PRESS RELEASE — Apr 12 — The 3rd annual Far East Internet Dating Conference and Social Networking Conference will be held on May 17-18, 2007 in Shanghai at the Four Points Sheraton Shanghai Hotel and will focus on management, technology and marketing in China. Speakers at this event include executives from: Baihe, 51Friend.net, Match.com, ModMySite, Userplane, YeeYoo, 99Bill, InterCanel, Hungry for Words, Loci China, YeePay, Dragon Lady Consulting and Social Networking Watch & Online Personals Watch. Topics include: the social networking market in China, the online personals market in the Far East, wireless carriers and business models for Chinese mobile social networking, business development in China and marketing for social networking and online dating services in Japan.
Category: Userplane
Userplane Powers Mayoral Candidate Video Webchat
MEDIA POST — Mar 7 — Dwight Evans, a Democratic candidate for Philadelphia mayor, is deploying Userplane Webchat to conduct weekly live video chats. The Pennsylvania State Representative is the first candidate in a high-profile local race to connect with voters in this way.
Mark Brooks: This is very forward thinking of Mr Evans.
Userplane Powers Mayoral Candidate Video Webchat
MEDIA POST — Mar 7 — Dwight Evans, a Democratic candidate for Philadelphia mayor, is deploying Userplane Webchat to conduct weekly live video chats. The Pennsylvania State Representative is the first candidate in a high-profile local race to connect with voters in this way.
Mark Brooks: This is very forward thinking of Mr Evans.
Community Next Notes
OPW — Feb 21 – On Saturday 10th February I attended Community Next in Silicon Valley, CA. Here are a few keypoints I picked up from the day of speakers which included the founders of Dogster, Hi5, Mychurch, PlentyofFish, HotorNot, and Userplane. – Mark Brooks
People will gather online around 'social objects' i.e. pictures (Flickr), bookmarks (Delicious), friends (Friendster).
Loopt offers location based services on phones. Mark suggested that the mobile platform is more appealing than the PC because it's 'Always Available.'
Threadless makes $15 million a year from community designed tshirt sales. One of the secrets of their success is they listen to members and make changes quickly. Side projects include ExtraTasty, NakedandAngry and IParkLikeAnIdiot. Start your site with minimal rules and then add rules to the community later on. Be evolutionary. Make frequent small incremental changes.
The Dogster Founders recommended choosing appropriate advertisers and building campaigns around them that truly engage users. Don't be deceptive, ever! Write your advertisers copy. Offer something special to users.
Currently MyChurch has 2700 church groups signed up. There are more churches than schools in the U.S.A. (300k) and Americans donate $88 billion a year in tithings. There are 88k Christian groups on Y! groups, and 82k on MySpace.
Danah Boyd was not a speaker but was quoted as follows… "Community is a garden, tend it well."
From the final panel:
The Suicide Girls name was inspired by a book written by the author of Fight Club. Presently, their fastest growing revenue generator is from merchandising.
PlentyofFish contrasted executive opinion on the final panel on two points. Markus believes that advertising is actually very important in building an online community. Other speakers (HororNot, Fark, Hi5, Slide, Suicide Girls) did not. Markus stated that 'passion' is not as important as 'cold hard analytics skills.' Other speakers believed that passion for the site was their primary success factor.
James Hong of HotorNot suggested that being an entrepreneur was like volunteering to be bipolar.
Fark was started when Drew Curtis put up a photo for 18 months of a squirrel with big nuts. Fark nearly ended up as a curry recipe site, but Drew decided to focus it on to focus on listing 'things you're ashamed you laughed at.' He's still the sole employee and maxim sells advertising for the site now.
Slide has 50 employees and is not profitable yet. It's founded by Paypal co-founder Max Levchin.
Community Next Notes
OPW — Feb 21 – On Saturday 10th February I attended Community Next in Silicon Valley, CA. Here are a few keypoints I picked up from the day of speakers which included the founders of Dogster, Hi5, Mychurch, PlentyofFish, HotorNot, and Userplane. – Mark Brooks
People will gather online around 'social objects' i.e. pictures (Flickr), bookmarks (Delicious), friends (Friendster).
Loopt offers location based services on phones. Mark suggested that the mobile platform is more appealing than the PC because it's 'Always Available.'
Threadless makes $15 million a year from community designed tshirt sales. One of the secrets of their success is they listen to members and make changes quickly. Side projects include ExtraTasty, NakedandAngry and IParkLikeAnIdiot. Start your site with minimal rules and then add rules to the community later on. Be evolutionary. Make frequent small incremental changes.
The Dogster Founders recommended choosing appropriate advertisers and building campaigns around them that truly engage users. Don't be deceptive, ever! Write your advertisers copy. Offer something special to users.
Currently MyChurch has 2700 church groups signed up. There are more churches than schools in the U.S.A. (300k) and Americans donate $88 billion a year in tithings. There are 88k Christian groups on Y! groups, and 82k on MySpace.
Danah Boyd was not a speaker but was quoted as follows… "Community is a garden, tend it well."
From the final panel:
The Suicide Girls name was inspired by a book written by the author of Fight Club. Presently, their fastest growing revenue generator is from merchandising.
PlentyofFish contrasted executive opinion on the final panel on two points. Markus believes that advertising is actually very important in building an online community. Other speakers (HororNot, Fark, Hi5, Slide, Suicide Girls) did not. Markus stated that 'passion' is not as important as 'cold hard analytics skills.' Other speakers believed that passion for the site was their primary success factor.
James Hong of HotorNot suggested that being an entrepreneur was like volunteering to be bipolar.
