Chelsea Clinton And Marc Mezvinsky Are Bad Match, Says Dating Site
Private Education Breeds Adulterers, New Statistics Find
PR WEB - Jul 29 - Children that are enrolled in fee-paying schools are
more likely to pursue extramarital relationships in later life,
statistics from IllicitEncounters.com show. 22% of the site’s
membership attended private school; that’s double the amount of
privately educated people nationally (The Independent Schools Council,
2009). The study also found that 15% of IllicitEncounters.com members
attended a religious school. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
European Internet Dating Conference
SheDate.com, Lesbian Dating Site Gains Following
IAC Reports Q2 Results
WSJ - July 29 - IAC
posted a second-quarter profit of $13.6<, or 12c a share, down from
$40.8M, or 28c a share, a year earlier. Excluding tax impacts in the
latest quarter and a gain related to Match Europe in the year-ago
quarter, earnings rose to 24% from two cents as revenue climbed 18% to
$402.9M. Match.com operations saw a 10% drop in profit while revenue
grew 10%. Paid subscribers climbed 48%. In May, IAC said it signed an
agreement with Yahoo, in which Match would become the exclusive online
dating site for Yahoo's personal users. Match will receive media
placements on the site, as well as occupy the position served by the
personal navigational link on Yahoo's homepage. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ
2.5% of Married People Are Cheating Online
PR WEB - July 29 - 2.5% of the UK married population are now members of
extramarital dating site IllicitEncounters.com. The typical
IllicitEncounters.com member is between the ages of 30 to 50, and has
been married for ~7 years; adding some truth to the long-dreaded ‘7
Year Itch’ concept. Typically, the percentage of men and women on the
site is 55% and 45% respectively. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
"Why He Disappeared" New eBook
Give Me A Shot Puts The Dazzle Back Into Dating
Dr. Robert Epstein - Author, Editor, And Longtime Psychology Researcher And Professor
What inspired you to take up the profession of the study of love and motivation?
It happened by accident. A woman approached me about doing some work
with me, and I was trying to find a project we could do together. I was
single at the time, and she was very attractive, so I made the
outrageous suggestion that we should deliberately fall in love through
some process and then write a book about it. She loved the idea, but
her boyfriend wasn’t as thrilled.
It got me curious about whether people could deliberately learn to love each other. I subsequently posed the question in an editorial when I was editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine back in 2002. The editorial led to a genuine media frenzy that spread around the world. More than 1,000 women from 6 countries proposed to be the guinea pig to deliberately fall in love with me.
That’s how it started. Then I began studying the whole process scientifically. Can people really do this? Do people deliberately fall in love? I started studying people who were in arranged marriages in which love had emerged over time, and I’m still doing that research. I also created a very romantic document called The Love Contract, which allows two people to commit for some period of time to deliberately falling in love with each other.
Then based on my own work and based on scientific studies done by other people, I developed a series of games and exercises that strengthen emotional bonds. In other words, they very rapidly get people to increase their feelings of liking, loving, closeness and attraction.
I’m working now on a book about all this called Making Love: How People Learn to Love and How You Can Too. Over the years, I also ended up doing research on online dating and wrote an investigative article about online dating for Scientific American magazine. I’ve also done consulting for some of the big online dating services, including Match.com and Engaged.com.
I developed an online test as well, which can be found at MyLoveSkills.com. The test is focuses on seven types of relationship skills that research shows are important in long-term love relationships. I’ve been developing what I also just released the beta version of a new test of compatibility, available at AreWeGoodTogether.com.
Would you say any 2 people can fall in love?
No, not any 2 people can fall in love. You can get any 2 people to
increase their emotional bond, but for a deep love to emerge, it’s
helpful to start out with at least minimal physical attraction. And for
a relationship to be successful long-term, you also need to start out
with few or no “deal breakers” – that is, threats to long-term
happiness. That’s what AreWeGoodTogether.com is all about. However, it
turns out that, based of my rough calculations, each of us has about
350,000 people in the world with whom we could build a very deep love
over time. Now not all of those people are going to be available of
course, so that cuts the number way down. And not all of them are going
to be local so that cuts the number down further. But the point is that
there are a lot of people out there with whom we could build a very
wonderful love relationship over time that is,if one knows how to do
it, which is what I’m basically trying to educate people about.
How could an internet dating site systematize the matchmaking process around those facets?
Internet dating sites allow a lot of exchange of text. It’s a waste of
time, however, to correspond for very long, because once people meet,
all previous impressions are wiped out within seconds. If you think
there is potential, you should meet, or at least talk on the phone or
by video. Another problem with the online dating sites is that they
make deception very easy. 10 to 20% of users admit they provide
incorrect information online. But the same people say that 90% of other
people are deceptive as well. There are a lot of limitations with
online dating. I think that it can be improved, though, and will
certainly will improve over time.
There is definitely a limited deck of cards that we have to
play with. What site would you say gets closer to doing a good job of
this thing called matchmaking?
