Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Online Dating Safe and Convenient

THE DAILY MONITOR -- Dec 29 -- Mark Musoke of Global Internet café says that online dating has become as much a part of peoples' lives as the Internet is. What makes online dating even more fascinating are the high levels of privacy that are maintained. Most dating sites keep the details of their clients private and allow users to report incidents of harassment.  Dating online is very convenient and a lot more comfortable than real life experience. Online dating grants women security from premature physical advances from men, granting them and opportunity to study the date well before getting involved in a serious relationship. 

Yahoo Positioning Itself as Social Media Leader

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS -- Dec 28 -- Davis, a media professor at UC Berkeley, has been given the keys to perhaps the biggest real-world lab in the world, Yahoo.  As head of Yahoo's new social media research lab in Berkeley, Davis has been tasked with helping Yahoo chart a course through the rapidly evolving world of "social media" from blogs and social networking services to interactive mobile devices.  Yahoo is aiming to build a technological playground where individuals can create and share their own content, from audio "podcasts" and blogs to message groups and photo albums.  Yahoo's focus has expanded to a "social search" concept. It allows people to search the subset of Web sites that friends and acquaintances have found interesting and annotated with their thoughts and comments.  Yahoo launched a social networking and blogging service called 360 this year, recently acquired Upcoming.org, an events calendar assembled entirely by the public, and has plans to let people create and share their own audio podcasts. It recently began including blog content in its news section, elevating grass-roots journalism and writing closer to mainstream media.  FULL ARTICLE @ MIDDLE EAST NORTH AFRICA FINANCIAL NETWORK NEWS

Goddess Among Geeks

NY POST -- Dec 27 -- SHE is just a little bit cooler than most of the hot nerdy hipsters online at Consummating.com.  She has 269 people who like her and 47 people who do not at Consumating.com, which makes her most popular at the dating site for "hot nerdy girls and indie rock boys."  Consummating, now more than 6,000 users strong, quickly shows users what people are into thanks to "tagging technology," often hyped as part of the next generation of Web 2.0. Other sites that use tagging are the photo sharing site Flickr and popular social bookmarking sites del.icio.us, furl.net and jots.com.  Tags others have givne her; "hominahomina," "madonnalookalike" and "thereisagod." "About the same time I told this one guy I wasn't interested, I get tagged 'possibly retarded,'" Irby says. "I left it up there because I thought it was funny." 

A Match Made on the Web?

CBS NEWS -- Dec 27 -- A grandmother of eight, Marilyn Rogers may very well be a poster girl for online dating. Men are clamoring to meet this groovy granny. On the day Murphy visited her, she had 153 messages. That's a lot of guys who think she's hot. "The Internet has given me a lot of confidence," she says "I've always had confidence, but now I'm just better than ever."  FULL ARTICLE @ CBS NEWS

Online Trolling can Enhance Networking

OMAHA WORLD-HERALD -- Dec 26 -- For a growing number of workers, more networking happens online rather than over martinis. Sites such as LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, Spoke.com, and Friendster.com all foster networks that let members multiply their connections exponentially. Linkedin differs from other networking communities in its business emphasis and more conservative approach.  FULL ARTICLE @ OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

Mark Brooks: It's a shame Ryze isn't mentioned in this article.  Linkedin and Ryze are my favorite business networks.  Linkedin has been invaluable for business development work. 

Meeting on the Line

NORTH JERSEY MEDIA GROUP -- Dec 23 -- Zogo.com, a free site that launched in October, offers the same profile searches available on other online dating sites, with an important bonus - it hooks its users up by cellphone. Find a profile that interests you, click a button to send a text message to that person's cellphone inviting him or her to chat. If the person is interested, it takes just one more click to connect you to his or her cellphone.

Mark Brooks: Zogo hides the telephone numbers.  Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com if you'd like a copy of the anonymous calling service providers white paper. 

Want a New Friend? Try an Online Social Network

TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS -- Dec 22 -- As of Wednesday, Dec. 21, Myspace.com had 44,448,308 members and accounted for 10% of all online advertisement viewed in November.  Why do 44 million people want to be Tom's friend?  "You can use it in a very local way, to keep up with your friends; it's kinda like a telephone with pictures.  Plus, it's music-oriented, so you can find a lot of new bands."  This user said, the ability to "get rid of" friends and allow only people you want to communicate with to send you messages makes the site more personal - more like a virtual clubhouse than the 44 million-member network that it is. Another online social network is Xanga.com, which has less emphasis on music than Myspace.com.  Half of the users of Xanga.com are between the ages of 12 and 24. Facebook.com is marketed more toward college students, but a high school version was recently launched as well.  FULL ARTICLE @ TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS

Mark Brooks: Are social networks good or bad for the online personals business?  Your comments please.

November 2005 Site Rankings

Dec 27 -- The November rankings are live (see left bar).  Nielsen has tidied social networks Myspace, Facebook, hi5 and Friendster out of their online dating rankings, leaving Yahoo Personals (1), Match (2) and TRUE (3) with the November 2005 top spots.   

