Category: SexSearch

European Internet Dating Convention in Prague

Posted on September 27, 2005

Idate_2006_1Last Thursday and Friday I attended the European internet dating convention. Here are the pics. The conference was better attended than last year with 65 attendees and was more heavily attended by European dating companies. Last year half the attendees were American dating companies. Execs from U.S. notables Date.com, Match.com (UK based exec), and adult sites Sexsearch and Iwantu were present. Here’s a smattering of info for you from some of my favorite presentations:

Alex Burmaster is Jupiter Research’s new European online dating analyst
– Germans are most likely to be online daters
– British men are most willing to pay for online dating
– Pre-screening to provide matches is the most popular feature to help find love online

Jan Becker, CEO of German leader Friendscout24
– There are 11 million singles in Germany with 1 in 3 single in big cities
– 43% of European users on the web have used online dating (Statistisches Bundesamt 2005)
– Top sites are be2.de and Parship.de for high end ‘introductory type’ (personality profiling) services

Christian Vollman, CEO of iLove
– iLove had over 2 million uniques in May 2005 according to Nielsen Netratings
– iLove bills mainly via SMS billing
– Their mobile JAVA application has been downloaded 12,000 times so far

Nick Davis, Marketing Director for mobile enabler Mobestar
– Most European providers have recently launched 3G services. Japan is experimenting with 4G
– There are 10 million European 3G users with 18 million expected by 3/06

Eythor Arnaulds is VP at mobile enabler Enpocket
– ‘EDEN’ is Enpocket’s Dating Engine, receives 2 million hits per day, has 22 operators worldwide and powers Match on an exclusive basis in the U.S.
– Airtel in India has 700,000 paying mobile dating members averaging 600 messages per user!

Final Panel Session
– Match is now operating in 32 countries in 19 languages; most significant markets being U.S., Germany and France
– Parship.de is the German leader for personality profiling based services (personality profiling)
– Parship.de charges 179 Euros for 6 months!
– In Europe, the credit card does not rule. One service collects just 30% of it’s payments via credit card

Other notable presentations include
– Frederic Bien, Director of Flirt.com
– Richard Exon, Bus Dev Director for Bartle Bogle Hegarty gave an excellent presentation on TV advertising

Marc Lesnick, the internet dating conference organiser, ran a speed-networking session as an experiment on the second day.  We’ll see more speed-networking sessions at future events.  Socials in the first evening and a Prague penthouse party on Friday evening completed the event very nicely. 

The next iDate is the big one: See you in Miami Feb 1-2.

Hooking Up Is Out; Finding Your Perfect Match Is In!

Posted on August 26, 2005

PerfectmatchcomPRNewswire — Aug 23 — PerfectMatch.com appears prominently in the "Must Love Dogs" movie trailer and throughout the extensive television campaign.  PerfectMatch's remarkable growth in 2005 has been driven by partnerships in entertainment with Sony Pictures' "Hitch," the Dr. Phil Show and Lifetime Television, as well as major online brands MSNBC, iVillage and drugstore.com. PerfectMatch is a premium "relationship" site and continues its impressive growth while the "casual" dating space faces an industry-wide slowdown. A primary reason for the slowed growth within the casual dating space is the emergence of the savvy Internet dater. "Casual sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals are terrific to introduce users to online dating," Mr. Dahl, CEO, stated continued. "As singles gain confidence, we can expect them to graduate to a community of like-minded people. At PerfectMatch, singles can do that because we have a community of genuine people looking for real love and sincere 'relationships.'"  PerfectMatch.com(TM), is preparing for another sizeable growth increase in 2006 with the release of a book "Finding Your Perfect Match" authored by PerfectMatch relationship authority Dr. Pepper Schwartz (Penguin), and a partnership with NBC Universal's "The Break-up" starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. 

The full article was originally published at Red Nova, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Match and Yahoo Personals, along with True.com I might add (a relationships site with a slightly broader perspective), allow users the freedom to decide what kind of relationships they are interested in. eHarmony and PerfectMatch are focused on people who are 'very single' and very motivated to hook up for a longer term relationship.  Examples of full-on casual dating sites include Adultfriendfinder/Passion.com (Alexa rank has gone from 100 to 45 over the prior 12 months), Sexsearch (Alexa rank grown from 1500 to 600), Mate1 (15,000 to 2,000).  Eroticy and IwantU are plugging along as well.  Morals aside, full-on casual dating sites are here to stay.  This segment is alive and kicking and not to be ignored.

SexSearch.com Adult Personals Mentioned On Howard Stern Show

Posted on July 10, 2005

PR NEWSWIRE — July 8 — Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood’s madam and sex boutique owner, mentioned SexSearch.com adult personals three times in the course of the show, joking on how she should post her profile, while Howard Stern dropped the name twice.

Mark Brooks: A separate press release mentions Sexsearch has surpassed 3.5 million registrations. 

Former Friendfinder Executives Face Civil Suit

Posted on May 21, 2005

FriendfinderXBIZ — May 18 — Friendfinder (Various Inc) filed suit against affiliate managers, Jack Mardack and Sean Barrett for breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and defamation, among other charges, after they left the company and formed Profit Lab, which does consulting work for competitor Sex Search.  Mardack is accused of poaching the company’s affiliate list and that both execs embezzled and diverted company funds.  The suit further alleges that Mardack shared its affiliate list with competitors, helped set up a competing joint venture while employed at Friendfinder and brokered unauthorized payouts while paying those funds to himself and Barrett, and that Mardack made false statements that the company’s “payment processing was in jeopardy due to Friendfinder’s bad financial condition.” Mardack denies all allegations and says he left FriendFinder because of a "hostile environment.  "I am saddened by the retaliatory sentiment and paranoid tone from Friendfinder. I didn’t take away such an affiliate list.  One who does business in this industry knows that everyone who works in it also has a personal list.” Friendfinder seeks damages and a permanent restraining order against Mardock and Barrett from future use of its affiliate list.

The full article was originally published at XBiz, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks:  Fascinating.  In the sales world salespeople can walk away with their rolodex.  How is the affiliate world different?  I would argue that an affiliate manager should be able to take his 'relationships' from affiliates that he has recruited for the company.  But, not the affiliates already in place.  How to track?  Just what is a 'personal list?'  This case may well lead to some significant affiliate management legal precedents.  Watch this space.

Internet Creates a New Venue for Cheating

Posted on January 29, 2005

WILLIAMSPORT SUN-GAZETTE — Jan 25 — Across the country and around the world, people are increasingly caught up in a trend of cheating on the Internet via e-mail, instant messaging or adult Web sites. According to Dr. Dan Egli, a licensed psychologist in Williamsport, “no question about it. Internet cheating is one of the most common forms of unfaithfulness for a married couple today. It’s cheating and no different from meeting someone in a bar.”

Mark Brooks: Many of the adult dating sites have 'discrete relationship' categories. The top adult personals sites are AdultFriendFinder, Sexsearch and Eroticy. New entrant Ashley Madison Agency actually caters to cheaters.