NEWSWEEK -- May 31 -- The wave of the future, perhaps: free internet dating. In April, Craigslist saw 2.6 million personal ads posted, up from only 970k two years ago. PlentyofFish.com, a free dating site that was launched in 2003, now brings in 200k U.S users a day - and $5 million to $10 million in advertising a year according to Markus Frind, who runs the site by himself. "I think all the paid sites are going to go away, he says" Even Match.com is offering discounts to subscribers: six months free, if you don't find Prince (or Princess) Charming in the first six months. While the online dating industry has been enormously successful so far.
Research
Reviews
- Build A Dating Site
- Financials: Cupid plc
- Financials: FFN
- Financials: Jeevansathi
- Financials: Jiayuan
- Financials: Match
- Financials: Meetic
- Financials: SNAP
- Financials: Spark Networks
- Internet Dating Acquisitions
- How To Choose A White Label Dating Service
- iDating Twitters
- Instant Messengers
- Internet Dating Statistics
- Payment Providers
News by category
Rankings
Twitterers
« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 »
Gay Male Dating Matures
EBAR -- May 31 -- Increasingly, gay men are seeking out life partners and starting their own families. Call it the gay marriage effect. myPartnerPerfect launches Friday, sort of the gay version to the anti-gay eHarmony site. myPartnerPerfect claims to be the first and only dating service with a compatibility system specifically designed for gay men. Patrick H. Perrine, the founder of MyPartnerPerfect and creator of its "Partner Perfect Compatibility" test, said, "Our goal isn't necessarily to be a dating site. With most users our goal is to help gay men develop relationships," said Perrine, who earned a master's degree in human sexuality at SFSU in 2004. "We are not trying to put Gay.com out of business. There is a need for what Manhunt.net does and what Gay.com does." Perrine, 28, is marketing his site "to sophisticated, cultured, and professional gay men." Its mission is "to assist extraordinary men in finding their true love and life-partnership." The test stems from his undergraduate studies at St. Johns University where he took Darwinian evolutionary theory on mating preferences and applied them to the LGBT community. For the last three years Perrine has offered a national private gay matchmaking service. Now he plans to focus more on his new site. Some portions of the site will be free to use, while others will cost up to $2,000. It will also have a phone call service called MyCall where men can call each other using anonymous phone numbers supplied through the site. FULL ARTICLE @ EBAR
Mark Brooks: I’m handling Patrick’s media relations. Press can contact me directly at 212-444-1636, or at mark@courtlandbrooks.com to interview Patrick.
'Userplane Money' Program Pays Publishers
BUSINESS WIRE -- May 31 -- Userplane, the premier communication platform for online communities, today launched Userplane Money, a new revenue-sharing program for publishers. The Userplane™ platform serves ads in instant messaging, web chat and other widgets that more than 155,000 online communities, including MySpace, deploy. Marcien Jenckes, SVP, AOL, said, "Userplane is leading AOL's charge with feature-rich applications that increase user engagement. Paying publishers to use tools that many would gladly pay for is the icing on the cake." Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane and VP, AOL, said, "Over the last two years, just by offering Userplane tools for free, we've experienced and sustained phenomenal growth of about 5,000 new communities per week," Any Userplane-powered website using its Instant-Install community platform can sign up for Userplane Money merely by agreeing to the terms of service. Once a $25 minimum is met, publishers can request and receive their revenue share via PayPal. Userplane tools enable millions of daily users in more than 30 countries to communicate. AOL acquired Userplane last August. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE
MSN China Partners With Marry5.com
PR NEWSWIRE -- May 30 -- China’s MSN added channel partner, Marry5.com. It recently signed agreements with Eastday.com, Hexun.com, Ctrip.com and Yesky.com also to reinforce the MSN Chinese website's brand positioning of "fashionable life, white-collar portal." Marry5.com (founded October 2005, 300k monthly paying members) paid high "rental fees" to become a content provider for MSN. The high-profile promotion initiative has resulted in speculation that Marry5.com's move is an omen of accelerating its proposed IPO in 2008. According to iResearch, China's online social-networking market reached RMB175 million in 2006, up 169% from a year ago. At the same time, it is expected that the market will reach RMB1.2 billion by 2010, with a compound annual growth rate of 85%. The monthly fee of just RMB50 ($7 US) has attracted a great number of singles. Before its cooperation with MSN, Marry5.com had a monthly income of RMB 2.30 million, which now is estimated at more than RMB 5 million. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE
Mark Brooks: According to Alexa, Love21cn.com is China’s leading internet dating site followed by Marry5.com, ‘serious dating’ site Baihe.com and 96333.com. I did a video interview with the CEO of Baihe.com two weeks ago. I’ll be sending a video interview with the CEO of 96333.com live shortly.