Not much change with the Alexa rankings.  Plentyoffish and Friendfinder bump Date.com down two spots to #6.  For the social networking rankings Facebook bumps Friendster out of the top 3.  Myspace now leads the social networking category, followed by Hi5 and Facebook.

TRUE trumps American Singles on the Hitwise top 15 rankings for November and takes the #5 spot.  Singlesnet moves up one spot to #7 and wrestles Plentyoffish and adult oriented Mate1 down one place.  MSN leans on it's online dating and moves up five full places to take the #10 position.  Niche site Blackpeoplemeet impressively moves up a spot to #11 and Perfect Match gets squeezed out to #12.  Youngsters online dating site, Hotornot, moves up a spot to #13.  - Mark Brooks   

Google Buys 5% of AOL

MEDIA POST -- Dec 22 -- Google will pay $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL. The deal more deeply integrates AOL's content pages into the Google network, and allows the AOL sales force to sell image ads that will appear within Google's AdSense network of publishers. One of Google's goals is to become more of a comprehensive one-stop shop for media buyers.  FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST

Mark Brooks: AOL is partnered with Match.com for online personals.  Google comes one step closer to Match.com.

Mobile Dating Makes Cell Phone use More Obnoxious

COURIER POST -- Dec 20 -- Technological dating has finally spun out of control and there is now a movement under way -- by both large companies and two-geeks-in-a-basement-start-ups -- to turn our cell phones into matchmakers.  Mobile dating is already more popular than Internet dating in places like Japan. All you need to post a profile and picture on Webdate, the mobile dating leader, is a Web-ready camera phone and $3.99 a month. Then there's Dodgeball, a service where users make a list of "crushes" based on online pictures. Then, when they go out to the bars, they send "check-in" text messages to Dodgeball to find out if a crush has checked in from another bar nearby. If so, the crush instantly receives a picture and profile of the admirer via cell.  Zogo enables users to search through profiles and then speak over the phone through a service that doesn't reveal their numbers.  Bluetooth dating is known as "toothing", "bluejacking" and "snarfing". It enables your phone to detect singles currently in the neighborhood.  SMSGenie is a mobile dating program with no pictures and no profiles, just random texts sent to you from random women and men.  6 million Americans reportedly mobile-date.

Mark Brooks: Location Based Services could lead to a significant paradigm shift in online dating eventually. 

Yahoo to Plug Security Hole in Dating Site

CNET NEWS -- Dec 20 -- Yahoo plans to tighten security on its dating site after a security expert uncovered a method for breaking into members' accounts. Yahoo Personals ads contain clues about key personal information, birth date and ZIP code, that members also use to reset their passwords. If an intruder obtains that data, the only thing that would block him from changing passwords and accessing accounts are members' secret questions, such as "What's your pet's name?" In the age of instant messaging and e-mail, answers to such questions are often easy to obtain with a bit of social engineering.  FULL ARTICLE @ ZDNET NEWS

Online Dating Experiences Major Surge

BRAND REPUBLIC -- Dec 21 -- Whatever it is the season for, online dating websites are soaring. Mysinglefriend.com, encourages friends to register their single friends who then get the opportunity to approve what their best-intentioned mates have written.  Over the Christmas and New Year period DatingDirect.com, the biggest UK online dating website, is predicting a 50% increase in membership and is launching a four-week outdoor ad campaign employing 2,000 bus sides in more than 165 towns up and down the UK. 

Mark Brooks: Europe is experiencing a similar online dating to the USA boom three years ago. 

Man Dates Gal on Internet -- Turns out She's his Mother

YAHOO ENTERTAINMENT -- Dec 9 -- Skirt-chasing playboy Daniel Anceneaux spent weeks talking with a sensual woman on the Internet before arranging a romantic rendezvous at a remote beach -- and discovering that his on-line sweetie of six months was his own mother! "I walked out on that dark beach thinking I was going to hook up with the girl of my dreams," the rattled bachelor later admitted. "And there she was, wearing white shorts and a pink tank top, just like she'd said she would. "But when I got close, she turned around -- and we both got the shock of our lives. Mom called herself Sweet Juliette and I called myself The Prince of Pleasure, and unfortunately, neither one of us had any idea who the other was," said flabbergasted Daniel. 

What's Old is New Again: Matchmakers

PR NEWSWIRE -- Dec 19 -- Great Date Now is a professional matchmaking service in New York and Connecticut. Personalized introductions from a matchmaker who cares is the preferred method of dating for today's busy professional.  Services include interviewing and screening all prospective clients, selecting appropriate potential partners, arranging dates, gathering client feedback, and then refining the search.

Mark Brooks: I'd love to see more service unisons between real world matchmakers and online dating companies.  There's a natural affinity here. Who will figure it out first?

