WALL STREET JOURNAL — Mar 27 — Splitting up rituals: bowing out of email lists, updating online profiles, clearing cellphone memories of phone numbers and old text messages. Nokia even shows a TV ad that features a woman named Jill, who says cellphone-number deletion is a sort of post-breakup therapy. The Internet makes it much easier – and therefore more tempting – to find out what a former partner is up to. soyouvebeendumped.com.
Category: Outlets – Wall Street Journal
‘Adult’ Dating Sites Flourish
WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE — Mar 1 — Amid sluggish growth for dating Web sites, a different kind of matchmaking service is thriving online: so-called adult dating sites that dispense with courtship and urge members to head straight for the bedroom. With names like AdultFriendFinder.com, SexSearch.com and IWantU.com, adult dating sites purport to help users find one-night stands, swinger parties and other sexual escapades. "We enable someone to express themselves sexually in a place that doesn't make them feel dirty," said Andrew Conru, FriendFinder founder. He estimated that about half of his site's members are "actively seeking a sexual partner." Others take advantage of features such as chat rooms and blogs. Others are merely interested in being a "voyeur into other people's lifestyles." AdultFriendFinder's traffic rose 67% in January from a year earlier, according to Nielsen. SexSearch.com, the second-most visited adult dating site, tripled its traffic to 3.2 million unique visitors in January while running online advertisements that promise "real people, real sex." Nielsen said traffic to InterActiveCorp.'s Match.com, the most popular of the traditional dating sites it tracks, grew 7% to 4.5 million unique visitors over the same period. Holly Fabian, 40, of Warren, MI, joined AdultFriendFinder "as a joke" to browse the amusing content. She received 150 emails in 24 hours and discovered a man who shared her interests. They met for dinner, and have been dating for the past two years.
The full article was originally published at WSJ Online, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: It's a rarity that the press write about the casual dating sites, much less Wall Street Journal.
‘Adult’ Dating Sites Flourish
WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE — Mar 1 — Amid sluggish growth for dating Web sites, a different kind of matchmaking service is thriving online: so-called adult dating sites that dispense with courtship and urge members to head straight for the bedroom. With names like AdultFriendFinder.com, SexSearch.com and IWantU.com, adult dating sites purport to help users find one-night stands, swinger parties and other sexual escapades. "We enable someone to express themselves sexually in a place that doesn't make them feel dirty," said Andrew Conru, FriendFinder founder. He estimated that about half of his site's members are "actively seeking a sexual partner." Others take advantage of features such as chat rooms and blogs. Others are merely interested in being a "voyeur into other people's lifestyles." AdultFriendFinder's traffic rose 67% in January from a year earlier, according to Nielsen. SexSearch.com, the second-most visited adult dating site, tripled its traffic to 3.2 million unique visitors in January while running online advertisements that promise "real people, real sex." Nielsen said traffic to InterActiveCorp.'s Match.com, the most popular of the traditional dating sites it tracks, grew 7% to 4.5 million unique visitors over the same period. Holly Fabian, 40, of Warren, MI, joined AdultFriendFinder "as a joke" to browse the amusing content. She received 150 emails in 24 hours and discovered a man who shared her interests. They met for dinner, and have been dating for the past two years.
The full article was originally published at WSJ Online, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: It's a rarity that the press write about the casual dating sites, much less Wall Street Journal.
Zoroastrians use Internet Dating to Rescue Religion
The full article was originally published at The Post-Gazette, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Shaadi.com is mentioned as one of the sites catering to Iranians.
Looking for Love (or a Date) on Cable TV
The full article was originally published at Wall Street Journal, but is no longer available.
How Cellphones May Beat Computers as a Dating Service
WALL STREET JOURNAL — Nov 3 — The latest phones can do email, video, music, photo sharing and Web surfing. Though the U.S. was late to the market for sending text messages over in recent years. SMS.ac boasts tens of thousands of communities of users who share interests in topics including sports, music and politics over their cellphone screens. In July, Upoc launched its first dating service. Since then it has attracted about 25,000 subscribers, at $4.99 a week, he says. Match.com has offered such a service on cellphones since February 2003. Zogo expects users to communicate in a novel way: by voice. Users are connected by a phone call. Zogo makes the calls to the two users. No phone numbers are made public, so users can remain anonymous behind their screen names. The Zogo service is free as the company builds up its user community. It eventually will cost $12.99 a month. Setting up a Zogo account and using it on a cellphone was cumbersome.
Mark Brooks: Instant gratification with Zogo's service…once they build a critical mass of users. Webdate offers mobile dating with access to 4 million profiles. Nice.
TV Review: Perils and Pitfalls of Online Dating
WALL STREET JOURNAL — July 8 — "Hooking Up" is a real-life ABC version of "Sex and the City" with the twist that the New York women depicted start their search for Mr. Right on the Internet. Begins Thursday July 14, 9-10pm ET. "Hooking Up" is mesmerizing and often very funny — first, because Internet suitors, both male and female, tend to lie about themselves and that makes for some notably bad first dates. It becomes clear why some of the girls are having problems finding a lasting relationship. It ends up being about the good, the bad and the ugly in both sexes, and the games they play.
The full article was originally published at Post Gazette, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: A reality check for online daters perhaps…but the program will boost the interest in online dating. 😉
Business ‘Social’ Networks; Expand Your Enterprise
WALL STREET JOURNAL — Jan 31 — Sites like Friendster.com let users meet new people through their friends on the network — in effect, a mutual friend provides an introduction. As the popularity of these sites has boomed, more people have realized that online networking can also be useful for business purposes. Making new business contacts is the third-most-popular feature of online networks — after contacting friends and looking for jobs — says Nate Elliott, an analyst at Jupiter Research, a unit of Jupitermedia Corp. of Darien, Conn. A total of 15% of all online users are interested in using networks to make business contacts.
Mark Brooks: I highly recommend the business network leaders LinkedIn.com and Ryze.com. OnlineBusinessNetworks.com is good guide.