DAILY NEWS — Nov 13 — Marc Lesnick organizes three or four internet dating business conferences a year in places such as Beijing, Amsterdam and Miami. "In Europe, the business generates between $200 and $250 million," says Lesnick, "and in Asia, between $40 and $100 million." Whatever your nationality, religion, occupation or fetish is, it seems there is an online dating service tailor-made for you. "If you want to meet someone local, you've got the big sites like Match.com and eHarmony," says Mark Brooks, online editor and blogger of Online Personals Watch, a Web site devoted to Internet dating industry news. "If you look in a smaller niche site, keep in mind you'll probably be jumping on a plane," advises Brooks. Internet safety expert Larry Burris talks to parent and teacher groups all over the world about keeping people safe on the Internet. He calls his presentations "Safety in the Cyber Village," and says dating online is not much different than traditional dating. Thanks to online dating services such as TRUE.com, ensuring user safety is becoming a top priority for many matchmaking companies. TRUE offers criminal background checks, as well as marital background checks, and the company says it will prosecute anyone who commits fraud on their Web site. "Women need to know that when they go on a date, they're not talking to a criminal or someone who is married," says Brooks.
Category: TRUE.com
TRUE Sues Convicted Sex Offender
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Wow, they actually did it, they're suing a user! Your comments please. Which mainstream online dating site is going to introduce background checks next?
TRUE Sues Convicted Sex Offender
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Wow, they actually did it, they're suing a user! Your comments please. Which mainstream online dating site is going to introduce background checks next?
Web Dating Game Heats Up
THE STREET — Nov 14 — Troublemakers on the online dating scene may have met their match in a group of increasingly brand-conscious Internet giants. Yahoo! Personals and Match.com, two of the largest Internet dating sites, are stepping up their efforts to weed their services of abusive, obnoxious or married people. Earlier this year, Yahoo! instituted a code of conduct for online daters in which they must swear that they are single and won't be abusive toward other members. The company also has made it easier for members to report misbehavior. Match.Com has added additional people to its fraud and abuse unit. The effort comes as the online dating market consolidates and surviving services fight off competition for loyal users from social network sites like Friendster.com and Myspace.com, which also offer free dating, and smaller upstarts such as True.com. "They have got very significant brands that they have to protect," says Mark Brooks, who runs the blog onlinepersonalswatch.com. "They can't have people who are scamming, spamming, being obscene or being obnoxious. It's very bad for their brand." About 11% of all online users have a profile on an online dating site, according to Jupiter Media. "The market is reaching maturity," Jupiter Research analyst Nate Elliot told the blog onlinepersonalswatch.com in a recent interview. "…there are fewer consumers 'just curious' to have a look. It's no longer the 'new thing.'" FULL ARTICLE @ THE STREET
Web Dating Game Heats Up
THE STREET — Nov 14 — Troublemakers on the online dating scene may have met their match in a group of increasingly brand-conscious Internet giants. Yahoo! Personals and Match.com, two of the largest Internet dating sites, are stepping up their efforts to weed their services of abusive, obnoxious or married people. Earlier this year, Yahoo! instituted a code of conduct for online daters in which they must swear that they are single and won't be abusive toward other members. The company also has made it easier for members to report misbehavior. Match.Com has added additional people to its fraud and abuse unit. The effort comes as the online dating market consolidates and surviving services fight off competition for loyal users from social network sites like Friendster.com and Myspace.com, which also offer free dating, and smaller upstarts such as True.com. "They have got very significant brands that they have to protect," says Mark Brooks, who runs the blog onlinepersonalswatch.com. "They can't have people who are scamming, spamming, being obscene or being obnoxious. It's very bad for their brand." About 11% of all online users have a profile on an online dating site, according to Jupiter Media. "The market is reaching maturity," Jupiter Research analyst Nate Elliot told the blog onlinepersonalswatch.com in a recent interview. "…there are fewer consumers 'just curious' to have a look. It's no longer the 'new thing.'" FULL ARTICLE @ THE STREET
LoveHappens Darling of Dating Industry. Y! Personals Still Winning
Negligence Claims Arise When Online Dating Goes Wrong
LAWYERS WEEKLY USA — Oct 30 — Randall Miller won a $434,000 verdict last November for a Ukrainian immigrant who was severely beaten by her husband, whom she met through an international online dating service. Because that case was based on specific federal laws protecting mail-order brides from other countries, it has little direct application to domestic online dating cases. But it is of some interest because the defense repeatedly tried – and failed – to get the case thrown out based on the argument that all a dating service does is arrange the meeting, and from there, the participants are on their own. TRUE and a number of safer dating interest groups are supporting state-level legislation aimed at reducing the dangers of online dating. Under the bill, which is being considered in six states – California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Virginia – an online dating site would be required to either perform criminal background checks of its users or post a disclosure on its site indicating that it does not screen users. True.com already performs criminal background checks of its users, including a check of whether the individual is married. According to Terra Gray, VP Government Affairs, about 5% of the people who attempt to enter a profile are married and another 5% are felons. Opponents of the legislation worry that background checks will give online daters a false sense of security because no background check is foolproof. Herb Vest, Founder/CEO of TRUE, argued that it's still safer to perform background checks. But he agrees that if a firm touts that it does background checks, it would be wrong to say that without also disclosing the inherent fallibility of those checks.
