Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

SportsFansMatch.Com, FitnessFansMatch.Com Connect Sports and Fitness Buffs

PR NEWSWIRE -- July 28 --Sportsfanmatch and Fitnessfansmatch capitalize on the fast-growing trend of special-interest dating websites. Networking and information options include networking to find a local workout partner. A member can even, for example, find a partner for a game of tennis. Users can go online to find a racquetball partner -- as well as a club to play at -- in Atlanta while visiting. Other site features include articles and "ask the expert" advice on fitness, nutrition, training, relationships and much more. There are also audio and video chatting options, the ability to create personal blogs. RELEASE @ RED NOVA

Mark Brooks: Sports and Fitness are solid online dating niches.  Well done Doug ;-)  Entrepreneurs looking to start online dating sites should shoot for niches...or wield multi-million ad spend budgets.   

Dangers of Online Dating

News 10 -- July 28 -- For many single people the question isn't who's dating online, but who isn't?  Kane says she tried Internet dating but decided it was too risky. She says dishonest online daters forced her to go back to more old fashioned methods to meet men. "The more important thing is to check them out before you just go and meet them," said CyberCuse owner Glenn Santa. "I think that's where people get in a lot of trouble they see their picture they read the profile and they say hey let's meet tomorrow and that's dangerous that's really dangerous and we're finding that out now." Match.com says no dating is 100 percent safe and suggests you protect your anonymity until you feel comfortable meeting someone.  They also recommend doing an Internet search on any potential match.

Mark Brooks: All this talk of how dangerous online dating is.  It's still the safest venue for meeting people if used wisely.  The industry is working to improve safety options.

Virtual Matchmaking; Online Dating Goes Mainstream

CAPITAL TIMES --July 28 -- Madison entrepreneur Dan Chin launched Madcitymatch.com to provide a local option to the various national services. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 9% of those online use dating services. A report out this spring by comScore Networks cited online personals and dating as the fastest growing category of paid Web content, growing 4.4% to $469.5 million from 2003 to 2004.  Chin began Madcitymatch.com after piloting a site aimed at University of Wisconsin-Madison students, Badgermatch.com. Madcitymatch.com has attracted 550 members so far.  He'll add speed dating to Madcitymatch.com's service and is also thinking about background checks. FULL ARTICLE @CAPITAL TIMES

Mark Brooks: Cupid.com is taking the regional approach also.

'Beautiful' Web Site is Only Skin Deep

USA TODAY -- July 28 -- BeautifulPeople functions more like an invitation-only social club.  The criteria are shamelessly superficial: a recent photograph (bikinis and bare biceps encouraged) and body statistics. The site also accepts "people with personal/professional qualities that stand out from the majority" - like "Sandhill," an entrepreneur with a goofy grin who says his income is $1 million-plus.  An applicant's photo and profile is posted for three days. Members grade candidates of the opposite sex.

Mark Brooks: How wonderfully shallow.

Online Dating Leader FriendFinder Acquires Spring Street Networks Tuesday

BUSINESS WIRE -- July 26 -- The company powering online dating personals for websites such as Nerve.com, The Onion and Salon.com has been acquired by privately held Various Inc., the parent company of FriendFinder. Spring Street Networks is the leading provider of private-label online personals solutions for a network of more than 200 media companies, including outlets in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami. Terms of the merger between the two privately held companies were not disclosed.

Mark Brooks: Wow!  I heard Spring Street was up for grabs.  Well done to Dr Conru for sealing the deal.  I though CGI Holding would be all over this one, by they just bought Vintacom so probably have their hands full. 

K9Poker - Social Networking Joins Hands with Poker

PR WEB -- July 25 -- Two growing movements are currently sweeping American pop culture - internet social networking and the rise in popularity of poker. A new web site, k9poker.com, attempts to bring these two concepts together.  ComScore reports more than 29.1 million unique visitors to online gambling sites in April, out of a total audience of 165 million. K9Poker.com combines the two concepts in a novel way by helping people connect and become poker buddies. RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: The community is online and the games are real world.  This site just hooks people up for real world games.  Now if someone can combine online poker and social networking they'll have something.  Has anyone done this yet?

Speed dating! Women One Up on Men

TIMES NEWS NETWORK -- JULY 26 -- The time, place and reason are all just right. Leather couches, candle-lit ambience and a rainy weather on a Sunday evening, just the perfect time for romance and that is what the 30-odd people present here at a speeddating soiree are looking for! Well, for the guys attending, it’s great. As one of the 13 participants puts it, “You get the chance to meet 15 beautiful women in one night.” As for the girls? It’s not for nothing that they say girls just wanna have fun! We spot a group of four young 20-something enthusiasts who are all here, ‘just to have some fun!’ And a stray comment among those around: “Women are much more adventurous than men!” You bet! Girl:Hi! Guy: Hi! I am Manoj Girl: Hi! Manoj, I am Kiran. What do you do? Guy: Actually, I have come down from Dubai for a friend’s wedding. So, I am here for fun. (And the conversation carries on) BTW, we think this one has worked out. FULL ARTICLE @ TIMES OF INDIA

Mark Brooks: Speed dating is alive and well and working it's way around the globe.

