Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Study of 50,000 Female Online Daters Reveals the Demi Moore Effect

PR NEWSWIRE -- Apr 30 -- A study of over 50,000 women daters aged thirty and over on PlentyofFish.com from April 19th-25th, 2007 reveals that 35% contacted men 5 or more years younger than themselves. Markus Frind, Founder and CEO of PlentyofFish says, "It's not just men who want to date a few years younger these days. Women in their thirties, forties and older are pursuing younger men on dating sites." In the USA, of the 23,024 women who initiated contact with men, 38% sought out men at least 5 years younger, and 10% messaged men at least 10 years younger. In Canada, of 17,684 women, 31% emailed men at least 5 years younger. In the UK 41% contacted men at least 5 years younger. Mr. Frind says, "Demi and Ashton were the exception a few years ago, but by proving it works, more women than ever are comfortable looking to younger men for love." Founded by Markus Frind in 2003, PlentyofFish has grown to be the #1 dating site in Canada and the 5th most popular in both the USA and UK. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Chemistry.com Says 'Come As You Are'

PR NEWSWIRE -- Apr 30 -- Chemistry.com today announced the launch of a provocative marketing campaign that highlights differences between it and eHarmony and includes network television, print advertising, and online elements depicting men and women who wonder aloud why they have been "rejected" by eHarmony. Chemistry.com is also launching "The Great Mate Debate" blog with five world-class writers, thinkers and influencers discussing issues each week. The dialogue will address gay unions, divorce, marriage in the 21st century, and how relationships are being redefined. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Mark Brooks: Patrick Perrine runs MyPartnerPerfect.com and is a proponent of gay long term relationship dating and matchmaking. He covers similar ground at patrickperrine.com. It's generally considered very bad practice to mention competition in your advertising and be derogatory towards competition, but hey, that's old school. I guess it's  good to see Match.com thinking more freely and losing the chains of old school marketing and PR. Is it cool to hack away at eHarmony though? Does eHarmony deserve this treatment? Your comments please...

PARSHIP.ie Bringing Depth to Irish Internet Dating

PR NEWSWIRE -- Apr 30 -- Parship.ie launches as Ireland's first scientific online Matchmaking service for the 755,000 Irish singles now actively seeking long-term relationships. 59% of Irish singles say they would sign up to an online dating service. PARSHIP uses psychometric testing to cut through cyber-dating's potential superficiality. Derived from the theories of Jung and Freud, the testing uses simple questions to gauge the ways people think and interact with others and matches using a balance of similar and complementary characteristics. Parship Europe has 2.4 million members. It's currently FREE to subscribe to Parship.ie. Subscriptions will start at EUR14 a month from June 2007. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS - CON

U.S. State Dept. Warns About Internet Dating Web Sites

CBS -- Apr 30 -- The U.S. State Department has issued warnings for users of Internet dating services. People posing as eligible singles are turning out to be scam artists from Nigeria and other countries. CBS station in Denver KCNC-TV's reporter Rick Sallinger spoke with victims of the fraud. People on Romancescams.org have lost their homes, their businesses. Quin Lipin the owner of Singlesnet.com told CBS4 such scams are common all throughout the Internet. Lipin said his Web site has blocked communications from Nigeria, but the scammers can mask their addresses to get around that. He said his company will delete an account if they believe it is involved in fraud. FULL ARTICLE @ CBS

TRUE Between The Sheets

OPW -- Apr 26 -- A twenty something female friend of mine put a profile up on TRUE and was surprised to immediately receive messages responding to emails, she never sent, entitled "I'm your bedroom type" and "Between the sheets."  Good for business? Good for my friend? Your comments please. - Mark Brooks

Match UK Appoints Efficient Frontier For SEM

E-CONSULTANCY -- Apr 26 -- Match.com has appointed Efficient Frontier to manage the paid search bid optimisation for their UK SEM strategy in a deal expected to roll out across Match International later this year. The appointment follows Efficient Frontier's success with Match.com's US site and other IAC businesses: Ask.com, LendingTree, Pronto and ServiceMagic. FULL ARTICLE @ E-CONSULTANCY

Love21cn New Oriental Founders Invest In Dating Site

PACIFIC EPOCH -- Apr 26 -- Chinese online match-making website Love21cn.com received 40 million Yuan from three of the co-founders of private education company New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (Nasdaq: EDU): Xu Xiaoping, Wang Qiang and Qian Yongqiang. A March 2007 report said Love21cn would receive a US$10 million from Qiming Ventures. Qian Yongqiang also invested in Love21cn in 2003. FULL ARTICLE @ PACIFIC EPOCH

Nielsen, comScore Respond to Audit Request

BIZREPORT -- Apr 25 -- The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) called for third party audits of their comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings practices. William Pulver, President/CEO of NetRatings said, "We look forward to taking the next appropriate steps in the audit process."  comScore President/CEO Dr. Magid Abraham said, "We look forward to working with the IAB and the rest of the industry on establishing measurement standards for all participants." Advertisers have long complained about the differences in their log files and the information included in measurement reports. FULL ARTICLE @ BIZREPORT

Mark Brooks: This is excellent news for the rankings you see on the left bar of this site.