Mark Brooks: This legislation is not going to go away. We need to take this seriously as an industry. I just hope the background check providers can provide checks that meet the expectations of users. I can see some bad press coming our way as felons slip through the net. Please post your comments/thoughts on background check providers.
Safety? A Nice Photo? Help’s Out There, For a Fee
SUNDAY NEWS — Oct 23 — Consultation with online dating adviser: $30. Dating profile makeover: $70. Professional profile photos: $130. Criminal background check: $20. Finding the perfect match: Priceless. As the market for online dating continues to grow, so does the array of related businesses helping online daters find their ideal mate. Most online daters are clueless when it comes to attracting, wooing, and catching that elusive fish in the great big sea of online dating. Being more specific in your profile is simple advice that can make a huge difference, said Mark Brooks, editor of major industry blog Online Personals Watch. Posting a flattering – but accurate – picture is also important, but many online dating subscribers have yet to take advantage of the services. "The users still don't quite get it," Brooks said. "They still don't think they need it." Sites such as LookBetterOnline.com and DatingHeadShots.com will set up users with a professional photographer. Background checks are becoming a more popular way to screen dates, Brooks said. One dating site is taking the initiative and screening members before they are allowed to join the pool. True.com screens for convicted felons and married people, and requires all members to state that they are neither. Approximately 5% of the site's applicants fail to pass the felony screening and another 4% fail the marriage screening, CEO Herb Vest said. "If you go to any other site my guess would be probably 10-11% of the people on the site will have felony convictions, and I've heard estimates as high as 30% of the people on some sites are married," Vest said. Other services likely to grow over the next few years include "Web dating" - Webdate now allows daters to use webcams for "virtual dates" – and anonymous phone services that allow users to chat without handing over phone numbers. "To be honest, it sounds safer than going into a bar and meeting someone," WebDate founder Abe Smilowitz said. "When you walk into a bar and meet someone, you do that at your own risk." Most of the businesses related to online dating sites have only been operating for a couple of years, but Brooks predicts many of them will continue to profit from the boom of online dating.
The full article was originally published at Union Leader, but is no longer available.
Scammers Dupe Online Daters for Millions of Dollars
— Oct 14 — Markus Frind, of Plentyoffish, estimates that scammers operating on Internet dating sites steal at least $100 million a year. Those performing a ruse could be women in Russia asking for money to leave their country; or a Nigerian sending "business proposition" emails. Crooks often use stolen credit cards to join a site, send out messages to other members, wait for responses then sometimes chat for four or five months before asking for money. "It's bad for someone like Yahoo because it reduces the value of their service, it tarnishes their service," says Dave Evans, a consultant to the online dating and social networking industry who also writes a blog. Nelson Rodriguez, CEO of LoveAccess.com, explained that two and a half years ago Nigerian scammers used stolen credit cards to join the site causing so many charge backs (about 1% of all transactions) that it threatened his merchant account with his bank. But he's since blocked Russian and Nigerian IP addresses and cut that rate down by three-quarters. LoveAccess.com, with 3.5 million members, also reviews profiles manually, like its bigger competitors. TRUE created a stir in the industry last summer when it announced a nationwide campaign for legislation to require dating sites to conduct criminal checks of their members. Not everyone agrees with Evans, who estimates that on the majority of dating sites, nearly 10% of all profiles are fake. Mark Brooks, a former executive with Cupid.com, FriendFinder and Friendster, disputes that figure and says the actual dating sites, not their members, are even bigger targets. Fraudsters will set up an affiliate Web site to send traffic and fake members, which earn them a commission that can exceed the price of the monthly membership, says Brooks, who also writes a blog, Online Personals Watch.
Mark Brooks: Of 120 employees onsite at Friendfinder in Palo Alto, CA, over half are dedicated to customer service and the 'abuse team'…which grooms for scammers amongst other things. Smaller sites rely on automated methods for spotting scammers. Larger sites usually apply people resources for checking profiles and dealing with scammers more proactively.
The Match Game and how Search Stinks
— Oct 11 — Match.com has launched Chemistry.com (Denver, Seattle, San Diego, Washington D.C.) using matching technology rather than search technology. You answer questions and then a computer algorithm finds matches . Now I'm going to surrender my control to let the computer do all the work for me? Here's the thing, though: Search doesn't work. Match.com believes there's a large audience who want a more structured online dating experience and who'll pay a premium. Alas, matching is still highly unproven. You have to devote about 40 minutes at the outset to completing a profile in the hopes that it'll bear fruit in the end. In my experience, the harvest is a long way off. I think that matching has to get more sophisticated–and quickly. Chemistry's answers are either geared in such a way that you don't have any bad traits, only lesser degrees of positive ones, or they make it so that any reasonable person would answer "Sometimes" almost every place it's offered as a response. In the end, you're left with a middle-of-the-road profile that's going to mean that you're still most likely to get paired up with a mate based on whether you both smoke or not rather than based on how likely you both are to share your feelings. On the whole, I'm bullish on the idea of matching technology.
The full article was originally published at Fast Company, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Matching holds high promise. Is it delivering right now? If not, when will it deliver? Please comment? TRUE uses the only validated test I've come across yet btw.