GUARDIAN.CO.UK — June 28 – Ten years ago, Henry Badenhorst and his partner Gary Frish helped a friend find a date online. They put him on Excite, a search engine, which had a dating section. But it took two weeks for him to get a response. The idea for Gaydar was born. "Gaydar started as something we did on the side," says Badenhorst. "I placed some ads in Boyz, which drew in a few people, and slowly it grew. The 1st year we had several thousand, the 2nd year was 75k and then suddenly, in the third year, in 2001-02, there were ~220k." 5 million people around the world subscribe, spending on average more than an hour on the site with each visit, and pay £5/month subscription, with the rest of the company's revenue coming from advertising. By 2004 the website had a new sibling: GaydarRadio which now has 1.6m listeners. Badenhorst met fellow South African Gary Frisch in 1991. "I always make jokes that he was the one-night stand that never went away." On Feb 10th, 2007, Frisch did finally go away. He jumped off the 8th-floor balcony of his Battersea home. Badenhorst says he wants to cut down his hours, and admits that now, with Frisch gone, his passion isn't what it was. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Category: Outlets – The Guardian
Internet Dating Unplugged
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — June 27 – 15m people in the UK are single, and almost 5m are shopping for love online. According to Markus Frind, the CEO of Plentyoffish, 1/3 of POF users form a relationship, 1/3 do not and 1/3 give up. One in five married people between the ages of 19 and 25 met their partner online, in a YouGov poll of more than 2,000. 15% of couples met online. Research at Bath University found that internet relationships lasted, on average, seven months. Clyde Baldo, a psychologist who works with disillusioned internet daters, said "Many people are addicted to online dating. The problems lie in the fact that it is not a real relationship, but one in cyberspace. When you meet people conventionally, friends or colleagues introduce you. These factors create boundaries, so you tend to behave better. This doesn't exist on the internet. Dr Paige Padgett of the University of Texas has conducted a survey of the personal and sexual safety of women who internet date. 30% of women who meet men on the internet have sex on the first date. Of those, 77% do not use condoms. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Finding Love In Later Life
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — June 10 — According to eharmony.co.uk, 30% of men over 65 and a whopping 60% of women don't live as part of a couple. Match.com claims the baby boomer generation is its fastest-growing market. Many niche websites have popped up, specifically targeting an older demographic. The Senior Dating Agency and Senior Dating Group are both free to join and are targeted at over-50s. Singlesover60.co.uk and Online Senior Dates focus on a slightly higher age bracket, with the majority of its members over 60. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
ITV To Bring FriendsReunited Applications To iPhone
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — Sep 1 – ITV will launch two iPhone applications for FriendsReunited next year, one each for the social network and its spin-off dating service. Melissa Goodwin, controller of mobile for ITV, said its research had shown that 67% of iPhone users are men, so the application would focus on services that include sports such football scores. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Orange Opens Up Mobile Social Net Service
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — July 9 — Orange has launched a major push for mobile social networking in the UK today, introducing a service which aggregates users' accounts across the major social networks. Launched as a trial in France last month under the name MySocialPlace, Orange has now partnered with the biggest social networks – Facebook, MySpace and Bebo – to introduce the service in the UK under the Orange World branded website. UK users can also access the chat service Flirtomatic and the photo-sharing site Pikeo, while Orange customers in France can use the Skyrock community, DailyMotion video site and dating service Meetic. Data from Nielsen Mobile in May showed that 44% of UK mobile phone users have registered with a social networks, and estimated that 1.7% of users, or 812,000 people, had accessed those services from their mobile. Facebook had been accessed by 9% of all mobile web users, MySpace by 3.4% and Bebo by 2.6%. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
WooMe Woos With Video Dating
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — Apr 22 — Founded in December 2006, WooMe combines online dating with video chat. Chief executive Stephen Stokols explains his big ambitions for the site.
Q: Explain your business to my Mum.
A: WooMe is a live introductions platform that leverages a speed-dating model to let users meet each other via voice and video. Meet five people in five minutes and decide who woo'd you.
Q: How do you make money?
A: If two people mutually woo each other, they pay $1 to get their contact info.
Q: How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
A: Target in 12 months = 1m users. Existing registered user numbers are in six figures.
Q: What's your biggest challenge?
A: Keeping up with the user growth.
Q: Name your competitors.
A: No direct competition.
The full article was originally published at Guardian.co.uk, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Speeddate.com is the main competition.
The Big Switch May Turn Off Jobs
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — Jan 3 — Over the past few decades, we've seen a growth of riches in a small slice of the population. YouTube became one of the most popular and fastest-growing websites with just 60 employees. Within two years Skype had signed up 53 million customers and was attracting 150,000 new subscribers every day. Yet Skype employed just 200 people. Even more remarkable is PlentyOfFish, an online dating service. Launched in Canada in 2003, the site experienced explosive growth. By late 2006, some 300,000 people were logging on to the service every day, and they were looking at about 600m pages a month. Only one person, Markus Frind, did this booming business employ. Companies like YouTube, Skype and PlentyOfFish are constructed almost entirely of software. The cost of distributing their goods or services to a new customer is essentially zero, so they can expand vastly without hiring additional employees. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Match In Facebook Tie-up
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — Match.com is now partnering with Facebook by offering a "Little Black Book" application to Facebook users, which helps them find potential partners. Using the Little Black Book application, friends can share potential matches with any of their other friends on Facebook and can purchase keys to "unlock" a potential match for a friend. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Gaydar Co-Founder Leaves $13 Million Estate
GUARDIAN UNLIMITED — Aug 21 — Gaydar co-founder Gary Frisch has left an estate worth about $13 million to his business partner and former boyfriend Henry Badenhorst. Gaydar, the world’s largest gay online dating website, accounts for 72% of the internet’s gay and lesbian usage in the U.K. and has about 3.5 million users worldwide. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN UNLIMITED
Flirting And Fornicating
MAIL & GUARDIAN ONLINE — Aug 8 — Meetic claims the No 2 spot in the world behind match.com. It has become known as the "efficient" site in France with fast action, easy sex and open adultery. It has five million members in France, 22-million users in 17 countries and sites in 12 languages. On Valentine's Day Meetic announced a rise in profits of 70%, to £18-million.
The full article was originally published at Mail & Guardian Online, but is no longer available.