Fark was started when Drew Curtis put up a photo for 18 months of a squirrel with big nuts. Fark nearly ended up as a curry recipe site, but Drew decided to focus it on to focus on listing 'things you're ashamed you laughed at.' He's still the sole employee and maxim sells advertising for the site now.
Slide has 50 employees and is not profitable yet. It's founded by Paypal co-founder Max Levchin.
Compete.com Attention 200
THE PARADIGM SHIFT — Feb 6 — Compete.com has just released a monthly index of the top 200 sites in the USA ranked by time spent on the site. I've extracted the online personals rankings for you to review, below.
The full article was originally published at Compete, but is no longer available.
Rank Site
1 myspace
7 pogo
8 facebook
10 craigslist
12 youtube
13 live
18 neopets
19 adultfriendfinder
24 photobucket
31 match
36 bebo
55 blackplanet
67 singlesnet
73 plentyoffish
79 livejournal
88 eharmony
95 hi5
101 tagged
115 classmates
126 true
131 manhunt.net
146 userplane
159 adam4adam
163 hornymatches
167 ezboard
173 alt
176 blackpeoplemeet
189 friendster
Compete.com Attention 200
THE PARADIGM SHIFT — Feb 6 — Compete.com has just released a monthly index of the top 200 sites in the USA ranked by time spent on the site. I've extracted the online personals rankings for you to review, below.
The full article was originally published at Compete, but is no longer available.
Rank Site
1 myspace
7 pogo
8 facebook
10 craigslist
12 youtube
13 live
18 neopets
19 adultfriendfinder
24 photobucket
31 match
36 bebo
55 blackplanet
67 singlesnet
73 plentyoffish
79 livejournal
88 eharmony
95 hi5
101 tagged
115 classmates
126 true
131 manhunt.net
146 userplane
159 adam4adam
163 hornymatches
167 ezboard
173 alt
176 blackpeoplemeet
189 friendster
Community Next Conference, Feb 10th, at Stanford
OPW — Jan 29 — I'm attending the Community Next conference on Saturday 10th February at Stanford. Tickets are $295. The subject of the conference is Online Communities and they've got a great line up of speakers…
- Jeffrey Kalmikoff (Threadless)
- James Hong (HotorNot)
- Guy Kawasaki (Garage Ventures)
- Ted Rheingold (Dogster)
- Joe Suh (MyChurch.org)
- Akash Garg (hi5 Networks)
- Premal Shah (Kiva.org)
- Fred Stutzman (ClaimID)
- Markus Frind (Plenty of Fish)
- Sean Suhl (SuicideGirls)
- Mike Jones (Userplane)
- Joe Hurd (VideoEgg)
- Drew Curtis (Fark)
- Max Levchin (Slide)
Comment if you're going to be there. – Mark Brooks
Community Next Conference, Feb 10th, at Stanford
OPW — Jan 29 — I'm attending the Community Next conference on Saturday 10th February at Stanford. Tickets are $295. The subject of the conference is Online Communities and they've got a great line up of speakers…
- Jeffrey Kalmikoff (Threadless)
- James Hong (HotorNot)
- Guy Kawasaki (Garage Ventures)
- Ted Rheingold (Dogster)
- Joe Suh (MyChurch.org)
- Akash Garg (hi5 Networks)
- Premal Shah (Kiva.org)
- Fred Stutzman (ClaimID)
- Markus Frind (Plenty of Fish)
- Sean Suhl (SuicideGirls)
- Mike Jones (Userplane)
- Joe Hurd (VideoEgg)
- Drew Curtis (Fark)
- Max Levchin (Slide)
Comment if you're going to be there. – Mark Brooks
Digital Matchmakers Get Down to Business
MIAMI HERALD — Jan 16 — The online dating industry needs to start stealing tricks from younger and nimbler websites. That seemed to be the message floating through the hallways at iDate, the annual conference of the Internet dating industry. 350 participants were at the iDate (and Social Networking Conference). Dating sites (think Yahoo Personals and Match.com) are seeing users poached by social networking sites. While those sites are not specifically designed to find a date, that is how they are being used, said Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane. ''Traditional online dating sites are feeling the pinch,'' he said. Of the Top 10 dating sites in the United States, seven saw a declining number of unique visitors throughout 2006, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. At the same time MySpace overtook Yahoo as the world's busiest website. But the poison is the antidote, said Jones. By stealing pickup lines from social networking competitors — such as allowing users to link to their MySpace profile or upload slide-shows from sites such as Flicker and Rockyou — the industry can woo back admirers. Just a few years ago, anyone with a server, a black book and the verve could launch an online dating site, said Mark Brooks, the publisher of Online Personals Watch. Now the market is crowded and competitive, and the only hope for newcomers is to generate heaps of buzz and tap unexplored niches. Or, as Brooks sums it up: "Word of mouth marketing and differentiate — or die.'' Date.com CEO Meir Strahlberg said he didn't see any need for a radical reinvention to keep up with the MySpaces of the world.
Mark Brooks: iDate2007 was hands down the best internet dating conference yet. I felt there was more energy at this conference than last year. The halls were full of top level business schmoozing. The Royal Palm Hotel was more expensive but far more comfortable than last year. Worth the extra, and the location was perfect. It was walking distance to the convention center, and right on the beach. The convention center was a higher standard venue in many ways but we need to change the room orientation next year. Wide rooms work better than long rooms. The keynote presentations were packed out and the multi track system worked well. However, next year it would be great to have a distinct social networking track and a distinct internet dating track. That would encourage greater SNS participation and 500+ attendees. I think 75% of the attendees were dating focused this year. We'll see more social networking interest at the July conference in California. Your comments please…