NY TIMES — Feb 26 — During the week of Feb. 5, SeniorPeopleMeet, had 81% women, BBW Datefinder 76% and Catholic Match 72%, according to Hitwise. Greg Waldorf, the CEO of eHarmony (69% women visitors) said, "If you asked me would I rather have more women or men, I'd rather have more women. If you have a good healthy population of women, I think men are attracted to that." FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Category: Outlets – New York Times
On Niche Dating Sites, Many More Women
NY TIMES — Feb 26 — During the week of Feb. 5, SeniorPeopleMeet, had 81% women, BBW Datefinder 76% and Catholic Match 72%, according to Hitwise. Greg Waldorf, the CEO of eHarmony (69% women visitors) said, "If you asked me would I rather have more women or men, I'd rather have more women. If you have a good healthy population of women, I think men are attracted to that." FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking
NY TIMES — Jan 21 — Social networking is a close cousin of the other obsession of the moment: user-generated content. Sony paid $65 million for video-sharing site, Grouper. The Hearst Corporation bought eCrush, and the Walt Disney, CBS, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites. The big debate – will Internet surfers continue to migrate to big portal sites like AOL and Yahoo or use widely available tools to fashion their own customized Web lives. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: One of the great appeals of the internet experience is 'mass customization.' Individuals will ultimately design their own information sharing environments down to minute details. The big companies will have a part in this world but will move slowly and lose massive 'attention share' (market share) to nimbler companies with teams of tens of people.
Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking
NY TIMES — Jan 21 — Social networking is a close cousin of the other obsession of the moment: user-generated content. Sony paid $65 million for video-sharing site, Grouper. The Hearst Corporation bought eCrush, and the Walt Disney, CBS, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites. The big debate – will Internet surfers continue to migrate to big portal sites like AOL and Yahoo or use widely available tools to fashion their own customized Web lives. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: One of the great appeals of the internet experience is 'mass customization.' Individuals will ultimately design their own information sharing environments down to minute details. The big companies will have a part in this world but will move slowly and lose massive 'attention share' (market share) to nimbler companies with teams of tens of people.
U.K. Web Advertising Boom
NY TIMES — Dec 4 — Online advertising is racing ahead in Britain, growing at ~40%, and is expected to account for ~14% of overall ad spending this year, the highest level in the world, and more than double the percentage in the U.S. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: I heard from the CEO of Parship that advertising rates in the UK are the highest in Europe for online dating. I hear from other UK heads that the conversions are also some of the highest in Europe. Your comments please.
Here’s My Number (for Today)
NY TIMES — Nov 30 — "Why would I give out my cell?" said Ms. McClain, 23. "I don't need a guy I met at a bar one night calling me every day for the next two weeks begging me to go out. I want to filter out the people I don't need to have contact with." In an age of information oversharing, the mobile-phone number is one of the few pieces of personal information that people still choose to guard. And the decision to give out a cell number can haunt you for years, as people now hold on to the numbers longer than their land-line numbers. Instead of giving out her cell number, Ms. McClain has recently been dispersing what has become known as a "social phone number." A handful of Web sites are creating mask numbers, which can be obtained in nearly every area code. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: I'm preparing a side by side analysis of over a dozen anonymous calling service providers suitable for consideration of internet dating and social networking services. Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com to get your copy as soon as it's completed. I'm working for Vumber.com (coming soon) and this is part of my research for them.
Web 3.0 a.k.a. The Semantic Web
NY TIMES — Nov 11 — A growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence. Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. Web 2.0 sites connect applications, "mash-ups" — i.e. Zillow. The Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: "I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child." Radar Networks exploits social site content. KnowItAll’s Opine works with product and review sites. Metaweb want to “build a better infrastructure for the Web” and is underwritten by Intelligence Agencies along with Cycorp. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: Fast forward fifteen years. The internet dating industry will have completely transformed. Seemingly all powerful social networks will metastasize. Smaller, leaner, renegade companies who understand the culture and tenets and emotional make-up of their target markets will build powerful, deeply rooted new brands…and do so by giving them what they want. Dates, mates, new friends and fun about town. Users will get more sophisticated and demand more immediacy, more modes of communication, more results. Singles want dates, and sex, and relationships with compatible singles. Compatibility is easier to predict around behaviors. Users don’t understand what they truly want, or they all out lie. Guys lie about wanting serious relationships and women lie about wanting casual ones. Singles ultimately will demand the semantic web deliver them online flirting and real world dates. Talking to cell phone, "Find me a date with a <race> girl who is within 30 miles of <my town> and is compatible with me for a <term> relationship." I picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking, a KRZR phone and a Sonos music system in the last couple of weeks. In fifteen years they will all be one and the same, and they’ll understand me…not just my accent, they’ll really understand me.
Law on Overseas Brides Is Keeping Couples Apart
NY TIMES — Oct 17 — In June, the federal immigration service froze 10,000 visa applications for foreign fiancées because they did not conform with a law that went into effect in March. Imbra (International Marriage Broker Regulation Act) is intended to give foreign women and the American government more information about the men who seek so-called mail-order brides. Under Imbra, dating agencies that specialize in matching American men with women overseas must first obtain information about a man’s criminal record and marital history, relay it to the woman and then get her consent before disclosing her contact information. Men must also provide this information to the government when applying for a fiancée visa. The immigration service said 37,500 women entered the country last year on fiancée visas or temporary visas for spouses of American citizens. Up 50% from 2002 and a fourfold increase over 1998. One-third to one-half of these visas were for women who had met their American partners through matchmaking brokers. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
How Friendster Lost Chance for a Jackpot
The full article was originally published at IHT, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I was fortunate enough to be one of Jonathan's group of friends that he called on to help him with Friendster in 2003. Kicking Jonathan out, big mistake. He was overwhelmed with it's growth, and he wasn't as smooth as an Alexa 100 internet CEO might be, but he knew every nuance of Friendster and why it was successful. Some parallel's can be drawn with the success of Markus Frind of PlentyofFish. I talk with Markus every few days now, and every time we talk he's received more calls from VC's wanting to invest. But, he refuses to accept funding or grow his team beyond a one man band. Some would argue he should grow it into a company worth hundred of millions. He would argue…he is…his way. It's the antithesis of the approach Jonathan took. I'm sure he'd be inspired by it.
Dot-Com Boom Echoed in Deal to Buy YouTube
NY TIMES — Oct 10 — A profitless Web site started by three 20-somethings after a late-night dinner party is sold for more than a billion dollars, instantly turning dozens of its employees into paper millionaires. It happened yesterday. Google ($132B market cap) agreed yesterday to pay $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube. Users view 100 million short videos on the site every day. Google is expected to try to make money from YouTube by integrating the site with its search technology and search-based advertising program. News Corporation sent a letter to YouTube seeking to start talks but never received a response. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: And another raft of VC’s will pump money into new social networks which will launch in 3-6 months.