I’m not a big fan of any of the existing sites. The biggest ones are,
what I call “long bars” – bars hundreds of miles long which allow you
an endless shopping spree. They have some use, but they make it hard to
zoom in on people with whom you can build a great relationship. That
brings me to eHarmony and PerfectMatch, where they do some personality
testing. The problem here is no one really knows how to do that kind of
matching very well. People I’ve talked to who have used eHarmony have
said that most of the people they met seem to be completely random
people. They didn’t seem to fit them in any special way.
These tests are very crude. The biggest problem with eHarmony especially is, what I call the False Negative Problem. If they really use your test score to match you up with people, then there are a lot of people that they’re not introducing you to – people with whom you could be very happy. Sometimes people who are very similar are attracted to each other and create a relationship, but sometimes opposites really do attract and can also create wonderful relationships. The tests cannot possibly deal with both possibilities. They don't know whether you fit the rule or the exception.
Call me cynical if you like, but tests like eHarmony’s are mainly marketing tools. Some people believe that if you’re testing the heck out of them, you must know something.
I actually ran a strand of single dinners under the domain Undating.com. I used to stand in the group and look like I was really thinking very hard and indeed I was thinking fairly hard about how to match people. I knew a lot of the people in the room and I did try to ham it up I must admit, so that people could see this is a lot of work. I think people took the event a bit more seriously and took the value of the event a bit more seriously because they could see there was some effort going into it.
The same thing with eHarmony. When eHarmony first matched people up, they wouldn’t give matches immediately because that would undermine people’s confidence in the test. I think that’s what they had in mind. They made people wait, even though the calculations can be done is a split second. You could say, I suppose, that eHarmony is simply very strong in marketing and sales – in creating the illusion of effectiveness. But ultimately the site that gets matchmaking right will win.
If you have the power to make one sweeping change in the internet dating industry what would you do?
You have to be humble in the way you match people. Even though I have a
background in statistics and have taught courses on statistics at the
doctoral level, I don’t think you should be using statistics to match
people up. I think you should give people a lot of leeway in who they
meet, and then you should be providing opportunities for them to
experience each other. Someday computers will allow us to do that
really well. There are people working hard right now on allowing us to
meet other people realistically in virtual environments.
The social aspect of dating can also be facilitated by computers. Years ago, I fixed up two people I knew because I felt they would be good for each other. They got married and have had a happy life together. In the real world there is a social element to dating. I’ve seen a few websites try to add a social element to the dating process, and I think that’s a great idea.
Those are my main recommendations right now: create ways for people to truly experience each other, be modest about the way you match people up, and add the social element and make dating more like it is in the real world.
Now having said all that, I’ve actually been working for seven years now on what I think is a very modest and practical and humble way of matching people up without using statistics and without running into the false negative problem. That’s the new test at AreWeGoodTogether.com.
Can you tell us a bit about it?
It gives people who already know each other – perhaps a lot, perhaps
hardly at all – an easy way to find out right whether they’re likely to
run into problems in the future. It identifies the roadblocks that
people will face by comparing the minimum needs that each has for a
romantic partner.
In some ways it reminds me from my manufacturing engineering
background, of something called a failure modes and effects analysis,
which is largely used in the aerospace industry and it’s somewhat
statistical. You’re looking at different ways a plane can fall apart.
If a door knob comes off what is the effect.
Exactly. We’re conducting a “failure mode analysis” for relationships.
If you can start out with someone with whom you share few or no deal
breakers, your relationship will be virtually effortless. That’s worth
thinking about. Ultimately, when are data base is big enough, we’ll
also be able to help you find such a person.
How are you looking to work with the internet dating industry? How can sites work with you?
I have done consulting in the industry and I imagine I’ll do some more.
I’ve enjoyed helping these businesses do a little bit better. I’d also
love to partner with one of the big players who might be interested in
using some of the tools I have developed.
Triangulate Gets Cash From Playdom Chairman
PAID CONTENT - July 27 - Triangulate, a startup trying to build an
online dating business on Facebook, has raised $750,000 from Trinity
Ventures and Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson. Triangulate is the latest
so-called “social dating” site to attract interest from investors;
Zoosk, the most established player in the market, has raised more than
$40M, while SmartDate, raised $2.2 M in March. Triangulate’s Facebook
app, called Wings, uses data from a member’s Facebook profile, as well
as from their accounts on Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Twitter and Foursquare,
to automatically generate a basic dating profile for them, which
includes topics they are interested in, where they like to hang out,
and who their friends tend to be. FULL ARTICLE @ PAID CONTENT
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
Spark Network Services Partners With Match.com
Loving Links To Celebrate 15 Years Of Business
Privilege Matrimony: The Invisible Matchmaker
AFAQS - July 26 - Bharat Matrimony, a part of
Consim Info, has launched Privilege Matrimony to provide assisted
matchmaking services. As part of this, a customer is assigned a
personal relationship manager, who takes care of the entire process of
matchmaking - starting from shortlisting the potential profiles to
fixing up the final meetings with the family of the prospective bride
or groom. It targets young executives in the age group of 25-35 years,
who may not be users of Bharat Matrimony. These men and women are
confident professionals with little time at hand to search for
prospective life partners online. Currently, Privilege Matrimony has a
team of 100 relationship managers. FULL ARTICLE @ AFAQS
See all posts on BharatMatrimony
See all posts on PrivilegeMatrimony
6 Reasons Why Women Cheat
Here are the six most common reasons:
1. Familiarity has bred indifference - When a woman feels like little more than a household drudge, attention from someone else becomes extremely seductive.
