Category: Uncategorized

PR WEB — Aug 8 — Cheekymonkeydating allows users to publish personal contact details and incorporates Skype buttons. It's geared towards allowing people to contact each other directly. "I view the site more as a directory of people seeking dates than a traditional dating site," founder, David Thomas, commented. "Most online dating agencies get people to write their profiles which they will publish for free, then they charge them the earth for a subscription that allows them to send mail. Often the money will be wasted, because many of the people receiving the messages will not have paid a subscription fee, and therefore won't be able to reply." FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Internet dating sites need to capture the entire communications continuum. Email is old hat. Instant Messaging is where most dating site users are at now. But they really want to talk to each other, and see each other. Voice and video. How can internet dating sites capture the full communicatios spectrum? Is it viable, really? Your comments please…

PR NEWSWIRE — Aug 9 — The "Social Network Wars" have begun and Zorpia is on a quest for global domination. Today the company announced the launch of its new Chinese social networking site, Zorpia.cn. Zorpia’s expansion into China is the first step in an aggressive global expansion plan of taking on 22 additional markets including the UK, Australia, Canada, India, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. "We see Zorpia.com as the first ‘Global Social Network,’" founder Jeffrey Ng said.  In the past year, Zorpia.com has added more than three million registered users and receives 3.6 million page views daily.  Zorpia Ltd. is a privately owned company and is currently seeking venture capital.  Jeffrey Ng, (650) 331-7390. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS COM

Mark Brooks: Currently Zorpia has a 996 Alexa rank. They’ve been around a couple of years but morphed more recently into a social network. Cyworld, South Korea’s monster social network, opened an office stateside but I’ve not seen too much of them. There’s more to social networking than just opening up a site in a new country and hoping new users come. The sites need seeding with local ‘connectors’.  That usually takes a local presence and network. There are numerous examples of sites that were borne in and did well in their respective countries.  Grono.net (Poland), Rate.ee (Estonia), Yonja (Turkey) LIST.  Orkut is over represented in Brazil. Friendster has a huge following in the Phillipines. MySpace is the biggest worldwide. 

OPW — Aug 9 — Next month I’ll be launching a site for internet dating affiliates and affiliate managers.  It will offer news, links and useful resources for affiliates of internet dating sites.  If you’d like to be involved and are an affiliate manager for a top tier dating site please email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com.  Thanks.  – Mark Brooks

TECH WEB — Aug 7 — Google will be the exclusive provider of text-based advertising and keyword-targeted ads on the Fox Interactive Media network, including MySpace. In return, Google will make guaranteed minimum revenue share payments to News Corp. of $900 million through Q2 2010, based on Fox achieving traffic targets. The deal was expected to be the first of many between the two companies. Last December Google agreed to pay $1 billion for a stake in AOL and form an ad partnership. FULL ARTICLE @ INFORMATION WEEK

Mark Brooks: Google is focusing on it’s future. Advertising. One day it will turn a sliver of it’s considerable brain power and attention towards online dating, perhaps. What will Google Dating look like? I’d expect it to be a far cry from traditional dating sites. The more we keep ahead of the game, and innovate, the less likely Google will enter the online dating fray, in earnest. Margins are slim these days, so that will also keep Google’s attention away. The online dating industry is still a relatively baby sized industry at ~$600 million a year.

CYBERSOC.COM — Aug 8 — Gina Ford instructed her solicitors to send a letter to the ISP hosting mumsnet, threatening to sue them for libel if they didn’t cease hosting the community site for moms and expectant moms. Coverage of the story is going ballistic. Ford writes parenting books. Now her name has been in every major UK newspaper website and the story has reportedly run on TV. FULL ARTICLE @ CYBERSOC.COM

Mark Brooks: The site closed it’s doors rather than deal with the suit. Shame.

MARKETING VOX — Aug 7 — The market for online content services worldwide is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010, reports market research firm In-Stat. The number of broadband households is expected to double between 2005 and 2010, to more than 413 million. 

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

Mark Brooks: Online personals firms need to consider voice and video strategies now.  Voice and video are the future.  Voice and video and mobile (with Location Based Services) are the combination killer app for internet dating.  Which service will combine all three first, I wonder?

DARK READING — Aug 2 — MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Friendster, are susceptible to SQL injection attacks. SQL injection-type attacks can do a lot more damage than a worm or adware: They could provide an attacker with access to a social networking site's entire database, for instance, says David Aitel, CTO of Immunity. "Every site is based on PHP in the front and MySQL in the back," he says. "As you sign up and fill in a form or login, if the site isn't doing the proper check of characters, an attacker could insert a SQL command and get access to all usernames" or other data about MySpace, he says. Social networking sites don't collect the type of personal data big-time hackers crave — social security numbers, credit-card numbers, and bank account data. But they could be used to stage an attack on that data. "MySpace could be used to get a dropper Trojan on a machine and set up a stakeout post," Cole says. "When the user goes to his or her corporate site, it would go ahead and steal his login credentials."  Or if a user gets infected on LinkedIn, for example, his banking information could be stolen when he does online banking. 

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

Mark Brooks: Really? Your comments please.

PR NEWSWIRE — Aug 2 — The first niche online social network, Community Connect continues to innovate online social networking with the re-launch of their properties: AsianAvenue, MiGente, and BlackPlanet.  16 million registered members and 500 million monthly page views. (Blackplanet has 14 million registrants).  Launched in 1997. Recently upgraded features on BlackPlanet and MiGente include: — Enhanced photo management, User-generated news, Professional networking tools providing new ways, Video section, Free instant messaging, Improved Personal Page tools. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS.COM

Mark Brooks: Community Connects story is inspiration for entrepreneurs interested in developing niche dating and internet communities. Niches work. Choose carefully, shoot for the holes in the market and seed your word of mouth campaigns carefully. Community Connect spent NOTHING on advertising until 2006. Now they are becoming more aggressive as more competition springs up. Blackplanet is their mainstay community. They make money from advertising, jobs (Monster.com) and personals.

MARKETING VOX — July 31 — Boston-based Gather.com, which gives its writers a share of ad revenue, is launching its first major advertising campaign this week, running ads online and on cable networks. Three spots cover Iraq, the environment and immigration. Each begins with a black screen and audio, and ends with the tagline: "Join the conversation." In the "Iraq" ad, viewers will hear soldiers' voices, then an explosion, and will then see "Iraq" on the blank screen as the voiceover says, "Join the conversation at Gather.com." Gather.com is aimed at an older demographic.

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

Mark Brooks: The thinking man (and womans) social network.