Muslim Romeos
ABC NEWS -- May 29 -- Marriage service, Singlemuslim.com, has been available in the U.K. since 2000 (100k users), Singlemuslim.com launched the U.S. three weeks ago by Adam Younis. "So far we have had a fantastic response with people registering from all over the U.S. It's a bigger success story than our U.K. site." FULL ARTICLE @ ABC NEWS
Mark Brooks: World Singles will be one of their main competitors with ArabLounge.com, IranianPersonals.com, etc. What do you think Said, can they catch you?
Lavalife Online Personals & Social Networking Site for Baby Boomers
PRESS RELEASE -- May 30 -- LavalifePRIME is exclusively for mature singles 45+ and offers a mix of online dating and social networking. FREE for a limited time while in BETA or testing mode! "There are more than 85 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. and Canada," said Marina Glogovac, Lavalife's CEO. "As we created lavalifePRIME, we did extensive research that confirmed that Boomers are tired of competing on mainstream dating sites where the overall users are much younger and the emphasis is primarily on looks. This group of mature singles is seeking a place not only to connect with other like-minded singles, but also to uncover important life information, explore new interests, exchange ideas and to maximize their busy lifestyles."
A few interesting statistics on single Boomers:
• 30% of Boomers are single
• 70% of Boomers are internet savvy*
• 70% of single Boomers are dating regularly*
• Of those, 45% of men and 48% of women have sexual intercourse more than once per week*
• Only 14% of Boomer women and 22% of Boomer men are looking to get married or live with someone.* (For the younger groups these numbers are a significantly higher, ie. ages 30-39, 60%.) FULL ARTICLE @ PR LEAP
* AARP Study – American Association of Retired People
Mark Brooks: This is an interesting turn. I’ve always associated Lavalife with a sexy young audience and now they are pursuing an older clientele that don’t emphasize looks.
Chinese Dating Sites Rebuked for Promoting Sex Trade
CHINA DAILY -- May 28 -- Beijing's Internet watchdog has accused 12 dating websites of being a cover for prostitution and has ordered them to clean up their act by next Friday. Sexually-explicit information makes up 95% of the sites' content. The panel ordered a complete purge of such information from the websites by June 1. One of the websites, which purports to be a lonely-hearts dating service, contained a posting supposedly from a young woman with a fair complex who describes herself as a "professional pleasure giver". The website appears to have erased all postings prior to early Sunday morning. - Posted by The Dragon Lady, Ping Luo. FULL ARTICLE @ CHINA DAILY
Gay.com Not For Sale
OPW -- May 29 -- A little birdie told me...”Also, update regarding PlanetOut, Inc. and Gay.com. Their investment banker, Allen & Co., said that no part of PlanetOut's business is currently for sale. Allen & Co. is a prior investor in the business and has confidence in the current management (and is being paid a fee in the form of warrants to buy 750,000 shares at $1.69 a share). They are confident they can raise the $15 MM cash to continue the business through this year and that the value will be there in the long run. Good luck to them and the Red Sox. If shares recover to $5, they'll hit a home run.” Take a look at PlanetOut stock now. Up from a low of 86c on Tuesday May 22nd to $1.39 now. Someone made a killing already. - Mark Brooks
Yahoo is Hiring
OPW -- May 28 -- I just got an email from a Yahoo headhunter with the following job postings...