New Match.com CEO - Thomas Enraght-Moony

OPW -- Thomas Enraght-Moony (formerly the COO of Match.com) is the new CEO of Match.com. Jim Safka will now be the CEO of a new IAC-backed venture in San Francisco identifying new business opportunities for IAC. Thomas joined Match.com in November 2004 as SVP & GM North America and worked side-by-side with Jim Safka. Prior to Match.com, Thomas served as VP E-Commerce for AT&T Wireless. Before that he worked with E*Trade and Accenture, and he holds an MBA from INSEAD. - Mark Brooks

BuyYourFriendADrink.com Launches in NYC

PR WEB -- Apr 24 -- BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD) is an online gift service to buy your friend a drink launches today in New York City with 46 bars and restaurants in its network. "BuyYourFriendADrink.com creates the emotional connection of buying someone a drink when you can't be there in person," said Steven Cohn, founder/CEO. The gift giver clicks on the Buy A Drink button and fills out the gift information. The gift recipient receives an email and a text message containing a personal message and gift code, finds a BYFAD bar/restaurant and gives a bartender the gift code for his/her drink. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: A quaint service for popular busy people.

MySpace Research Study

BUSINESS WIRE -- Apr 23 -- Fox Interactive Media (FIM) released a series of research findings from a study examining the growth and marketing power of online social networks.

Key findings:

• Social networks have caused a fundamental shift in the way people interact with each other and with media. 70%+ of Americans 15-34 are actively using social networks
• U.S. social networkers chose interacting on sites such as MySpace.com as their favorite activity online or offline, ahead of television viewing and on par with cell phone usage.
• The vast majority of time was spent connecting with family and friends as opposed to meeting new people.

See summary at SocialNetworkingWatch.com

Mark Brooks: The final point is good news for dating sites.

eHarmony Selects StrongMail

BUSINESS WIRE -- Apr 24 -- By centralizing its email delivery on StrongMail's email delivery platform, eHarmony will be able to bring together several disparate customer applications for improved management and efficiency. "Getting email to members is essential to our business, and StrongMail will enable us to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of that critical communication channel," said Greg Steiner, president and COO of eHarmony. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE

Saturday My View: Law Would Promote Careless Online Dating

TALLAHASSEE.COM -- Apr 20 --  A new law could endanger Florida singles who use Internet dating services. House Bill 531 and Senate Bill 1224 would create a false sense of security by having the state endorse an outdated and ineffective way to keep convicted criminals off of online dating sites. Any criminal or would-be criminal with some intelligence could easily figure out how to get past a screening. Online dating services are inherently safer than many other dating methods. Singles remain anonymous in their own homes while asking as many questions and learning about potential dates at their leisure. Internet dating is rapidly evolving its own safety guidelines. FULL ARTICLE @ TALLAHASSEE.COM

Matchmaker Carves A Real-World Niche

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY -- Apr 24 -- Christie Nightingale is owner of Premier Match, a traditional matchmaking firm in NYC launched in 2000 ($6500 membership for 12+ matches, 400 clients). Despite stiff competition from the Net, she says her revenue is surging 30% annually. Premier Match found that competition from the Internet hasn't undercut its business. Ironically, it may be helping to grow it by making dating services with a human touch more alluring in a very digital world. Most clients are in their 30s and 40s. 60% women, 40% men.

Mark Brooks: I just flew up to Boston to check out the The Right One / Together Dating's services. They invited me to mystery shop them. More soon ;-)

Jonathan Crutchley, ManHunt.net Chairman - OPW Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- Apr 22, 2007 -- Manhunt is racy and gay and growing fast. It's Americas leading casual gay dating site. (MyPartnerPerfect.com sits at the other end of the spectrum as the gay eHarmony, with Patrick Perrine). I talked to Jonathan Crutchley ManHunt's chairman of the board. - Mark Brooks

What’s the founding story of Manhunt.net?
I have a business partner, Larry Basile, who invited me to be his business partner in 1992 in a gay telephone chat service in Boston, Dial Information Services. I bought out his existing partner and we went into the telephone chat line business together, in Boston. He founded the business in 1987.

