BUSINESS WIRE — Dec 19 — The Miami Internet Dating Conference and Social Networking Conference will be held January 15-16, 2007 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Discussions include: revenue models, community building, online and offline marketing strategies, venture capital, software, mobile, video streaming, web 2.0, metrics, idea generation, coaching and user generated content (UGC). Speakers include executives from: American Capital, CollectiveX, Cupid.com, Developer Shed, eCrush, Insight Partners Ventures, Google, Mobestar, MSN, Multiply, Nokia, Online Personals Watch, Plenty of Fish, Profile Helper, Sparta Social Networks, Tickle, Userplane, Yahoo! Personals.
Category: POF
Social Networking Service for Non-Profits
PR WEB — Dec 8 — The Grameen Foundation blog will commemorate the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to encourage continued public support for microfinance and poverty eradication. Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank received the prize on Sunday in Oslo. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Mark Brooks: The CEO of The Grameen Foundation blogged about the ceremony and experience. Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish is helping the team of ex-Yahoo's create a social networking service for non-profits. The blog is the first step for this pre-launch company. I'm helping out.
Social Networking Service for Non-Profits
PR WEB — Dec 8 — The Grameen Foundation blog will commemorate the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to encourage continued public support for microfinance and poverty eradication. Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank received the prize on Sunday in Oslo. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
Mark Brooks: The CEO of The Grameen Foundation blogged about the ceremony and experience. Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish is helping the team of ex-Yahoo's create a social networking service for non-profits. The blog is the first step for this pre-launch company. I'm helping out.
Paid Dating Sites Discover Local Spam
THE PARADIGM SHIFT BLOG — Dec 5 — Paid dating sites have now all adopted the strategy I created 3 years ago and taken it to the extreme. Check out google searches like garrison dating. Date.com Matchmaker.com take the top spots. Followed by match.com, AmericanSingles, Meetic and Match.com UK. Matchdoctor and others have started retooling their entire sites to try and rank high for local queries. Its like everyone just caught on in the last couple of months.
The full article was originally published at The Paradigm Shift, but is no longer available.
Oodle Launches Personals
BUSINESS WIRE — Dec 4 — Oodle, the search engine for classifieds, launched Oodle Personals for consumers to search over a million public profiles from sites such as OkCupid and PlentyofFish as well as smaller community sites Nerve and GolfMates.com. Launched in April of 2005, Oodle provides an index of 19 million listings from 75,000 sources.
Mark Brooks: Lycos Dating Search has gone away. Dating sites paid on a cost per lead basis and fed them a flat file of members periodically. The lead stream wasn't what partner sites were hoping for unfortunately. Oodle seems like a better bet. No flat file, no CPL. Nice! I called them and they tell me they grew 463% since last year. They're funded by Greylock Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. Featured listings are available if you want to move your listings up in the search rankings and pay them some money.
Dating Service Connects with U.S. Marshals
VANCOUVER SUN — Nov 20 — Bennett was wanted in connection with the killing of Pierce Odell, 79 and his wife Mary Odell, 78. Frind — who operates PlentyofFish from his downtown Vancouver apartment — said he got an e-mail from the U.S. Marshals Service at 8:16 p.m. Saturday. Someone watching Americas Most Wanted had called to tell them they saw Bennett’s picture on PlentyofFish. Frind combed through the messages Bennett had sent to other users which showed that Bennett had been sending messages to various women as he travelled north from Arkansas. One woman had agreed to let Bennett stay at her place. Frind checked that woman’s profile and realized that both Bennett and the woman had recently logged into PlentyofFish using the same IP address — meaning they were visiting his site using the same computer. Frind wasn’t able to figure out the woman’s phone number or address from the messages she sent, but was able to give police the phone numbers of other people she had contacted. Frind spoke with U.S. marshals on Sunday, following Bennett’s arrest, and they thanked him for his help. “They told me it was vital information,” he said. “Basically they had no idea where he was until I gave them all the numbers and the information.” Frind is not worried about the bad publicity Bennett’s case may attract. “When you’re dealing with millions of people, it’s bound to happen,” he said. “It’s like getting struck by lightning.” He said nothing like this has happened on the site before. Frind was never served with a search warrant and voluntarily looked through Bennett and his girlfriend’s message traffic. He said he wouldn’t hesitate to look at a user’s private messages again “if a crime has been committed or someone is in danger.”
The full article was originally published at Vancouver Sun, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: What would you do if you were Markus?
Markus Nails One of America’s Most Wanted
Homicide fugitive seeking online love arrested
REUTERS — Nov 20 — A fugitive, wanted for a double homicide in Arkansas, was arrested on the weekend in Wisconsin after he posted his name, picture and address on PlentyofFish.