Yahoo! Personals –Sr. Product Marketing Manager - Be Yahoo's online dating expert and manage the “voice” of the brand to oversee creative execution for Yahoo! Personals.
Community Manager, Yahoo! C&C - Cultivate and manage our power user/influencer audiences for Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Profiles and others.
Influencer Marketing Manager for Yahoo! Search and Social Search - Identify and develop loyalist user communities into powerful word of mouth engines for Yahoo! Answers, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! Bookmarks.
Mark Brooks: You can follow up with marisela@yahoo-inc.com. Also, check out the jobs page on Online Personals Watch.
My Personal Blog – SeasonalParadise.com
OPW -- May 28 -- Here's my new personal blog with a few more pictures from the Asian internet dating and social networking conference in Asia and our adventures in Shanghai. See SeasonalParadise.com. - Mark Brooks
Greg Pierson, iovation Founder & CEO – OPW Interview
OPW INTERVIEW -- May 26, 2007 -- For the last three years at the internet dating and social networking conference I’ve heard requests for a service for sharing scammer IP addresses amongst dating companies. I never quite got around to setting up such a sharing service. Instead, I’d like to introduce you to iovation. They provide a device fingerprinting and and sharing service that goes way beyond the simple scammer IP address list sharing service I’d considered setting up. - Mark Brooks
What does iovation do?
We are the device reputation authority for the Internet. We’re building a real time platform that an online entity can reach out to understand something about the reputation of the laptops, PDA’s, cell phones, the physical devices that consumers use to connect to the web and ultimately to an online service.
The founders of iovation founded a previous business that we sold in 2004 for several hundred million dollars. The technology that under pins what Iovation is doing today was really born in this company.
How does iovation work?
We track every device that is used to connect to an online service and identify that device uniquely in the world, not unique to network A but unique period. When that device, in the future, connects to network B, network C, etc. we will still see it as the same unique device (laptop 101, for sake of discussion).
In addition to identifying devices uniquely in the world, we associate logins to a network to all the physical devices that they ever used to connect to that platform. When an account causes a problem on a network, understanding device to account relationships helps you understand all other accounts and all other devices related to that problem. Now what a network can do is associate the problem that occurred through account Bob but not just stop there. They can then understand all the physical devices that account Bob has ever used to connect to their network. They can then understand all other accounts that have ever used those devices and you can see how this could go from there. Account to multiple devices to multiple accounts to other devices, etc. We are identifying an entire collection of accounts and devices related through common log ins.
Many abusers of online retailers, social networks, and dating services require consumption of massive numbers of accounts. And generally speaking good Internet citizens don’t have that same type of behavior. So far first starters device to account relationships help identify potential problems that require investigation. More valuable is that we stop the revolving door that exists on those networks. When most networks experience a problem with an account, they simply close the account, the problem is it doesn’t really do anything. So the actual individual behind that abusive account isn’t prevented from coming right back and potentially getting another chair, I mean right back into the network through the same computer and setting up another fraudulent identity and repeating the behavior you’re trying to stop in the first place.
So what we are doing again through this platform we’re building is help organizations to better understand all related accounts and devices and shut them all off and prevent them from coming back and continuing the abuse.
Most important of all, we share reputation; we share the problems that are experienced with physical devices across all of the networks that use our platform. So if a computer is associated with say posting inappropriate content at site A, if in several months down the road that same computer attaches to a different social network, even if that computer has never before connected to that second social network, they will be made aware of the problem that occurred on network A, if they’re both subscribers to our system. They get to make a better business decision as to what to do. It doesn’t mean they have to deny access, it just means they will be informed of that fact and they get to make a business call.
What industries do you work with?
We have a strong presence in the gaming industry, so massive multi-player online games. We’re also strong in financial services and e-commerce/online retail.
How can you help online dating companies specifically?
We have both online dating services and social networks coming to us with different issues but the issues are related to behavioral problems more than financial problems. Those networks, of course, some of them take financial transactions and when there are financial transactions taking place virtually there’s generally a use of financial instruments. So we can certainly help address that problem. (credit card chargebacks, for example).