Think Partnership to Acquire Litmus Media

YAHOO FINANCE -- Dec 19 -- Litmus Media marketing platform detects and protects against click fraud, increasing click-to-transaction conversion ratios and maximizing search marketing return on investment.  Litmus has also developed and implemented a highly effective patent-pending abandoned shopping cart recovery technology called Second Bite, which increases sales for online retailers.  The Company expects Litmus to add more than $4 million of pre-tax income to the Company during 2006. Purchase price is $6.5 million in cash and $6.5 million stock and earnout payments for shareholders up to a maximum aggregate of $21 million.

Mark Brooks: Think Partnership bought Vintacom/Relationship Exchange recently and also owns Cherish.com and other online dating properties. 

Is it Love or a Lie?

MIAMI HERALD -- Dec 18 -- Beth, a leggy brunette and successful lawyer who lives in Dallas, says she enjoys clubbing and rollerblading.  But some of these women don't even exist according to a Coral Springs businessman who alleges that Yahoo Personals posts fictitious profiles, date bait.  Lawmakers in Texas, Virginia, Michigan, California and Florida are weighing legislation that could make it a crime to misrepresent oneself on a dating site, or fail to inform consumers that they offer background screening for their customers.  Analysts say matchmaking sites believe that they can patrol themselves. Most of them use 'report this profile' options to report problem subscribers to a team of 'abuse' monitors who look for risqué photographs, insincere profiles, and users looking for a place to advertise their own business.  Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personal Watch, concedes that there is endless potential for abusing the rules. But, he said, that doesn't mean the site owners should be subject to government monitoring. He calls the suits against Match and Yahoo 'ridiculous.'  'If you were sitting in a product development meeting [at Match or Yahoo] and said, 'Hey, let's just have someone do that,' (send bogus emails), that person would be fired,' Brooks said. 

Del.icio.us Users Debate Yahoo's Buy

IDG NEWS SERVICE -- Dec 14 -- Users have posted hundreds of comments to the blog entry on which Del.icio.us founder and CEO Joshua Schachter announced the Yahoo acquisition last Friday. Reactions range from users who are absolutely elated to those who are irreparably distraught. The service lets its over 200,000 registered users save links to their favorite Web pages on a personal page hosted by Del.icio.us, label the links with descriptive tags and share their lists with other users. Del.icio.us, founded in September 2003, is considered part of a wave of Internet companies called Web 2.0.; they make their end users a central element to their services, giving them the liberty and the tools to create, share and manage content, often through the use of descriptive tags. Flickr, which Yahoo bought earlier this year, is considered part of the Web 2.0 generation, as are blog search provider Technorati; Odeo, a startup that lets users create and share audio files known as podcasts; and Padilla's Musicmobs.

Mark Brooks: Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, also created hotlinks.com which helped users manage links.  He also had designs on turning it into a search enginer.  A fantastic concept.  Alas, CMGI hotlinks mother company) nixed it after the bust.  Blink had a similar favorites hosting service which survived a little longer but was also nixed.

Looking for Love in all the Right Places

ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Dec 18 -- Older Americans looking for love have taken a cue from young urban singles and are flocking to speed-dating events and online personals sites. Match.com says registrations among people over 50 have soared 340% since 2000.  Some dating Web sites now have special seniors-only areas. Spark Networks, started SilverSingles.com last year, and the site now has about 600,000 members.  FULL ARTICLE @ INSIDE BAY AREA

Dating Site Fights Scamming Proactively

I-NEWSWIRE -- Dec 16 --  While dating online is convenient for the parties involved, it also attracts unsavory characters with every intention but finding a date. Online dating scams are perpetrated predominantly by foreign subjects primarily from Eastern European countries, Asia, and parts of Africa.  Scammers lie about their true location. Oasisoflove.com detects a user's location during sign-up. So, if someone is signing up from Russia, or from say, Ivory Coast, he or she cannot simply claim to be located in the USA.  If a user sends a message from a location other than his/her registered location, the recipient is alerted upon opening the mail.  RELEASE @ I-NEWSWIRE

Mark Brooks: Many sites block users from certain countries.  I was in Prague recently and signed up for the 10 online US dating sites.  I was blocked from signing up for three of them, presumably because of my Czech IP address.

Move Over MySpace

BUSINESS WEEK -- Dec 16 -- Brad Greenspan started his first business from his dorm room at UCLA and helped launch MySpace in 2003. Today he's backing video based social network site Vidilife, MySpace for the video crowd. Traffic has been promising so far: 220,000 unique users in October, six weeks after launch in September. A far cry from MySpace's 24.3 million unique users but not bad for a site with no marketing. Greenspan was forced from the company he founded, eUniverse, only months after he spent $1 million to finance MySpace's launch. Greenspan battled with board members, who changed the company's name to Intermix Media shortly after his departure. Among the disputes: restated earnings during his watch that prompted an informal Securities & Exchange Commission accounting investigation (now closed) and a temporary delisting of its stock by NASDAQ. Separately, both the company and Greenspan settled charges with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in September that they inserted spyware on unknowing consumers' Web pages. Neither admitted guilt.  Greenspan twice tried to retake his company in proxy battles, including a futile gambit in September to trump a $580 million bid by News Corp. He made $47 million from the News Corp. acquisition.