It’s a local business that made a reasonable amount of money but around 2000 we noticed that our youngest users, 18 to early 20’s, weren’t using our service as much as they had. Boston has 300,000 college students and a good part of our market was young people 18 – 22. Whenever they arrive for school in the fall we advertise in the gay magazines and newspapers locally to tell the newcomers about our chat line service and they weren’t responding. We figured it was because they were using the Internet.

We made a decision to get a website launched, persuade people to use it and then persuade people to pay to use it.  At that time most people didn’t believe in paying. 

By trial and error, mostly error, we got some people to design a website for us. Neither my business partner nor I knew anything about the Internet. Then we advertised locally. It took about 2 years to grow to 10,000 users for free services at www.manhunt.net. Then at one point in the year 2002, we sent all of our users an email and said, “We hope you’ve enjoyed using Manhunt these past 2 years but now we’re going to ask you to pay $10 a month for the service.” We held our breath, sat back and to our great surprise they paid. People told us that they appreciated the service so much it was worth paying for and that they understood.

After we found out that people were willing to pay for this, we realized the Internet goes everywhere not just Boston. So we decided to open up the website to users in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, coast to coast USA. We promoted it with advertisements in gay magazines and newspapers, held events at gay bars and nightclubs. I started traveling to various locations promoting our website and it caught on coast to coast in the USA. Now we have over 600,000 US members and 900,000+ members worldwide. We’ve translated Manhunt into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, and Italian is in process. We’re in Europe and Asia and Australia and North and South America. So it’s really taken off.

I’m quite surprised at the massive popularity of Gaydar in the U.K. Hitwise ranks them as the top dating site in the U.K.
They were there first. If you noticed, they’re way behind us in the USA. I admire them. They offer an excellent service to their members, but eventually, just like Pepsi caught up with Coca-Cola, it took them 100 years, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to catch up with Gaydar but we’ll catch up to Gaydar sooner or later in the U.K.

To what do you attribute your successes so far with Manhunt.net?
What our members tell us is it’s easy to use. We have very prompt customer service. I’ve got 30 guys who work shifts 24 hours a day and speak all these different languages answering emails and calls on our 800 number. If guys have a problem, guys have a question, credit card billing issues, and things like that, they send us an email and in 10 minutes they get an answer. If you go on most other dating websites you’ll find they’ll say, “We’ll get back to you in the next 2 or 3 days to answer your question.”

We’ve invested in customer service because the gay community is a community and people are comfortable using our site because there’s somebody on the other end they can talk to and they have the confidence to use our site and subscribe to it.

How fast is the site growing at this stage?
Let’s just say that revenues are growing 50% a year now. Sooner or later that’s going to level off but we keep going to new countries and they think we’re the best thing since sliced bread.

Does the gay dating market tend towards being casual or does it tend towards being long term relationship oriented?
Obviously, this question is not being asked by a gay man. I have to explain this frequently to straight people who ask me this. It’s casual. When I compare our dating website with a boy meets girl dating website, what happens on a boy meets girl dating website is boy meets girl, boy dates girl, boy marries girl because many of these sites are inclined toward promoting marriage, which is fine.

The difference between that and my website is boy meets boy, boy dates boy, tomorrow night boy dates another boy, the next night boy dates another boy. Especially with the younger crowd from age 18 to 40 that’s the way young gay men live. They get out and about, they go out to bars and nightclubs and they see a lot of people. Whereas, with Match.com or True or eHarmony, once a couple has met and dated and married, that website has lost two customers. But once I get a customer, if they like us and they subscribe, they just put their credit card on automatic rebill and they renew and renew and renew and we grow.

The reason I asked was, Gayparship.co.uk launched recently and they did a survey (1,000 responses) and found that 47% of gay men were looking for a serious, long term relationship compared to just 16% that were looking for casual flings. That didn’t quite ring true.  What are your thoughts on that?
They may be looking for Mr. Right but Mr. Right Now will do. I would say that most gay men are probably looking some day for a long term relationship. Sooner or later we all settle down for a while but then they still subscribe to my website and look at the pictures. But still in the meantime, gay men will casually date.  Also, we estimate that as many as 30% of our users are married men.

Which of the mainstream sites is most popular amongst the gay audience?  I heard that Yahoo Personals is popular amongst the gay audience.
I honestly can’t imagine that, I don’t understand why. Gay men are looking for their own community and I’ve gone and looked at, for instance, Match.com and Yahoo Personals and we do market research with these others, but a website operated by straight people just does not register with gay men. The questions, when you fill out their questionnaires the questions that a woman would ask a man when she’s looking for someone to marry, like how much money do you make, do you want children? These are ridiculous questions, a gay man could care less how much money you make, could care less about wanting children. They want to know your physical attributes, they want to see pictures, they want to know what you’re into.
My website is an adult website and men pose in adult photographs, they post naked pictures of themselves and some guys will subscribe just to look at the pictures rather then go to the newsstand and buy a magazine and see the pictures. So that’s what men are interested in and the people who run straight dating websites with a gay niche in it have no clue. I don’t think that they’re serious competition.

