Category: Uncategorized

THIRD AGE — Should you date someone who is "married-but-separated"? Most People Say No. "There is no such thing as being 'separated' — unless you're an egg."

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

US Newswire — Jan 10 — Founder of divorcedating.com, the nation's premiere dating and information website for singles, divorcees, widows and more, today offered the recently separated Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston a free membership the to the website.

Mark Brooks: FACT:Unmarried singles tend to search for unmarried singles.  Nice niche, no traffic, brand new site.

On dates more than a few of the handsome, rugged, athletic types she thought she had been corresponding with looked more like George Costanza than George Clooney. Some of those “single” guys turned out to have wives. Feeling weary and, she said, “jerked around,” Gold let her paid subscription to Match.com expire, and she has turned to real-life singles mixers for professionals. “It’s a lot of effort, and it’s really no different from the people you meet in the offline world,” she said. “I’m becoming disenchanted. I’ve got people contacting me from North Carolina and New Mexico, and that’s not going to work.”

Mark Brooks: Where else can you go to fast search through over one million eligibles? Yes, online dating is a lot of work…but if your goal is to hook-up for the long haul, it’s the most important decision you’ll ever make so it’s worth investing in a quality online dating service to help narrow the field in a hurry. btw…One of the reasons online dating is settling down from three figure growth rates is because of massive amounts of competition for online advertising. The industry is still growing by $100’s of millions of dollars a year.

INTERNET RETAILER — Buy.com sees social networking as a springboard to the future of retail e-commerce; acquired metails.com last fall and has since renamed it Yub.com. “Social networking is the next wave of the Internet,” asserts Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, which expects to boost its number of subscribers with a social networking feature it launched late November. Friendster (13 million members) just sells commercial advertising space so far. eBay’s system of letting buyers and sellers rate each other has for years served as a form of social networking. For now, Yub.com appears to be the only site offering to pay commissions to members whose product referrals lead to purchases. INTERNET RETAILER

Mark Brooks: Affiliate programs to the power ten. But will the ideavirus spread when there’s an obvious commercial agenda. Yub pays 1% to both buyer and seller. Add a little more weight to the percentages and everyone will become an MLM based affiliate. Shhh, don’t tell Amway.

MOTLEY FOOL — Dec 30 — With people using craigslist as a way to meet others in their neighborhood for free online dating services could suffer. Of course, you can sell your stuff on craigslist, too. Which brings us to the big heavyweight in community-based buying and selling, eBay. Both eBay and craigslist boast loyal communities, although craigslist’s can be described as grassroots. Is eBay worried? Well, it did take a 25% stake in craigslist this past summer. What’s the secret? Craigslist appeals to the young and hip. It’s rebelliously anti-corporate; eBay purchased its stake from a former employee. MOTLEY FOOL

Mark Brooks: I wondered how eBay laid their mitts on 25% of Craigslist. Anyone know who the former employee is?

ST PETERSBURG TIMES — Dec 25 — Internet dating coaches have emerged in recent years to help struggling singles navigate the labyrinth of dating sites. Many have marketing backgrounds and are turning to strategies they used to sell products to help people sell themselves. Put out the wrong message, little wonder you attract the wrong type of person. ST PETERSBURG TIMES Mark Brooks: There's help for writing profiles; e-cyrano, profiledoctor. Help with photos; LookBetterOnline, DatingHeadShots. It takes time to find good matches and get them to commit to a date so niche service companies are developing around this need as well.

OMAHA WORLD-HERALD — Dec 27 — Sociologists at UCLA found that even a $3-an-hour increase in a woman's "premarital wages" boosted her candidacy in the "marriage market." "Men's preferences have changed over time," said Megan Sweeney (co-author of study published Journal of Marriage and Family). "They want someone to contribute to the economic support of the family." Studies have documented that men are contributing far more hours each week to housework. Sweeney's study is part of a growing body of research showing that married men and women are more alike than they were several decades ago, sharing similar educational backgrounds and job experiences.

The full article was originally published at Omaha World-Herald, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Sociologists must be having a field day. One of my favorite books on the subject of the changing preferences of pre-marrieds is Urban Tribes by Ethan Watters.

THE UK INDEPENDENT — Dec 19 — Speed-dating – where it is possible to meet two dozen potential partners in a single evening – has proved so popular with groups of single women there are not enough events to cope. But unless male interest can be doubled, expansion will grind to a halt. One company thinks it has the answer, though. The Single Solution has just started marketing their "sugar mummies" – well-off women who are happy to pick up the bill. "They are women who have got lots of money from a divorce and they are happy to pay," said the company's Kirsty Jones. "And, not surprisingly, loads of men are queuing up to meet them." 

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

Mark Brooks: Speed dating events are typically hard to fill with males aged 40 and older. Same deal on the younger end for women. It's hard to find enough twenty something women. The top USA speed dating events companies are PreDating, Hurrydate and 8 Minute Dating.

BUSINESS WIRE — Dec 7 — CGI Holding Corporation today announced that the Company has raised gross proceeds of $15.05 million through a private placement of its common stock and warrants. "We expect to extend our leadership position in online and traditional advertising and marketing, driven by our search engine marketing, online dating, and other complementary businesses," said Chairman T. Benjamin Jennings.

Mark Brooks: CGI owns Websourced, Keyword Ranking, Cherish, and other online properties. 

SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW — Dec 16 — The (social networking) trend started with the fatally successful Friendster, which became slow and unwieldy as the site’s traffic grew beyond its capacity. Friendster began losing its enthusiastic participants to Tribe.net, MySpace and other competing networking sites. These days, it would seem that MySpace has emerged the victor. Its appeal lies chiefly in the fact that users’ profile pages are highly customizable–video clips, music, custom backgrounds and fonts. MySpace admins are doing their best to enforce the site’s no-nudity rule. (It would seem to be a losing battle.) Reynoso gave up his personal MySpace profile when he began spending hours a day online. He now concentrates solely on his band page but there are still times when he gets sucked down the MySpace rabbit hole. “You see a good-looking girl, and you click on her pic. And then you see another good-looking girl on her friends list, and you click.” SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW

Mark Brooks: MySpace reached the ultimate social connectors — musicians and DJs. Then they allowed them to express themselves musically and graphically on MySpace. Then they came from ‘left field’ and trumped Friendster.