But the thing that is unique to social networks and online dating services is that some of the abuses taking place there are not finance related, they are behavior related, posting of inappropriate content for example, stalking kids or using a platform to spam other accounts, using a platform to perpetrate other types of fraud against members, the so called Nigerian scam for example. So those types of non-financial related frauds aren’t addressed by many of the other risk mitigation platforms. And while the cost may not be “financial” in terms of actual dollars and cents; it is indeed financial if it affects the reputation of the site—and creates a sense of lost confidence in the safety of the site. This of course then can mushroom, and affect the reputation of the entire industry—so this is more than just an individual network problem; it’s a macro problem facing the entire online dating industry.
So I believe the reason there’s been tremendous interest among social networks and dating sites for what we’re doing is that we happen to have a platform that, in fact, helps stop the revolving door that exists relating to behavioral abuses and behavioral problems of those networks. Our system works the same way for say preventing the posting of inappropriate content at a social network or using a dating site to spam other members as it does when it’s being used by an online retail site to stop the passing of stolen credit cards. Same exact technology implemented in the same exact way, used exactly the same way, it’s just that it’s being targeted to stop one type of abuse in one vertical and a different type of abuse in another vertical but it’s the same platform. So we’re allowing clients to share the information across multiple industries. And interestingly, we’re seeing very interesting cross-over; namely, a device associated with credit card fraud at a traditional eCommerce site that is trying to establish an account at a dating site. This is potentially very predictive information.
Ultimately, we don’t make the decision as to whether a device is allowed to set up accounts or post content or interact or transact with a site. We allow each of our subscribers to set up rules that are unique to each of their businesses. We follow rules that are unique to our subscribers. That’s a very important distinction.
The other thing that is very important to understand is you don’t have to share to use our service. So we do have, although it’s a very small number, but a few of our current customers don’t share. That is an option. The catch is if they don’t share they don’t get the benefit of seeing device reputation data from other subscribers..
Can you work with other device print vendors?
Yes, although we haven’t had this come up. We’ve never been asked to do that but we are certainly open to it. What makes us valuable is our reputation authority. We believe that we do device printing as well if not better then anybody else in the world. But the real value of what we are building is a reputation authority. If we had a potential customer that had their own device printing technique or they liked the device printing solution of some other organization, we would be happy to try and incorporate that.
How many devices do you currently have on record?
I believe the current number is 8 ½ million.
Over how many years?
Iovation is in its 3rd year as a company; but the device reputation database was established five years ago (going back to our previous company), and has been growing from there.
What are iovation’s goals for 2007 with the online personals industry?
In ’07 we want to have a marquee subscriber to our service that we can work with as a partner to understand the issues that are unique to that vertical and make sure that we can understand those problems and can work with other social networks as a partner.
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch
eHarmony Labs Offers Free Relationship Check-Up
Notes From Asian Friends-Making Conference
OPW -- May 25 -- The Asian internet dating and social networking conference (a.k.a friends-making) was well attended with ~45 people, and increase of 25% over last year. Not a touch on the Miami conference which had 350+ attendees, but hey, this is a (very) emerging market. It’s a market with a lot of challenges. Here’s some keypoints from a couple of my favorite presentations. - Mark Brooks
51friend.net – Serious Dating
- 3 million couples divorced each year.
- Tens of thousands of offline events in China.
- From 1980, only one child per couple, so young generation tend to be well educated and choosy.
- Over 4 million students graduate from uni each year.
- 20% divorce. 10% marrieds not happy.
Yeeyoo – Social Network
- ‘Matchmaking’ and ‘dating’ is known as ‘serious dating’
- 114 million internet users in China; 2 or 3 people use each computer
- 414 million wireless users
- Yeeyoo offers an anonymous calling service which makes 1-2 RMB per min
- Meetic acquired Yeeyoo for $20 million
- Meetic made $100 million revenue last year and 8% was from mobile
- Mobile could be the same size as online dating in the next 5 years
- Yeeyoo won’t be charging for membership, not possible, lack of payment systems, will sign another deal like their China.com cobrand deal. No profit in mind. They have a lot of loss in mind. Meetic is being introduced to China on top of Yeeyoo.
- Text messages are 1-2 RMB. 15/85 split with China Mobile, 15% to the carrier
- Takes 2-3 months to get the payment
- 10% lost through bad debts or fraud
96333.com – Paid Dating Service
- Few Chinese have credit cards.
- But, 800 million have debit cards. However, there’s no auto renewals on debit cards.
- Billing available through mobile telecom operator billing partners with auto renews. Conversions are good because it’s very convenient. Cons: Capped at RMB 10 per month and only monthly subscriptions available.
- There are no credit rating services in China i.e. no Experian/Transunions yet
99Bill – Leading Chinese Billing Service
- 99Bill has 230 employees, 28 months old, has 16 million registered accounts.
- Can bill from 97% of credit and debit cards and 150 million prepaid cards and stored value card holders which are popular with the younger generation.
- 99Bill offers recurring billing, most others can’t, 99Bill has advanced risk mgmt system
- Economy Growth: 8-10% annual growth in GDP
- 71 banks offer online banking
- 760k merchants, 900k POS, 400k ATMs
- 3G coming in 2008
YeePay – Another Chinese Biling Service
- There are no personal checks in China
- Postal and bank wires available, COD. Prepaid cards.
- There’s virtually no protection for the consumers. No chargebacks!
- Lose your card and you are liable
- Another popular billing service is Alipay which is like paypal, used on Taobao (China’s ebay)
- Yeepay offers online and offline payment services
- Debit cards have passwords which are very sensitive and so debit card payments can only be entered at the banks website.
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch
Romance Blooms in Love21cn and Sina Partnership
INTERFAX -- May 23 -- Chinese online matchmaking service provider Love21cn.com (5 million registered) will partner with Sina's friends-making channel to integrate resources and expand businesses. Established in October 2003, Love21cn.com was one of the earliest matchmaking service providers in China and received a RMB 40 million ($5.2 million) investment last month from founders of Nasdaq-listed language school New Oriental Education and Technology Group to support its business expansion. “One of the challenges for running a Web site is to ensure the credibility of the information users provide," said Gong Haiyan, the Founder. "We have been very careful and have put a lot of effort into developing the user identity management system of our Web site. Users can file a complaint if they find someone submitting false information and we will block him or her from using our services." Revenue of China's online matchmaking market is expected to reach RMB 653 million ($85.4 million) by 2008, with an average annual growth of 106% (iResearch).
Saïd Amin, World Singles CEO - OPW Interview
OPW INTERVIEW -- May 24, 2007 -- This is the fourth in a series of five interviews I recently conducted on the subject of scamming. Saïd Amin runs World Singles, which includes such sites as ArabLounge.com, EligibleGreeks.com, HyeSingles.com, IranianPersonals.com and SoulSingles.com. - Mark Brooks
What kind of scamming do you encounter on World Singles?
Most of the scammers originate from Africa and parts of the Middle East, but they are increasingly working with people in the USA/Canada. I think that scammers are a big problem for the entire industry. They pose as someone they are not, usually as a very attractive male or female and prey on unsuspecting members This is usually done by showing interest in those members via a flirt/email or by waiting for someone to contact them first. The more aggressive scammers will buy memberships and usually proceed to send a bevy of emails.
Scammer networks have since become more sophisticated. Two years ago it was a lot easier to review profiles and detect them. They have become more sophisticated with how they cover up their profiles. For example, we identify blocks of IP addresses originating from certain countries as high risk and take a second hard look at those profiles. Nowadays we are seeing an increasing number of profiles from USA/Canada based members that are also being logged in from IP addresses in other countries. So it’s essentially someone overseas working with someone in the States who, let’s say, has an AOL or Comcast account, and are working in tandem. It makes it more difficult for us to detect them. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are overseas scammer conferences or published books available on the black market that cover scamming 101 tips and strategies.
How serious is this scamming issue?
