Category: Uncategorized

WEBPRONEWS — Apr 27 — Multiply.com, a social network launched in March 2004, has introduced an embedded search engine to assist members find content distributed by others within their social network.  "If you're planning a vacation to Rome, a search on Multiply may yield a photo album taken by your cousin's neighbor during his vacation, and a blog entry written by your co-worker's nephew when he was backpacking through Europe," according to Peter Pezaris, Multiply's founder and CEO. The search engine considers whether or not the person in your social network is related (wife, sibling) or merely an acquaintance when applying relevance rankings to the query results.

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

Mark Brooks: Multiply also has a nice calendar, message board and photos area. 

ASHLAND DAILY TIDINGS — Apr 22 — I am at the vanguard of a non-marrying generation, the first American generation in which bright young girls grew up assuming they would have careers. The consequences have been remarkable. From 1970 to 2000, the percentage of women ages 30 to 34 who never married almost quadrupled, from 6% to 22%, and from 9% to 30% for men. Many go the Internet route, some 40 million Americans but men swarm around the most attractive female packages like so many sperms racing to an egg. Such women spend half their day working and half their day deleting e-mail messages. 

The full article was originally published at Ashland Daily Tidings, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Men can be ignored, women may be inundated.  eHrmony has done a good job of moderating the online dating process and essentially slooowing it down, way down.  Which is great for monthly dues and most surely helped them raise their $110 million of VC money not too long ago.

PRWEB — Apr 22 — The stylish ad campaign will run on city scapes in major metropolitan cities in the US and Canada.  It features two singles stranded on a surreal desert, with the slogan "One2One Living — Fuel for The Single Life."  One2One Living also vows to promote laughter, discussion, and thought.  New contributors include CNBC columnist and NBC Producer, Brian Bathalsar, Fox"s Good Day LA Executive Producer, Paul Sucheki and Dr John Gray.  Accompanying the new creative is a new network TV produced by Media Evolutions. The shows will premier on the Oxygen Television Networks during the new fall season.

Mark Brooks: See the next issue (May) for my three articles on online dating.  I will also play the part of a quirky Englishman and online personals industry expert in the pilot Oxygen show.  I'm working on the accent now.

INDEPENDENT — Apr 20 — Fans were stunned when they saw Tara Reid (American Pie) listed on Friendster.  Hundreds of male admirers bombarded the site with dating requests.  The 29-year-old beauty listed ‘St Tropez, Sardinia and Aspen’ as her ideal holiday destinations and ‘acting, shopping and spending money’ as her interests.  A source said: "You’d think she’d have men queuing up, but it’s obviously not the case."  FULL ARTICLE @ INDEPENDENT ONLINE

Mark Brooks: I looked her up on Friendster.  This is the actual profile picture.  Alas, when I clicked on her profile, "Suspended User…Sorry, but the user you are trying to view has been suspended."  Probably a fakester.

WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL — Apr 20 — Laura Schaefer, 25, writes a column about sex for online dating service Match.com and expanded her sources to personal ads dating as far back as 1737. She'll be talking about her book next Tuesday live on "Good Morning, America." It's also been written up in the May issue of Playboy.  Some of her favorites…"A lady, young, pretty, bright and poor, desires to make the acquaintance of a man with the opposite qualities with a view to a happy marriage." (1894)…"Bachelor with 40 acres of excellent land would like to make acquaintance of lady with tractor; matrimony in mind. Please send picture of tractor." (1957)…Schaefer is a bartender at Middleton's Imperial Garden, and is finishing her second book, "HappilyEverAfter.com," a novel about online dating. 

The full article was originally published at Wisconsin State Journal, but is no longer available.

