SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Apr 12 - Weeks into a "soft opening", with no publicity or advertising, Australian women have adopted the Ashley Madison agency motto – "life is short, have an affair" – with an enthusiasm founder Noel Biderman says he's not seen before. "We've never had more women than men, it's always been about two to one, male to female," Biderman said. Biderman said 40,000 Australians so far had joined the agency, which he started in Canada in 2001, fusing the two most popular children's names at the time to come up with AshleyMadison.com. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Category: Outlets – Sydney Morning Herald
Online Cheating Is A Booming Business
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Mar 26 – 'LIFE is short. Have an affair!'' That is the line Noel Biderman uses to spruik his dating service, ashleymadison.com, which he claims has more than 5M philandering members, including 10,000 in Australia. An internet search throws up countless websites for cheating spouses, including meet2cheat.com.au, affairsclub.com, lonelyhousewives.com, philanderers.com and benaughty.com. ''I'm often asked if all these sites are causing more affairs,'' said the VP of Relationships Australia NSW, Anne Hollonds. ''To some extent it's easier, you can just sit at a computer. But these tend to be people who are wanting to escape their circumstances and derive the benefits from having a liaison with someone else. There have always been people who wanted to do that but they found other ways of doing it.'' FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
See all posts on AshleyMadison See all posts on Philanderers
See all posts on BeNaughty
Online Dating Industry Will Grow By Almost A Third
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Jan 10 - The Australian online dating industry grew by 5% last year and is expected to grow by a further 5 to 10% this year. According to dating site RSVP survey 50% of respondents had tried online dating and 10% had met their current or most recent partner on the internet. Business analyst IBISWorld expects the industry to earn ~$100M from subscriptions and advertising this year. Cupid Media, Australia's biggest online dating company, has 33 websites that specialise in religion, ethnicity, sexual preference and physical appearance. The company started at least three new websites every year and had ~15M customers in 50 countries. IBISWorld does, however, expect the boom to slow in a few years with the increased sophistication of social networks. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Mark Brooks: People Media was recently sold for $80 million to IAC. Cupid Media is doing well. I wonder how long it will be before they are acquired? First Beat Media, World Singles, FriendFinder's network of sites, Avid Life Media are other examples of networks of niche sites that have exceled and enjoyed the benefits of the 'network effect.' Given the choice, users will often join multiple sites within a network, which means improved ARPU. (Full Disclosure: First Beat Media and Avid Life Media are current clients of Courtland Brooks. World Singles is a former client, and I worked for FriendFinder in 2003-2004).
Redhotpie.com.au Accused Of Creating Fake Profiles
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Nov 6 – The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has accused dating site, RedHotPie, of misleading conduct. The site operators have allegedly created fake profiles in order to increase activity by sending flirt messages to its 1.6 million register users. The hearing is set for December 10th in Perth. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
It’s Raining Romantic Men Online
SMH — Feb 14 – Figures obtained from internet dating services show that in some age groups there are far more men than women searching for a partner online. RSVP reports that women are outnumbered by men 1.5 to 1 in their late 20s to mid 30s. On Lavalife, women remain in high demand even after they turn 50, when almost three times more men in that age group are logging on. FULL ARTICLE @ SMH
Japan’s Online Social Scene Isn’t So Social
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD — Sep 26 — The vast majority of mixi's roughly 15m users don't reveal anything about themselves. It's not just mixi. It's Japan. Fewer than half of Match's members in Japan are willing to post their photos, compared with nearly all members in the U.S. Google, which operates YouTube, has tried to convince the Japanese to loosen up, running events in Tokyo in which girls in miniskirts roam the streets with giant picture frames and video cameras, soliciting pedestrians to frame themselves and record a clip for the site. "When we did research in Japan, we found that the No. 1 reason for not using online dating is that they don't know if people are real or not," says Match.com's Japan president, Katsu Kuwano. The company hopes to make more people show themselves online by defining itself in a less Web-centric way. Match has also held offline events at Tokyo restaurants. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Online Dating Reaches a Critical Mass
SIDNEY MORNING HERALD — Jan 12 — Two thirds of singles in Britain looking for love turned to electronic dating agencies in 2005, figures published in the Times showed today. There are more than 100 independent online dating agencies in Britain, chasing a market that is valued at about $A28.12 million and expected to rise to $A62.33 million by 2008. Mary Balfour, founder of Love and Friends, where a full "hand-holding" matchmaking service can cost more than £5000 ($A11,715), said the internet had revolutionised the dating industry by raising its profile and placing a new reliance on getting to know a date before meeting. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
We Must Meet: Sharp Edge to Internet Dates
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD — Sept 23 — At least four Sydney men have been abducted and robbed at knifepoint in an internet dating scam in the past week, police say. The victims were lured to locations in Sydney’s south-west, believing they were about to meet women after blind dates were set up via websites. When the victims went to meet the women, they were ambushed at knifepoint, kidnapped, robbed and then later released. None of the victims were harmed. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY HERALD
Mark Brooks: Always meet in a public place. Let me repeat. Always meet in a public place.
Australian Singles Heaven
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD — June 10 — Australia is singles heaven with 4.7 million singles according to the 2001 census. Marriage rates are at their lowest in 100 years and Aussies are marrying later, divorcing more and have less time on our hands. Nearly 1.5 million Australians (14% of people online) visited dating sites in April, a rise of 102% in two years according to Nielsen Net Ratings. Jupiter Research estimates that U.S. singles will spend $US516 million on online dating this year. RSVP, the largest Australian website, with 580,000 members, boasts that in five years it has "facilitated" nearly 900 weddings and about 8000 dates a week. New members can put up their profile for free but must pay $6 for a "stamp" to initiate contact by email with another member. Fast Impressions, is positioned as a great night out for busy professionals. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Crazy For You – Here’s the Scan to Prove It
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD — May 31 — Scientists believe Love could be mistaken for psychosis. Scientists have for the first time produced brain scans of people in the first stages of love and those who have been rejected and concluded that romance is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal. Writing in The Journal of Neurophysiology, the scientists from New York and New Jersey said romance was closer in its neural profile to drives such as hunger, thirst or drug craving than to excitement or affection. However, as a relationship deepens, the neural activity alters slightly, and in some cases primes those areas involved in long-term attachment. 2500 brain images from 17 college students who were in the first weeks or months of new love were analyzed. Last year, scientists in Atlanta reported that they could turn promiscuous male voles into stay-at-home fathers by activating the areas highlighted in the new study. You can almost imagine a time where instead of going to Match.com you could have a test to find out whether you're an attachment type or not. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD