AGELESS LIFESTYLES — Nov 15 — 23½ million single Baby Boomers are using
online dating and more than five million people over 55 have used online
dating as well. "Novices do best by
starting with large free sites like PlentyofFish.com to get a feel for
online dating. With that feel, they may want to move on to niche sites", said online
dating psychologist Dr. Jim Houran. FULL ARTICLE @ AGELESS LIFESTYLES
Category: POF
Interview With Linda Maynard
FOX NEWS — Nov 7 — Linda Maynard, who dated online on and off for years, wrote a book about online dating called "The Savvy Woman's Guide to Online Dating".
Q: Linda, did you find anybody?
A: Well I have a few times. This book is not about how to find Mr. Right, it's about how to navigate through the dating process from posting your profile, to the email, the first phone call and to the first meeting.
Q: Let's talk about the danger. Some people are afraid to do this.
A: When I first dipped my toe into the unchartered waters, I was scared and skeptical and I was looking for something to guide me and give me some rules and guidelines to be safe. And that book is full of ways to be safe.
Q: And some of the more familiar sites, e-Harmony.com, Match.com they charge a fee, especially some of the more secure sites and safer ones.
A: I've tried Match.com. But since I've published this book, I've discovered another site called PlentyOfFish.com and they do not charge at all. And I highly recommend that because more people are on that site because it is free and I found that there is quite a good caliber of people there too.
The full article was originally published at Fox News, but is no longer available.
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Online Personals: Changing Norms, Changing Business Models
CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE REPORT — Oct '08 — JupiterResearch predicts the online dating industry will hit $1.9 billion by 2012, not including matchmaking services at $250m+ in the U.S. Mark Brooks, who monitors the personals industry, pegs 2004 as the year when dating sites matured. "There are less people on dating sites, but they're spending more money." The CEO of The Right One/Together Dating, Paul Falzone has been in the business 20 years. "When times are good, people want someone to share the fun with. When times are bad, they want companionship."
The Free factor – Free has become a very real factor in the industry, with the emergence of PlentyOfFish.com. POF has more than 10m profiles, and 2m active monthly users. "He's the renegade of the market," said Brooks. "He's making the other players think about advertising money." Frind acknowledges that his $10m in yearly ad revenue has gotten people's attention, but he thinks the traditional dating sites are too invested in the paid-membership model to shift gears.
The Facebook factor – Many in the online dating industry believe social networks will not be a negative factor because SN are for friends and people are posting all sorts of material there they might not want a prospective date to see. But Robert Lee, who has been reviewing dating sites at ALoveLinksPlus.com, believes Facebook is going to figure out how to establish different layers of access, so a user can create a dating-oriented profiles that not everyone can see. As of Oct. 18, Facebook had 497 dating applications.
Different marketing and revenue models – "Personals ads" in newspapers was disrupted by the Internet in the mid-1990s but is being revived with a new focus on Web-first publishing, promoted in print. Another model uses the Web as its operating venue, but drives new customers through heavy advertising in traditional media. Cupid.com makes deals with radio stations to run ads for free in exchange for a share of revenue and claims a conversion rate of 13%. eHarmony and Match spend millions on TV advertising. The typical revenue model is "browse for free, connect for a fee." Matchmaking sites such as Kelleher and Associates, Together Dating and It's Just Lunch have a dual role in the online ecosphere. First, they buy leads from online dating sites, creating yet another line of revenue. Paul Falzone bought LoveAccess.com as a way to generate his own leads. In the 1980s, Falzone's cost per lead was $200-$250 using direct mail. Now his goal is to get that number to zero.
Growth of explicit sites – At the Internet Dating Conference held in London in September, the hallway buzz was all about the explosion in numbers of women signing up for adult sites like Fling.com and AdultFriendFinder. "I'd call it a sexual awakening," said Brooks. "Guys have always been interested in the adult sites, but this is new." The average length of membership on a regular dating site is three months, compared with five months on an adult site.
The future – Mobile and video remain theoretical game-changers, enabling potential match-ups by proximity or direct communication. Brooks sees another potential business model emerging from academic research: a dramatic improvement in the quality of matching.
