OPPOSING VIEWS - June 17 - Mothers are now signing up for sites like TheJMom, Duo and Telugu Matrimony that help mothers find their sons and daughters a significant other. TheJMom.com, a Jewish matchmaking site, has ~5K registered members. A six-month subscription package costs $78. A Personal Concierge Service costs $199 and includes one-on-one advice and a profile makeover. Similarly, Duo, a South Korean matchmaking service, helps parents find matches for their children. The site is not free, with annual fees starting at $2K.
Research
Reviews
Speed Dating In Vancouver: 100 dates In 100 minutes
METRO NEWS - June 18 - 200 singles signed up for a massive speed-dating event in Vancouver this Thursday. Rendezvous Club owner Chris Hall has been running the annual “100 Dates in 100 Minutes” mega-mixer in Vancouver for the last five years, and thinks speed dating is a cut above online dating because it offers something a profile on a screen can’t. “It’s the first impression,” he says. Rendezvous’ regular events are usually more intimate, with 30 guys and gals chatting for five-minutes each, but this one is designed to be a matchmaking machine.
Paul Shurey - CEO & Founder Of Illicitencounters.com
GUARDIAN.CO.UK - June 15 - Paul Shurey (aged 54) died after a fall in India this April. He was one of the key movers and shakers in the rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He began running unofficial parties from 1989. Shurey’s most significant contribution to the rave scene came when, with Ian Jenkinson, he decided to launch Tribal Gathering, a vast outdoor festival devoted entirely to dance music, with several different stages and DJs. It was first held in April 1993, at Lower Pertwood Farm, Wiltshire, with ~25K people attending. The success of Shurey’s parties grew until they were so large that one was held in a disused aircraft hangar in Wiltshire. Such was the parties’ popularity that Shurey decided to organise them on a legal basis. He began a weekly club night at Club UK in London and set up Brainstorm, which then became Universe. After the dispute with Mean Fiddler, Shurey moved into digital marketing and went back to university to study television production. He went to Cupid, before, in 2012, founding his own dating site IllicitEncounters.com for married people who wanted to have affairs. Shurey was still running the site when, in March this year, he travelled to India. He was there when he suffered a fall, hitting his head and suffering injuries from which he never recovered.
Paul Shurey, born December 24, 1958, died April 24, 2013.
VineaLove: New Dating Site For Wine Lovers
NY DAILY NEWS - June 16 - VineaLove, the brainchild of former wine journalist Françoise Pauly, officially launched last weekend. The site will eventually transition into a paid networking site for wine enthusiasts looking for love or companionship.
by Victoria Taylor
See full article at NY Daily News
DatingWithHerpes.mobi: Mobile Dating Site For People With Herpes
PR WEB - June 14 - DatingWithHerpes.mobi is a newly launched mobile dating site for people with herpes powered by PositiveSingles.com. PositiveSingles.com launched in 2002 and is the largest online dating community for people with herpes, STD and HIV. There are more women than men registered on the site and most of the members are age 45 to 54 or over 65. The site is dedicated to supporting people with herpes, STD, and HIV. There are more than 500 STD treatment stories, 800+ STD Q&A, and 800+ STD care locations posted on the site.
Lulu App Lets Women Rate Former Boyfriends
MASHABLE - June 15 - Lulu is a controversial social platform that lets ladies post reviews and recommendations about past dates. It is for women only. Men are denied access, deeming it a safe zone for females to rate guys on a variety of topics, from humor and ambition to first kiss and sex.
Women Want Younger Men
TIME - June 13 - AYI pulled data from its 68M downloads and 20M Facebook profiles to see which subscribers are making successful matches. A woman was five times more likely to show interest in a man five years her junior that one who was five years older. Among men ages 30 to 49, 42% wouldn’t even consider a woman if she was older than him. However, if contacted by an older woman, men wouldn’t necessarily turn her down. A man is only 22% less likely to respond to an older woman than a younger woman if she initiates contact.
8 Bizarre Social Networks
- DateMyPet.com - online dating site for pet lovers.
- FarmersOnly.com - online dating network that pairs rural-bred singles with other anti-city folk.
- Line for Heaven - a weekly competition for its users to digitally bless one another for karma points. Those with enough points are admitted to "Heaven."
- My Free Implants is a crowdfunding network that lets women raise funds for the procedure through online donations.
- Stache Passions, a dating site that caters to mustache maniacs.
- Match a Dream is a discussion board about dreams and their meanings.
- Ravelry is a free networking site for anyone interested in knitting, crocheting, spinning or weaving.
- Star Trek Dating is a dating platform to connect users to the Trekkies of their dreams.
by Eric Larson
See full article at Mashable
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
GuySpy Reaches One Million Members
PR WEB - June 12 - GuySpy, the location-based gay dating app for, has reached one million members. Android app users are the most active (46% of traffic) followed by iOS at 36%. The website, GuySpy.com, currently gets 400K page views each day, (second in its category behind Adam4Adam, according to its Alexa Traffic Rank).