Online Loveseekers to Get Fast Face-Lifts

PR WEB -- July 26 -- Pictures online daters upload are usually terrible: vacation snaps, family portraits, group shots...everything including the high school year book. The result is that dating sites have to spend days checking, cropping and improving each picture they receive. CroppingTool software identifies the human face in a picture and automatically cuts out the surrounding beer bottles, stained sofa, clothes-covered bed or whatever happens to be lying in the background. The program can identify 90% of images with a human face, even profiles and unfocused blurs, and improves bad color balance to create a much better head shot than the single sent in. RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Merav Knafo has done an awesome job with www.lookbetteronline.com and has the respect of the industry.  She can be reached at admin@lookbetteronline.com fyi.

Online Dating Sites Break Into the Mainstream

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS -- July 25 -- George, 35, and Erika, 29, provide a pleasant contrast to the ABC show "Hooking Up" (9 p.m. Thursdays) where singles juggle, mislead, evade and dump potential mates they meet online.  A few years ago, George and Erika's relationship might never have happened but internet dating has gone mainstream.  eHarmony knows of at least 12,000 couples married after meeting on its site.  Match.com estimates it has helped hundreds of thousands of singles meet. It receives 200 e-mails or letters each month from couples telling about their engagements or marriages. Both eharmony and Match.com say the prime audience tends to be people in their 30s who have moved beyond their college social network and are still looking for a mate. More than 26 million people, or 16% of U.S. Internet users, visited an online dating site in June, according to comScore. U.S. consumers spent $470 million last year on Internet personals, making it the largest category of paid online content.

Mark Brooks: In the 90's people said, 'ugh, you're using internet dating. People are now saying, 'I use internet dating and it's OK.'  In the future people will say, 'you're not using internet dating...are you insane!' Everyone will be using internet dating...but it still has a long way to go. Personality profiling, mobile phone based dating, referral/social networking based services, services that bridge the communications gap between email/IM and that first coffee date.  This is the future.

DateandRate.co.uk Reinvents The Dating Game

BIOS MAGAZINE -- July 25 -- Date and Rate lets you put a photo of yourself up for the public vote. The image is then displayed on the Date and Rate site in the section appropriate to your age and gender. At the end of each month the man and woman with the most votes and highest average rating will win a choice between a luxury photo shoot and portfolio worth £700, or £100 cash. Other members who want to contact them (via e-mail) are charged £1.99 per contact or £39.99 per year for unlimited contact. If they reply they will earn a commission percentage of the contact fee.  The date is optional and the commission is not dependant upon meeting up. FULL ARTICLE @ BIOS

Mark Brooks: A www.hotornot.com knock off with an interesting spin.  Users should get commission for actually showing up on the dates...and having photos that really look like them.  www.dateandrate.co.uk site is wide open for abuse. i.e. post a pretty picture, wait for the money to roll in.

Net Dating Is Painful Reality TV

WIRED NEWS-- July 22 -- Reality TV is so terribly fake. Still, I thought it was important that I watch ABC's new series Hooking Up, which follows a dozen New York women on their year-long online dating journeys. The show barely pays attention to the internet. The show ends up as just a series of dates caught on camera. And it's like watching a handful of your most clueless acquaintances stumble through one botched romantic encounter after another. FULL ARTICLE @ WIRED NEWS

Hey, Baby, Want a Date?

SAN FRAN CHRONICLE -- July 23 -- With advances in cell phone technology and wireless networks, users can browse truncated profiles, view photos of possible dates and exchange cheesy lines via text messaging. SmallPlanet has come up with a way for its compatible users to be alerted when they are within range of each other, in most cases about 30 feet for now.  Said analyst Brent Iadarola of Frost & Sullivan. "The comfort people have with online dating in the wired world is now translating to the mobile world."  Subscription revenue for mobile services are expected to rise from $31.4 million this year to $215 million by 2009. That does not include revenue from text-messaging charges, which could double those figures, according to Iadarola. "Handset technology has moved in leaps and bounds to the point you can have a good user experience while on the bus or sitting in the back of car," said Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch. "People are gaming and texting now. It all makes sense at last." One promising technology is location-based dating, in which users can be alerted to a potential match just down the street or somewhere in their ZIP code. "I can go to a club, and the phone becomes a transponder," said Joe Brennan Jr., vice president of Webdate, the industry leader with 5 million users. "I can find someone I match up with, and that facilitates a meeting." But there's a hitch. Wireless carriers haven't embraced Webdate technology for now because they are unconvinced of the safety and manageability of the service. Some fear the technology could be manipulated to electronically harass users. FULL ARTICLE @ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