You’re ranked by Hitwise as the 10th most trafficked dating site in the U.S.A., and gay.com is 14th. How so?
Gay.com doesn’t consider themselves a competitor of ours. They’ve said they’re going in a different direction. They’re going into the magazine publishing business, they’re going for advertising revenues, they’re going into the travel industry, they chartered the Queen Mary. They’re looking for the Fortune 500 to advertise in their properties, their magazine or their website properties. That’s what they want to do.
We stick to our knitting and we’re just in the personals business and the personals business only. I have no cruises up and down the Danube or Atlantic crossings from New York to Southampton. I have none of that.

Do you believe in offline advertising or do you believe in purely online?
We’re an Internet business but actually we did promote and we do promote our website in gay magazines and newspapers, but the trouble with that is if you pick up the newspaper and you want to connect to our website you can’t push a button on the page to get there. The way you get traffic is on the Internet. It’s generally more effective for word-of-mouth to get people to come to your site and create links to your site, and things like that.  If someone has no clue as where to find a date and enters gay dating on Google they’ll find us.

What are your goals for 2007 for Manhunt.net?
To grow the business, it’s a big, big world and I only have around a million members and there are billions of people in this world.

Are you going to the Shanghai conference in China?
Oh yes, definitely. I’ll be there. Actually I’ve made contacts already in China that tell me that Gay.com and Gaydar are already marketing there. We plan to offer our service in China. We plan to offer our service in India. We are international and I’ve got a lot of work to do in the next 20 years.

PlentyofFish Podcast Interview

OPW -- If you want to know the PlentyofFish story, here's an interview with it's Founder/CEO/CTO one man band Markus Frind. The site ran 2 million page views  per hour at peak on April 11th, 40-50k concurrent users, on one IIS 6 server at 65% capacity. PODCAST @ CHANNEL 9

NBC Integrity Call

OPW -- At some stage we all have to make integrity calls for the brands that we manage, and stand for. Brand = Trust. Trust is a long term thing. NBC made a short term gain today by releasing the Virginia Tech killer's pictures that he had mailed to NBC on the day of his shooting rampage. NBC will have gained considerable traffic and revenues from doing as the killer had wished and sharing these ill-gotten images. Shouldn't NBC have let the public know they had received images from the Virginia Tech killer, and duly destroyed them in honor of the victims, and denying Cho his fame after death? - Mark Brooks

The Coming Virtual Web

BUSINESS WEEK -- Apr 19 -- The Internet of the future, and the vast wealth of information and services on it, will look different: slicker, more realistic, more interactive and social than anything we experience today. "Three-dimensional virtual worlds will, in the near future, be pervasive interfaces for the Internet," says Bob Moore, a sociologist who studies virtual worlds at PARC, in Silicon Valley. Virtual worlds are inherently social settings. "You go up to an avatar and you know there's a real person on the other end," says Joe Miller, VP at (Second Life) Linden Lab. Social interaction is the key driver of people's use of the Internet today. From social networking sites to participatory projects such as Wikipedia to sharing services like Google's YouTube, e-mail and IM. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK

Aussie Singles Keep it Simple

FFC -- Apr 19 -- A recent poll conducted by Australia's largest online dating site, RSVP, ruled dinner and a movie as the most popular first date idea. Coffee and cake at the local cafe and a picnic in the park also proved popular first date choices.

Top dates:
1. Dinner and a movie
2. Coffee and cake at a local cafe
3. Picnic in the park
4. Candlelit dinner al fresco or meet up and see what you fancy doing (equal fourth place)
6. Twilight cinema
7. Dinner cruise
8. Watching a band at the local pub
9. An ice-cream and walk in the park
10. Pub lunch and a game of pool or going to a theatre/art exhibition (equal 10th place)
FULL ARTICLE @ FFC

Response Times

MEDIA POST -- Apr 19 -- Hornstein Associates sent out a one-line email to the customer service departments of 49 highly respected companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart to see how long it would take them to respond. The email they sent simply said: "What is your corporate policy regarding the turnaround time for e-mails addressed to customer service?" And the results? Only half responded at all, and only 33% responded within a 24-hour period. Five years ago 86% responded and 63% responded in 24 hours.

Mark Brooks: What's your response time? I'll be testing this for a set of online dating companies shortly.