How serious? Every dating site is plagued by scammer activity; some sites and niches attract more scammers than others. I think one scammer is one too many. Singles are bravely taking ownership for their journey, posting a dating profile and putting themselves out there in the hopes of increasing their chances for finding a romantic partner. Members who join dating sites are trusting us to help them find a partner in a safe environment. Scammers, work to undermine this trust with our brand and the dating industry as a whole.
I agree and that’s my next question actually, what kind of effect do you think it has on the industry for the long term?
It hurts the industry but it is also an opportunity because it increases the value of the companies who diligently invest time and energy to ensure a safe space for singles to meet. I think that a lot of sites in the dating sector are not responsible enough in how they address scammers as far as educating their members and being transparent when scammer emails are sent and read by unsuspecting members.
When catching a scammer we suspend their profile, remove the messages that they sent and replace them with a message explaining that they have received an email from a person/scammer who is posing as someone he/she is not. There’s certainly a PR hit when this occurs; a member may have invested time emailing back and forth and now the site is recommending that they cease all communication with this individual whom we suspect to be scammer. Talk about taking the air out of a balloon of someone who may have been really excited at his or her initial communiqué with a member. Some members appreciate our proactive nature, but generally speaking there’s still a PR hit. Nevertheless, I feel that this is a responsible way to address such cases. I rather be up front with our members rather than brushing it under the rug and let our members continue emailing back forth on or off the site and risk getting scammed out of money, time, and emotions.
What else are you doing right now to combat scammers?
We double check every membership sold and review screened profiles with high risk IP addresses a second time. The same applies to profiles that have been accessed by multiple IP addresses. There are some internal tools that we use to help us and are looking to companies like Iovation for additional measures to assist us in eliminating scammer activity.
What time does scamming take from your day?
It takes up time and resources. From dealing with charge backs, reviewing IP addresses, profiles, double checking the profile/billing details for sold memberships etc., we spend a few hours each day on this.
How do you think the industry can work together to combat scammers?
The idea has been floated around by others, but it would be great to have one company that specializes in cleaning out databases or one place where all dating site operators can share banned IP addresses, email addresses, pictures, nicknames, etc. Doing so would behoove dating operators, the dating industry as a whole and most importantly, help protect our members.
What do you think the industry would pay?
I can’t speak for others but we are open to spending a good chunk of money for a service that would help fight scammer activity. The price points for such services should be determined by their value, as defined by a decrease in charge backs and overall effectiveness in catching paid/non paid scammers. Preventing scammers from joining our niche dating sites is of utmost importance and something we take pride in addressing on a daily basis. I have a responsibility to protect our members from scammers and while I’m probably not going to bat 100%, I’m striving for 100% nonetheless.
Mark Brooks
- About
- Consulting Group
- In The Press
- CEO Interviews
- Service Spotlights
- Contact Mark
usa: 212-444-1636
uk: 020-8133-1835
mark@courtlandbrooks.com - LinkedIn Profile
Free Services by Courtland Brooks
- Courtland Brooks Blog
- Daily Deals Observer
- Domains & Sites For Sale
- Internet Dating Affiliates
- Internet Dating Executive Alliance
- Internet Dating Investments
- Internet Dating Jobs
- Internet Dating Newswire
- Internet Dating Science
- Online Personals Insider
- Online Personals Watch
- OPW - Deutsch
- OPW - Español
- OPW - Français
- Social Networking Insider
- Social Networking Watch
Events
- iDate Startup
Feb 22, 2012 in Boston - Conversion Conference
Mar 5-6, 2012 in San Francisco - iDate Startup
Mar 9, 2012 in Austin - Subscription, Membership & Paywall Site Summit
Apr 24-25, 2012 in San Francisco - The 3rd Annual Corporate Social Media Summit East Coast
June 13-14, 2012 in New York - Internet Dating Conference
June 20-22, 2012 in Beverly Hills - Conversion Conference
June 25-26, 2012 in Chicago - Internet Dating Conference
Sep 10-11, 2012 in Köln - Internet Dating Conference
Nov 2012 in Sydney
Recent Comments