The full report was originally published at AIM Group, but is no longer available.
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Microsoft BizSpark Supports Plentyoffish
NEWS FACTOR — Nov 5 — Microsoft has announced its
BizSpark program, which helps startups by providing software and
server products as well as marketing, tech support and access to
venture capitalists. Microsoft hopes BizSpark will help drive
innovation and create new jobs. Microsoft has also launched BizSpark
DB, a Web site to promote software startups. Markus Frind, featured on BizSpark DB, said not taking
advantage of the program is "stupid" because the software is free and
the program can dramatically decrease business costs. Frind runs the
Canadian-based company Plentyoffish.com, a free online dating site.
FULL ARTICLE @ NEWS FACTOR
Mark Brooks: Markus is always good for a candid and catchy quote. 🙂 (Full Disclaimer: Plentyoffish.com is a client of Courtland
Brooks)
Allegran Lays Off 70% Of Workforce
OPW — Nov 3 — Allegran runs Loopylove and GirlsDateForFree. Apparently 17 were laid off today. Everyone but management and a few in marketing. Reasons mentioned were the high cost of marketing, losses of of £1m this year, Plentyoffish taking market share in th U.K. and Match and Dating Direct's considerable ad spending. Allegran got squeezed in the middle. (Full Disclosure: Plentyoffish.com is a client of Courtland Brooks)
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Women Are More Sexually Promiscuous
SILICON.COM — Oct 17 — Thanks to the internet, women are more sexually promiscuous than ever before according to PlentyofFish, an online dating site with more than 10m registered users. The number of women looking for sex has doubled since 2004. Three years ago, men who were looking for intimate encounters online outnumbered women 10 to 1 – now, the ratio is only five to one.
The full article was originally published at Silicon.com, but is no longer available.
Number Of Women Looking For Sex On Casual Dating Sites Doubled
PR NEWSWIRE — Oct 26 — PlentyofFish.com, a free online dating site with over 10m registered users, has released data that shows promiscuity among women has doubled since 2004. PlentyofFish.com, which generates revenue from sending members to other dating sites, tracked 315,478 users going to casual only dating sites in 2004. Of those users, the number of women who were looking for sex through the "intimate encounter" option was about 9%. Among users tracked in 2008, the number of women who were looking for an intimate encounter rose to 18%.
The full article was originally published at MarketWatch, but is no longer available.
Lessons In E-commerce
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS — Oct 27 — Rich Barton founded Expedia.com in 1994 and Zillow.com in 2006 and learned a few lessons along the way. "If it can be known, it will be known. If it can be rated, it will be rated. If it can be free, it will be free." Those three are true now, Barton says. "There are only a couple words in marketing that work every time. Free is one of them." He pointed to plentyoffish.com a free dating site that is taking over the dating world.
The full article was originally published at Rocky Mountain, but is no longer available.
Single Shot: How To Be A Cheap Date
SEATLE PI — Oct 10 — Dating in the New Improved Depression means learning to make do with the simple things in life, the things we've been blathering about for 30 years: long walks on the beach, snuggling in front of a fire and enjoying The Sunday New York Times. Free personal sites are one of the hottest new trends in online dating, according to Mark Brooks, editor of Onlinepersonalswatch.com. The top three contenders, as ranked by Hitwise, are Plentyoffish, DateHookup and OkCupid, but there are many more, including HOT or NOT, Webdate, Matchdoctor, Bookofmatches and Smooch.
The full article was originally published at Seattle PI, but is no longer available.
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PlentyofFish Passes 2 Billion Matches
PARADIGM SHIFT — Sep 26 — I saw this post from eHarmony this morning showing 1 billion matches since 2000. PlentyofFish passed 1 Billion emails this weekend at iDate in London. We also passed 2 Billion matches generated by our matching system since 2005 or so. Stay tuned for 2 major press releases in the coming weeks, both of which will have a major impact on the industry.
The full article was originally published at The Paradigm Shift, but is no longer available.