2. You're leading parallel lives
3. The passion has fizzled
4. The fantasy has fizzled
5. Your ego needs a boost
6. It's payback time
FULL ARTICLE @ MODERN GHANA
Mike Fitzgerald, CEO Of Dating Central
Listen to the interview
You’re based in Gibraltar. Tell us more about Gibraltar and the benefits of being in Gibraltar.
We moved to Gibraltar in 2004. The company was growing to the point where the VAT
and corporation tax were becoming a hindrance to us for developing the
company. The benefits of being in Gibraltar are zero rated VAT, so we pay no VAT
on our membership fees, and the corporation tax is a flat fee of around
600 pounds a year. So we moved here and went from paying 16 to 20,000
pounds a month in VAT to paying zero. We
also went from paying 50 to 60,000 pounds a year in corporation tax to
paying 600 pounds. So from a company point of view, our overhead shrunk
by 25% overnight by simply moving to Gibraltar.
Is there any down side to being in Gibraltar?
The biggest down side to Gibraltar is probably staffing. Finding skilled staff that know anything about affiliate management, SEO or web design is very, very hard. We normally have to use people who are based in Spain or fly them in from Romania or London.
Bringing them over for interviews is one thing, however climatising to Gibraltar is another one. You either love it here or you hate it. You can either fit in straight away and enjoy the lifestyle or you can find it to be slow.
Have you considered using a distributed work force and giving them the freedom to work from anywhere?
We do have staff who work from other places. We have a couple of people
on the coast that work for us; we have some people in the UK that do
copywriting for us. In the past, we’ve used design houses in India,
Russia, and Eastern Europe in general, as well as Canada. So we do have
staff that work from other places. However the core staff, such as
affiliate management, customer service representatives and office
managers, we need in the office.
There are some benefits for affiliates with you being in
Gibraltar I understand. Could you tell us more about that? How do you
attract affiliates with your business base?
When we moved to Gibraltar we spent a great deal of time talking to the
tax people in the UK and Gibraltar to make sure we weren’t doing
anything illegal and that we weren’t breaking any laws. So from an
affiliate point of view, you don’t have to pass anything on to the tax
man or the VAT man because the actual transaction is taking place in Gibraltar and not anywhere else.
Once again that’s a heck of a competitive advantage for your
improvement in business efficiency. What is the founding story of
Dating Central?
Me and my business partner Graham Hampson received our business degrees
in Manchester in 1997. I was working in the insurance industry, on the
IT side, and Graham was working for a design house. We both realised
early on that design houses were reinventing the wheel every time they
built a website, in a time frame of 6 to 8 weeks. We both agreed that
the best way to build a website was to look at a template building
system. You would then have a core engine that created these templates
for you.
At the time, back in 1998/99, there was a great deal of buzz about the dating industry. So
we created a website called StudentsVille.com. We were going down the
avenue of creating the world’s first white label dating service to
allow all of these backroom web masters or small enterprises to have
their own dating service without having to put in weeks of work and
thousands of pounds.
About 6 months later, we started turning over a profit and within the first year we started to employ people. We’re self financed and never had any capital investment. Within 2 or 3 years we were making a very healthy profit. We were attracting affiliates from all industries and from all parts of the world. Once we moved to Gibraltar, we built the company up again. We managed to completely rebuild the structure, the database, the content as well as the back end. We were able to complete that project at the end of 2009. Whereby now, we have a completely new engine and new templates. Now it’s all very much Web 2.0.
How would you say you’re differentiated against the likes of
WhiteLabelDating out of the UK and Global Factory who are going after
the continental European market?
We differ in terms of the actual application itself. The
WhiteLabelDating.com system is very much an “add your logo here”
system. With our system, we try to integrate our service into your
site. We are also a lot more open in regards to fees. We provide
statistics where you can see a full breakdown of all your members, all
of your commission, all of your charge backs and you can see at a
glance, in real time, what you have done. So as far as the likes of
WhiteLabelDating is concerned, we take it to the next level in terms of
customisation and integration.
Our service is also tied to the niche markets. For example, we have Christian networks and Disabled networks. We’re giving our affiliates the ability to enter that market with zero overhead and zero cost. So I think the niche element of our service will always mean it will be very difficult for any competitor to come in and take away our membership database or our affiliate base. We spread ourselves across the different niches and it allows us to deal with a competitor entering the market.
You have some very specific niches. What would you say are your top couple of niches?
It’s changed in the last 5 years. We had a very stable Christian niche
5 years ago. The biggest surprise is the Lesbian network, which has
really taken off. The ethnic network, which is for African-American and
European Africans, has also done quite well.
New Compatibility Test
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