Man sought in Arkansas double slaying captured in Wisconsin
ASSOCIATED PRESS — Nov 20 — Wisconsin authorities arrested Calvin A. Bennett, 26, on Sunday after a segment on the killings was aired Saturday night on the television show "America's Most Wanted." The television viewer's tip led police to PlentyofFish, run by Vancouver based CEO Markus Frind. A U.S. Marshal e-mailed him Saturday night. Within 10 minutes, Frind had gathered messages sent by Bennett to five women on the site ranging from "call me" to "I'd love to talk to you and get to know you," Frind said. From the messages, Frind could tell Bennett had moved into a home of a site user. He also found Bennett's cellular phone number. With that information, an Arkansas State Police investigator contacted Wisconsin authorities. About a dozen officers arrested Bennett as he tried to leave a home in Rothschild, Wis. Frind said he has removed Bennett from the dating Web site. But he cautioned that the arrest shouldn't dissuade people from attempting to find matches online. "I've made 112 million introductions since the site started," Frind said. "One in 8 million people get hit by lightning in the U.S."
Mark Brooks: Markus happened to stay in Saturday night and caught the email from the US Marshals and was able to quickly turn it around. What might have taken hours at some dating sites, took minutes…and the bad guy got nailed. Nice! Well done Markus.
Markus Frind, 21st-century Superhero
MATHEW INGRAM — Nov 20 — Markus Frind, who runs one of the
world’s most popular dating websites, PlentyofFish.com, is a bit of a 21st-century
superhero. He helped to catch a suspected murderer who was
featured on the TV show America’s Most Wanted – Calvin Bennett. Provided with the user name that Bennett
used on his site, Mr. Frind found several
conversations the murderer had had with women online, and determined that he was staying with one of those women in
Wisconsin. "There are millions of people who use the site and I feel like I am
responsible for them," said Mr. Frind. "It felt
really good to capture him. Unlike the other dating sites, I was able to do this all within 10 minutes
on Saturday. FULL ARTICLE @ MATHEW INGRAM BLOG
Friendster’s Future Depends on its Philippine Team
MANILA TIMES — Nov 12 — Joseph Ross Lee, 26 years old, is currently Friendster's Philippine team chief; a group of young enterprising IT specialists engaged in maintaining and jump-starting the site's online services. There are millions of Filipino Friendster users. Friendster's Philippine team was responsible for initiating the site's online services that include Classifieds.Friendster.com, Friendster Mobs, Friendster Flowers, Friendster Fads and just recently Friendster Groups.
Mark Brooks: Orkut is huge in Brazil and India. PlentyofFish is 'the' dating site in Canada these days. BlackPlanet is the community of choice for black America.
Online Dating 2.0: Thirteen Sites To Find Love
TECH CRUNCH BLOG — Jul 23 — Online dating drew ~4 million U.S. users daily in June 2006 (25 million monthly), and they spend a daily average of nearly 17 minutes each on these sites. That adds up to ~4.5 billion page views per month (source: Comscore). And that doesn't take into account the billion-a-day Myspace page views. All told, at least 15% of U.S. Internet users visit an online dating site each month. The two largest dating sites are Yahoo Personals and Match.com (9.3 million monthly visitors). Match.com charges $30/month for the basic plan, Yahoo's is $25/month. Both offer premium plans. An entire batch of next generation dating sites have emerged that are starting to nip at the established players. One, PlentyofFish, launched in 2003 and has over half a million monthly U.S. visitors. Google entered the space with their Google Base product. These sites are (mostly) free, making revenue from ad sales alone.
- Consumating – "Find People Who Don't Suck" – Launched the summer of 2005 and was acquired by CNET in December 2005. Tagging plays a big part. Aimed at young hipsters who make themselves more "popular" by answering questions to fill out their profile. Offers contests and weekly user quizzes.
- Engage – Hooks up couples Fiddler-on-the-Roof-style through matchmaking. Users sign up with the usual descriptive profile, but then take on the role of either "dater" or "matchmaker" (or both).
- Google Personals – Google Base – User profiles highly targeted towards dating. Other features include labels (tags), location mapping, and an anonymous email to be reached at.
- GreatBoyFriends – Friends, family and ex's are asked to leave feedback about users. GBF then verifies the endorsement or removes it.
- MatchActivity – MatchActivity is a new site that sets up a date before the introduction. Users post activities in their area and then choose the respondent they like the most and carry out the date.
- MatchTag – Same core activity tagging feature of MatchActivity.com, but wraps it in a more complete social network. A service to meet new dates and friends.
- MingleNow – Users group themselves by what real world locations they hang out at (bars, restaurants, cafe's, etc.) so groups can mingle online and off.
- PlentyofFish – A very large dating site. Users browse personal profiles free of charge, with a bulletin board system that allows users to freely chat, vent frustrations, and offer up dating advice.
- Poddater – Users create profile videos and allow others to download them and view them.
- Prescription4Love – Niche site devoted to people facing thestigma of special conditions, such as deafness, HIV, or obesity.
- RateOrDate – A meta-dating-search site that features couple ratings, singles event listings, and a dating site directory.
- VerbDate – Adds voice to the usual online dating experience via Skype and incorporates Flickr photo albums. Allows the greatest amount of interaction while remaining physically separated.
- Wikia Personals – Aims to create a free global personals page.
If numbers of profiles matter PlentyofFish leads the pack. Our anticipated favorite is MingleNow – tying socializing to real-world hangouts is a great idea. FULL ARTICLE @ TECHCRUNCH BLOG