News Corp. Banking on Continued Growth for MySpace

REUTERS -- July 23 -- MySpace is gunning to become the Internet's next major consumer brand. Jupiter Media analyst David Card says that while there is evidence that MySpace has figured out the formula for success in social networking, it is still not clear that its popularity is sustainable. MySpace 15 million uniques and 7.5 billion page views in May, making it the fifth-largest domain in the United States, according to ComScore Media Metrix.  MySpace claims more than 22 million users worldwide.  "We have plans to build MySpace into a next-generation portal," said CEO Chris DeWolfe.  In the works are plans for MySpace to create products and services for mobile devices and push into Europe and Asia. RELEASE @ YAHOO

Mark Brooks: A key difference between Friendster and MySpace is in the integrity of the connections. I believe Friendster users tend to be more oriented towards 'real world connections' whereas first level connections made on MySpace are more likely to have been initiated online. Friendster has battled 'fakesters' in the past to maintain this connection integrity.

Must Love Dogs

ROLLING STONE --July 22 -- A frisky romantic comedy with a great title and wonderfully appealing performances from Diane Lane and John Cusack as computer-dating matchups. REVIEW @ ROLLING STONE

Singles-Space.com Launches Campaign Against Russian Dating Fraud

PRWEB -- July 22 -- There are two common forms of fraud on Russian dating sites. A lone scammer asks for money to get a visa or recommends a travel agency to extract money.  Singles-Space.com has invented several methods of unearthing scammers and blocking their progress.

GoingOn Aims to be Social `Network of Networks'

MERCURY NEWS -- July 22 -- GoingOn, will work on an open-standards platform, is expected to launch this fall, and will mix social networking and blogging.  Perkins and Canter said they want the company to be a "network of networks" -- a platform open for integration with other social networking players, such as Tribe or Friendster, and other large media companies, such as Yahoo, and even other corporate sites. All these players could create their own networks on GoingOn.  Being interoperable is not entirely new. SXIP sells a product that allows the same user name/password information to be used across many networks. FULL ARTICLE @ MERCURY NEWS

Ireland’s Largest Web-Dating Site Launches Assessment Tools Powered by Thomas

THOMAS -- July 18-- Thomas Technologies, a leader in private-label behavioral assessment software, reporting and search tools, today announced Anotherfriend.com successfully launched two of their web dating products – Personality Assessment and Personal Feedback reporting. Two additional products, Essay Coaching and Compatibility reporting, are scheduled for release later this year. Thomas’ Web-dating client list includes LoopyLove.com (England), Pocado.com (England), AnotherFriend.com (Ireland), NWNP Communities (US), LoveAccess.com (US) and ConnectionClub.com (US). Thomas’ Personal Profile Analysis is a web-based, self-administered, forced-choice adjective checklist consisting of 24 tetrads of descriptive words. In 6-8 minutes, the PPA assesses member’s basic characteristics, perceptions, motivators, communication style and unique strengths. The Thomas PPA is independently certified to meet the testing standards set by the British Psychological Society.

Mark Brooks: I just came across this company at the Mobile Internet Dating Convention.  Any comments from users or partner companies?

How Cell Phone Dating Could Lead to a Ring

CBS CHANNEL 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS -- Joe Brennan Jr, Sr VP Marketing and Strategy for Webdate, and myself, Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch appeared in this news piece at the Mobile Internet Dating Convention last Thursday.  NEWS VIDEO

How Cell Phone Dating Could Lead to a Ring

CBS CHANNEL 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS -- Joe Brennan Jr, Sr VP Marketing and Strategy for Webdate, and myself, Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch appeared in this news piece at the Mobile Internet Dating Convention last Thursday.  NEWS VIDEO

Internet Dating Goes Mobile

CBS CHANNEL 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS -- July 21 -- In the world of Internet dating, cell phones are the newest way to sell yourself.  Webdate is among the largest of the online dating services that have dialed in to the cell phone market. There are now 182 million cell phones in the U.S. There aren't that many computers. There aren't that many TVs.  Forty million people have tried online dating. But over the cell phone? Only half a million so far in the US. "If you're sitting on a train, or at the doctor's, or in line somewhere. You can spend those few minutes to actually find someone who's compatible with you," said Mark Brooks of OnlinePersonalWatch.  FULL ARTICLE @ CBS 5