Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

IamFreeTonight.com Now Free on FaceBook

PRESS RELEASE -- June 28 -- Online dating site IamFreeTonight.com announces an online dating application built on Facebook Platform. 13,000 Facebook users have added the application. Users can post when they are free to date and can select an activity to do on the date ranging from coffee to cocktails. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WIRE

Mark Brooks: Check out wannago.com (formerly named matchactivity) also. 

It's a Date! Meetic and Orange Boost Cooperation

FINANCIAL MIRROR -- June 29 -- Following a number of years of cooperation, meetic and Orange are strengthening their partnership in internet, matchmaking, advertising and mobile venues. They aim to create more bridges between the Internet and Mobile segments and enrich Orange Advertising's ad offer. FULL ARTICLE @ FINANCIAL MIRROR

This post also appears on MobileDatingWatch.

Niche Databases Are Worth More

SAID AMIN BLOG -- June 28 -- Generalist sites overlap users, making their member lists less valuable than niche sites, according to Saïd Amin of WorldSingles. Most ethnic niche sites, due to less competition, enjoy a higher % of unique members. However, with many new competitors jumping into niches, newcomers will struggle to reach critical mass. Niches thrive on word of mouth. Money alone is not enough. Look at ChristianCafe.com. It is so entrenched in the community. It has the pulse of the community it serves. Ditto with Jdate. FULL ARTICLE @ SAID AMIN BLOG

MatchActivity Becomes Wannago.com

SOCAL TECH -- June 28 -- L.A. based online dating site MatchActivity has become wannago.com, and is now focusing on creating a social networking site focused on sharing activities and events. The angel funded startup, which raised a small round in January and is still fundraising, is planning to relaunch its site towards the end of July. FULL ARTICLE @ SOCAL TECH

Mark Brooks: Match killed Matchlive.com a couple of years ago. On the positive side, PreDating was acquired by Cupid and Hurrydate was just acquired by Spark. Some day dating sites will take more interest in events. 

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Mobestar Delivers mDate to Major UK Brand - Gaydar

BUSINESS WIRE -- June 28 -- Mobestar, a specialist provider of mobile community applications (LSE:MOBS) (GER:M6V) announces implementation of their mobile social networking application to Qsoft Consulting, owners of the dating brand Gaydar. Powered by Mobestar, GaydarMobile is will allow 1.1 million users in the UK and 4 million users world-wide access to profiles, messages and contact members with text, picture and video messaging using just their mobile phone. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE

For HotOrNot, Betting on Free Is Paying Off

GIGA OM -- June 27 -- Three months ago, HotorNot dropped its subscription-based model for a free-ad supported model. In his latest blog post HotorNot founder James Hong says HotorNot's traffic has doubled to about 20 million page views per day. The revenues tanked from over $5 million per annum, but the company still remains profitable, with most of its sales coming from Google Ads. Hong claims a new sales force will replace the lost revenue. FULL ARTICLE @ GIGA OM

Mark Brooks: Here's the one month page views comparison with PlentyofFish courtesy of Alexa.

Dating Cards Fuse Physical & Virtual Connections

SPRINGWISE NEWSLETTER -- June 27 -- Bucking the online first meeting, now you can meet in person, and then go hunting the profile. Canadian Admit an Attraction prints Attraction Tickets members can hand out to invite someone they meet to check out their profile. If they approve, they can meet again later. Hitchoo, recently launched in Singapore, works on the same principle, sending members cards with a friendly "You made my day" on the front, and access details on the back.  It brings in more non-service users and saves face for those too shy to ask for the phone number. FULL ARTICLE @ SPRINGWISE NEWSLETTER

4ppl Google Maps Mashup

PRESS RELEASE -- June 27 -- Now 4ppl (Boonex) users can see the location of other members on a Google Map. They can even search for singles around them with an unmatched precision. A member can keep his/her location secret, by telling 4ppl about his/her city only. But, when they feel adventurous - they just go ahead and pinpoint their very specific location, up to a house they live in.

Mark Brooks: That's handy for stalkers.

Good Looks Only

AHN -- June 26 -- In a bid to attract only the best people, an online dating site in Arizona has decided to publish the pictures of only attractive people. The decision, says site owner Allena Brown, was prompted by pictures by a man in flannel underwear holding an axe. The Beautiful People Arizona, has about 300 vetted members who pay $9.99 a month. The us.beautifulpeople.net site used the same method to phase out inappropriate people and pictures. FULL ARTICLE @ AHN

Mark Brooks: Hotenough.org has a similar model also.

Better Photos Double Singles Success

PRESS RELEASE -- June 26 -- When a professional photographer from LookBetterOnline.com, captured singles for their profiles, a report shows a rise of 235% more unsolicited contacts and email responses. And it sticks. The data shows that three months after posting their new photos, singles are still receiving over 200% more messages on average. For LookBetterOnline.com, 80% of its customers doubled their response rate and 40% received five times more messages. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Dating sites sell people to people. Make your product look better by helping your people look better. I've long been a fan of the LBOL service. My photo here was done by an LBOL photographer.