Most Online Daters Are Seeking Serious Relationships
LAPTOP MAG - June 13 - According to Your Tango survey 63% of online daters are looking for a long term relationship. 60% said they wouldn’t sign up for a dating site that charges a fee. 95% of respondents said that they use Facebook to scout out love interests, although the success rate falls at 13 %.
Students Flock To Join 'Sex For University Fees' Dating Site
BELFAST TELEGRAPH - June 13 - Two students a day are signing up to SeekingArrangement.com to receive a university education in Northern Ireland in return for sex. 6,460 women and 555 men in Northern Ireland have used the website to meet rich partners. Queen's University is ranked 16th of the fastest growing 'sugar baby schools' in the UK.
by Anna Maguire
See full article at Belfast Telegraph
Internet Dating Jobs Listing Update - June 2013
OPW - June 12 - New iDating jobs listing is live on the Internet Dating Jobs blog.
Below see a couple of this month's most interesting offers:
____
From our esteemed Courtland Brooks clients:
Global Personals USA (Webdate, Fling, WealthyMen)
Multimedia
Ad/Traffic Analyst
GuySpy
Director, design
____
Badoo
Head of PR
Grouper
Director of PR/Communications
Match.com, Chemistry.com,
People Media
Director,
West Coast Advertising Sales
Spark Networks
Director of
Mobile Products
Zoosk
Director of International Marketing
To see more open positions go here.
Do you have an idating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to petra@courtlandbrooks.com and we will add it to the list.
AMillionMatches: Outsourced Online Dating
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - June 11 - Some matchmaking companies, such as AMillionMatches, have been established to help busy singles manage online dating for them. For the basic package, which includes profile creation, photo selection, profile search, AMillionMatches charges $100. For executive packages (80 hours of commitment, a professional photo shoot, criminal record checks, 'date coaching' and four guaranteed dates) the site charges up to $1249 a month.
Consim Info Is Now Matrimony.com
BUSINESS-STANDARD - June 11 - Chennai-based privately-held Consim Info, which owns BharatMatrimony.com, has changed its name to Matrimony.com. With this, the company would offer all its matrimony services under Matrimony.com. The company is planning to raise $100-$125M through an IPO this year. The company was running various matrimony brands under different names. (EliteMatrimony, PrivilegedMatrimony, AssistedMatrimony and PopularMatrimony). This would help it to offer various matrimony platforms and services under a single brand. So far, Matrimony.com has raised ~$20M.
The Future Of Dating Is Mobile
FORBES - June 11 - Sam Yagan, OKCupid co-founder, is convinced that the future is mobile. But even Yagan admits he hasn’t figured it out. “There’s no effective app for hetero hookups, Yagan notes. One of the two apps Yagan’s most keen on tackling is dating through your social graph. That’s what Tinder, the mobile dating startup that Yagan’s IAC/InterActiveCorp Hatch Labs incubated, is doing. Tinder is now a standalone company and IAC/InterActiveCorp is its lead investor. Tinder guys say they’re innovating on the whole process of dating itself. They’ve all experienced difficulties around meeting new people and agree that rejection sucks.
geoLunch Launches Lunch Meetup Site
PR WEB - June 11 - geoLunch is a social discovery website/app for finding someone new to meet for lunch. It can also be used for making new friends or business networking. Users sign in between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm and immediately see a list of other users in the area who are searching for a lunch partner. The search service only operates between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm but can sign up and edit their profile at any time.
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
The Economics Of Relationships
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK - June 11 - We tend to think that teenagers are now more sexually active. that's really not true. Teen promiscuity rates have fallen and there is an economic story behind it. It's become much harder for people who don't go on to further education to support themselves. Teens are responding to economic incentive. Divorce rates in the UK have been falling for almost 10 years. They have now fallen to where they were in 1977. One possible explanation is how they meet. The Internet opens up the market for dating and marriage, the pool becomes much bigger, which leads to people searching for longer and searching for somebody who is more perfect for them. Because women live longer we tend to think that they are disadvantaged. Early in life we assume that women are looking for a longer-term commitment and men for short-term relationships, but later in life, women are actually looking for short-term relationships and it's the men who are looking for the longer-term commitment because they're hoping to find somebody who will take care of them when they reach old age. When older people search online, the women are actually very picky whereas men actually become much less picky as they get older. A lot of older men end up with women who are older than them.
