Mark Brooks: Bebo is the U.K.’s top social network and was similarly seeded from the Founder’s prior company BirthdayAlarm.com. Friendster was grown from the Founders golden database of Bay Area contacts who were initially given exclusive entry to the site to help Jonathan build and refine the site.
Category: Outlets – New York Times
For MySpace, Making Friends Was Easy. Big Profit Is Tougher.
Mark Brooks: Myspace was a internet design company in 1996, sold virtual hard drive space in 2000, scooters in 2002 and kicked off as a socail network in 2003. I remember calling them to see if they wanted to sell the company in 2003, while they were still smaller than Friendster. The underground site went mainstream. They've done a great job being big AND 'underground.' However, there are still opportunities for other flavors of social network. Enter Bebo and Tagworld.
European Online Dating: An ‘Ideal’ Web Business
Mark Brooks: Meetic started Ulteem to compete with Parship.de, in similar fashion to Match starting Chemistry.com to compete with eHarmony.
Computing the Mysteries of Attraction
NY TIMES — Mar 29 — Students Elizabeth and Robert were at Wesleyan in 1965 when they became a part of what might have been the first computer dating service; Operation Match. It sent questionnaires to college campuses, students rated their own looks, intelligence and interests, described their ideal date using the same measures, then returned the survey, along with a $3 fee. Responses were transferred to punch cards and fed into an enormous Avco 1790 computer. Six weeks later, it spat out lists of mates for everyone. …During the first five years of marriage, the divorce rate for a couple of the same religion is 24%, no matter what that religion is. But it jumps to 38% for a Protestant and a Catholic, and 42% for a Jew and a Christian, according to economist Evelyn Lehrer. Divorce rates are higher for interracial couples and couples with a wife who is 4+ years older than her husband. (When the man is a lot older, on the other hand, divorce is no more likely than when spouses are about the same age.) Personality profiling atempts to "…narrow it down so you spend less time with people who are totally out of the question," said Pepper Schwartz, PerfectMatch's sociologist. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Looking for Love in all the Possible Places
NY TIMES — Feb 13 — Last year, almost a quarter of online daters seeking serious relationships or marriage held paid subscriptions on more than one dating site – more than double the comparable rate among Internet daters in general. Serious daters are also more likely to go from browsing to paying at a site, and to keep their subscriptions longer, according to Jupiter Research. "This is a really attractive market, who will pay high prices to lots of different players at the same time," said Nate Elliott of Jupiter. "They want to find someone, and actually don’t seem to be very price-sensitive. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Muslim Women in Europe Claim Rights and Keep Faith
Test Adds New Twist to the Dating Game
NEW YORK TIMES — Nov 27 — A rapid at-home H.I.V. test could be available on pharmacy shelves within the next year or so. Encouraged by a federal drug advisory committee earlier this month, OraSure Technologies in Bethlehem, PA, is expected to apply to the FDA soon for permission to start selling its H.I.V. test over the counter. Now it's available only in clinics. Taking the test involves a simple swab of the gums. Results appear within 20 minutes. And if the results are negative, certain inhibitions may disappear. Ken Deckinger, co-founder and chief executive of the dating service HurryDate, said that an easily available AIDS test could quickly reassure a dater of a prospective partner's health. An H.I.V. infection will take anywhere from two weeks to three months to become detectable, so the test can offer no assurances about a partner's most recent sexual history – or fidelity. Last year 38,685 more Americans were found to be infected with H.I.V. At least 250,000 Americans carry the virus for years without knowing it. Getting this quarter-million people to get screened could be the key to reducing the epidemic's toll in the U.S. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: And my next action, I am calling Orasure to find the person you can talk to about advertising Orasure on your site. …220 E.1st St, Bethlehem, PA. www.orasure.com. 610-882-1820. Orasure had sales of $54 million in 2004 with 194 employees. Ron Picho is VP Marketing.
When Capital Goes to the Founders, Not the Company
NY TIMES– Aug 5 — When Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch, the founders of eHarmony, a popular online dating site, were making the rounds last fall looking to raise venture capital, they weren’t merely seeking money to bankroll a big TV marketing blitz. Rather than wait for eHarmony to go public, which might never happen, or for some bigger company to acquire it, which also might not happen, the company’s founders decided to look for venture capitalists willing to cash out some of the stake they and others held in the company. They had no trouble finding eager venture investors, even though a big chunk of the investment would end up paying for vacation homes and other personal luxuries, rather than building the company. In eHarmony’s case, 116 people benefited financially when the company, which was started in 1999, announced last December that it had raised $110 million. The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers. Mr. Forgatch said that was inaccurate, but he would provide no specifics. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Finding a Second Act on the Internet
NY TIMES — Apr 12 — Hani joined JDate where she met David, a fellow graduate of Lafayette High School, class of '59. Her email,"David, is that you?" According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, the number of online dating site users 55 or older rose 19% in the last year. "As older folks and baby boomers become increasingly Internet-savvy, a lot of them are turning to online dating to find both romance and companionship," said Kristin Kelly, Match.com, whose 50-plus membership has tripled since 2000. "It's one of our fastest-growing segments," said Andrew Conru, CEO of FriendFinder, which operates SeniorFriendFinder with 400,000 members. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: My mother is learning to use a computer now, at 72. She's kicking it's ass at Scrabble.
Friendster, Love and Money
NY TIMES — Jan 24 — Fifteen months ago, Friendster enjoyed the kind of enviable status that Silicon Valley start-ups dream of: A-list investors and millions of users. The company endured three chief execs during 2004 and has seen a spate of senior executives depart in recent weeks. A younger, flashier rival called MySpace has eclipsed Friendster and Friendster loyalists have groused that the company has done almost nothing to enliven its site. Reid Hoffman (of LinkedIn), another early Friendster investor, agreed that the company frittered away its sizable head start over the competition. Last summer, the company hired Mr. Sassa a former NBC executive taking over from Timothy Koogle, an early Friendster investor and former Yahoo chief exec, who ran the company after the board lost faith in Mr. Abrams. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: Jonathan did a stellar job of observing the real world and emulating social group interaction online. I'd love to see Jonathan take the Product Development reigns. Seems MySpace has outfriendstered Friendster.