JAM SHOWBIZ — Apr 19 — Stars from A-list to C are blogging like crazy to connect with their fans, often tossing aside grammar, punctuation, capital letters and concern for their image in the process. Their blogs are sometimes fascinating, often banal and frequently embarrassing.  Blogs: Rosie O'Donnell, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Zach Braff (Scrubs)   

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

Mark Brooks: Rosie's funny.  Bruce's support of foster children touched me.  Melanie Griffith's site is just beautiful.  I can't believe I actually saw Pamela Andersons blog on Friendster advertised on an Alexa ad bar…'Start your own Friendster Blog.'  I guess social networks are now having to resort to additional 'seeding' to keep ahead of the competition. Shame really. Part of the magic of social networks is that they haven't really needed to advertise.  Craigslist still doesn't advertise.  Although they have done a little PR in the past.

PRWEB — Apr 19 — aLoveLinksPlus.com dating directory announces the addition of columnist the Revenge Guy who will provide weekly revenge advice for the readers of the Advice Central section of aLoveLinksPlus.com. ‘Revenge is an art that needs to be cultivated.’ RELEASE @ PRWEB

Mark Brooks: Novel but alas, not that funny.

SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE — Apr 17 — Young professionals are turning to neatly packaged Web sites like Friendster, MySpace, NamesDatabase and LinkedIn to help them create relationships.  "It is sort of the next generation of lifestyle portals," said Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace.com.  Michelle Wohl, marketing director for Friendster, said "really, the stigma is gone from meeting people online." That stigma is what spurred Jonathan Abrams to start Friendster in 2003. He had been unsuccessful in online dating, calling it "a bit creepy," and decided a better way to meet people was through common friends.  The "viral nature" of the trend has grown Friendster's membership to 15 million.  MySpace, whose slogan is "A place for friends," is gaining on Friendster with 9 million users. It has focused on a specific interest, music, and the company has even organized large parties.  NamesDatabase offers fewer bells and whistles.  It has revenues of $1 million, runs on two Dell servers.  Users must submit more than 20 e-mail addresses of friends to the database for full access or buy a $12 subscription. The site boasts 13 million users.  LinkedIn is targeted at business people who use the site to find employees or clients.  It has 2 million users, many of whom are high-ranking execs. 

VILLAGE VOICE — Apr 15 — Since moving to New York from England, I have ascertained that not everyone shags on the first date. In God’s Blessed Land, "dating" has been established for the express pursuit of filtering for one’s life partner before tumbling haphazardly into bed with them. I am more used to the English way of doing things. Get blind drunk, snog, repeat the next week, repeat the next week, bang! relationship. By the time alcohol has dissolved that messy barrier between social convention and drunken desire, the English couple has progressed past the need to ever "know" each other, apart from in the carnal sense. Having sailed through the last few years shagging married men—unknowingly, for the most part—I don’t think I’d know what to do if I ever got past the "hanging out" stage. The New York answer is probably to take all the money I would have spent on happy-hour margaritas and invest it in an excellent therapist. A friend of mine, Amy, who has been online dating for a year or so, regaled me with horrors of how 99% of participants regularly "fake" their photos. "You have to be careful when meeting them. Don’t take any risks." The challenge in successful online dating, then, is managing to avoid a potential psychopath. I would rather go out, buy two bottles of wine, and glug my way into inebriation. It works in England. 

Mark Brooks: Those barbarian Brits!

RENO CHANNEL 4 NEWS — Apr 18 — Denise's daughter is a middle school student, but to Internet users she's a very different person. "She put that she was 18, making $100,000 a year," on myspace.com. Her daughter got a lot of responses from older men. The website requires users to be over 18, but that hasn't stopped school students from logging on. School officials say myspace.com is one of several online networks they may seem fun to kids, but can make them easy targets for Internet predators. "We got filtering software installed in all the servers in schools, it automatically updates itself, we can add a specific address which is what we did in this case." News 4 attempted to reach myspace.com for comment, but did not get a response.

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

Mark Brooks: Sheesh, where to start with this one?  MySpace does have a younger audience.  HotorNot also.  But we can only do so much policing.  Of course, if everyone put down their credit cards we could verify age quite easily.  Freedoms vs infractions.  Your comments please…