Americans Are Schizophrenic When It Comes To Adultery
COURIER POST ONLINE - June 8 - A Gallup poll on attitudes about 19 moral issues found that more Americans considered adultery more morally wrong than any other type of behavior — ahead of suicide and human cloning. More than nine in 10 said infidelity was immoral. But it appears that more people may be cheating on their spouses. In any given year, ~10% of married people — 12% of men and 7% of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage. Launched in February 2002, AshleyMadison has 19M members across 26 countries. The site was created when the founders discovered that 30% of people who were using singles dating sites were actually married or in an otherwise “committed” relationship.
by Michael Riley
See full article at Courier Post Online
1 In 3 Dating Dads Lie About Having Kids
MASHABLE - June 6 - A new survey by WhatsYourPrice.com found that one in three online-dating dads lie on their profiles about having kids. The main reason for this type of lie is male fear of rejection by a potential date. The survey found that more younger men lie about being a dad than guys over age 30.
Recent Changes To POF
HUFFINGTON POST - June 5 - Markus Frind is trying to eliminate those on POF who are looking to hook up rather than to find a real relationship. Frind attributes the recent increase in hook up offers to the increase in mobile application use. "We went from 20% mobile to 70% in a year-and-a-half." He relayed that the mobile app use is later at night and more casual with more condensed messages."When men send messages, they try to do it in the minimum amount of words possible," Frind noted. "So what they do is use certain combinations of words. So you pick 30 words and you block those words and you solve the problem." Feedback from his recent email and changes to the site has been overwhelmingly favorable.
Tastebuds.fm Matches People Based On Music Taste
METRO.CO.UK - June 6 - When it comes to forging new relationships, there is no doubt music can be a powerful connector. Tastebuds.fm is a new dating site that is using music to match people. When users register on the site, they include their favourite bands and link their Spotify, Last.fm and Facebook accounts. They are then shown people who have similar musical taste and can message them privately.
Hookup App Tinder
FORTUNE - June 6 - Tinder, the iPhone app, which debuted in October, connects to Facebook and displays photos from a user's albums. When a users clicks "yes" to someone who has also liked them, it's a "match" and both users gain the ability to chat with each other. If nothing happens, the other person may simply have not seen you yet. Tinder is strictly photo-based. Tinder came out of IAC's research and development arm. "We keep it sort of on the DL because it's much sexier for it to be a totally fresh startup," says Sam Yagan, CEO of Match.com and OkCupid. Tinder declined to release download figures but claims 58M matches have been made, out of 5.8 billion ratings. Co-founder and CEO Sean Rad claims he's heard of 20 engagements resulting from using the service.
Jiayuan First Quarter 2013 Financial Results
PR NEWSWIRE - June 5 - Q1 net revenue was RMB111.5M ($18.0M), a YOY increase of 27.6%. Operating income was RMB9.4M ($1.5M), with an YOY increase of 139.1%. The number of average monthly active user accounts was 5,188,638, compared to 5,434,692 in Q1 '12 and 5,123,265 for the previous quarter. The number of average monthly paying user accounts was 1,279,063, compared to 1,171,031 in Q1 '12.
Domains4Sale: Romantically.com And unDating.com
OPW - June 5 - Contact us if you are interested in any of these idating domains: Romantically.com for $20K, microDating.com for $900 and unDating.com for $12K.
A Third of Recently Married Couples Met Online
FORBES - June 3 - A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
found that 35% of couples married between 2005 and 2012 met online and
that these couples were slightly more likely to stay together and
“associated with slightly higher marital satisfaction among those
respondents who remained married,” according to the report. Just under
6% of those who met their spouse online had divorced or separated
compared to 7.67% of those who met offline.
Got News?
eHarmony Study: Couples Who Met Online Have Happier Marriage
LA TIMES - June 3 - The study was led by John Cacioppo, a respected social psychologist at the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and scientific advisor to eHarmony. Those who turn to the Internet to find a mate may be more committed to finding a long-term relationship than those who don't. People open to online dating may have other strengths, including certain cognitive skills such as empathy, persistence or impulse-control, that help foster happiness in committed relationships. Online daters may also be hunting for a mate from a larger and more diverse pool of prospects, he said. As a result, they may be more likely to find a compatible long-term match. Finally, online dating sites may give potentially compatible partners more opportunities to reveal themselves to one another before meeting face-to-face.
by Melissa Healy
See full article at LA Times
Dating Sites Aren't Liable For Their Users' Actions
FORBES - June 3 - Mary Kay Beckman suffered an online dating nightmare. She met Wade Mitchell Ridley on Match.com. Three months later, Ridley “ambushed” her at her home, repeatedly stabbing and kicking her. Later, she learn that Ridley was suspected of previously murdering an ex-girlfriend. She sued Match.com. Last week, Beckman’s lawsuit was dismissed. Beckman argued that she wasn’t suing Match.com for Ridley’s posts. Instead, she said she was suing Match.com for failing to protect her from Ridley. Incidents like this are not good publicity for Match.com. So even though the law says the sites aren’t liable for their users’ actions, most branded websites typically care enough about their reputation that they will voluntarily undertake measures designed to protect their members.
Mark Brooks
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