Perfectmatch Scores in NBC Debut

SEATTLE PI.COM -- June 25 -- It could have been bad for Perfectmatch.com if NFL football player Adam Johnson -- the star of the reality TV special "Science of Love" -- decided to date his choice rather than the selected woman. After all, the Duet Total Compatibility System was placing its reputation on the line by choosing a "scientific date" for the bachelor. In the Monday night debut, Perfectmatch won when Johnson said he was going to "take a leap of faith" and "see what science has in store for me." FULL ARTICLE @ SEATTLE PI.COM

Guy Kawasaki: Markus Frind, Founder of PlentyOfFish, Is my Hero

DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE -- June 25 -- Markus Frind, the founder of PlentyOfFish.com is my new hero (James Hong of Hot or Not is a close second). Marcus spends about two hours a day in his underwear managing a free dating website that gets twelve billion page views a year. He is the only employee, and he only has one server. And by the way, he makes $5-6 million/year with Google ads. The members of the five-person panel provided many good insights into starting and funding a company today.

Marcus Kazmierczak, vp of engineering, Maya's Mom
Markus Frind, Founder, PlentyofFish.com
James Hong, Co-Founder, HotorNot.com
Dave Lu, CEO, Fanpop
Karen Northup, CEO and Founder, CoreFino
FULL ARTICLE @ DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE

Facebook Has 40 Dating Applications

ONLINE DATING INSIDER -- June 25 -- After only a few weeks, Facebook's new platform shows 40 dating applications. Most are enhanced ways to poke, match up or meet new people, only a few are based on actual dating sites.

fbDating
Connections
Verbdate
Kathleen's Wild and Crazy Poking Application
Poke Pro
Date Rate

Two useful apps I found, out of hundreds:
Facebook iPhoto Exporter

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Gambling on Romance

POKER LISTINGS.COM -- June 24 -- A free dating site for online poker players, Poker-Online-Dating.com has launched to "match poker players together from around the world who are looking for true love." Cupid, the online matchmaker, will help by making matches based upon the results of the Cupid compatibility form. FULL ARTICLE @ POKER LISTINGS.COM

Mark Brooks: In theory, adding games to dating sites is a great idea. It gives prospective daters something to do that is fun and can give them more insight on each others character. In fact, however, I've not seen a sizable site introduce games successfully yet. That's a shame really. Your  comments please...

PlentyofFish on The Today Show

OPW -- June 25 -- In case you missed Markus Frind on The Today Show from last Tuesday, here's the link to the video.

When it comes to masters of romance Spain has Don Juan, Mexico has Zorro and Vancouver Canada has a 29 year old computer programmer who has turned his knack for playing Cupid into one of the biggest sensations on the Internet. His identity is a mystery. Until now. 

I’m looking for Marcus.
Markus: That would be me.. Come on in and let me show you around. This is my global headquarters.

Markus Frind is the founder of Plentyoffish.com, the number one dating website in Canada and one of the top 5 in the US and growing.

It’s a lot like a spare bedroom.
Markus: Yeah people say that but a lot happens here.

Don’t let this modest office fool you, Markus is making millions but not off you, his website is for free. He is making money off these little ads.

This is the website? Pretty basic.
Markus: Yeah, I like to keep it very simple. When I first created this site it was just a hobby, like it wasn’t meant to become anything. 

But become something it did. Attracting viewers by the price and keeping them by his unusual approach to matchmaking, giving people what they don’t want.

Markus: What people say they want and what people want are actually two completely different things. On my site if someone is searching for a clean cut guy but they really are messaging all the bad boys, I’ll show them more bad boys then good guys.

So on Marcus’ website it’s much more important who you are clicking on than who you think you click with.

How much time in a given day do you spend working on a website?
Markus: An hour.

That’s it?
Markus: That’s it.

44 million visitors in an average day and you spend an hour running this site that satisfies them all day long.
Markus: I know it’s a bit long isn’t it?

And its not just his work day that is smaller then most. His staff is too.

Let me get the team down. You’re the President, so who is the head of business development?
Markus: That would be me.

And tech support?
Markus: That’s me again.

And marketing?
Markus: That’s me again.

By keeping Plentyoffish.com a company of one, Markus can spend his time as he pleases, reading on the beach, having a leisurely meal of mussels or depositing his latest million dollar check for ad space. Even website trend analysts don’t know what to make of Markus’s success. 

eHarmony Lawsuit Stirs Passions on Both Sides

EDGE BOSTON -- June 21 -- It all started with a lesbian in San Francisco, Linda Carlson, who tried to post a personal ad on eHarmony, which was rejected. Her recent lawsuit has gotten bloggers, pundits  and gay rights groups weighing in. eHarmony, a straight dating site, has long rattled the LGBT community by refusing to match gays. Dale Carpenter, Julius E. Davis professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School, believes that the lawsuit has a chance of success based on the California anti-discrimination law. eHarmony claims its tests don't accomodate gay psychology and the site caters to straight Christians. FULL ARTICLE @ EDGE BOSTON

Online Dating Gets on 'Net TV

MARKETING VOX -- June 21 -- With 40 million people now using online dating sites, the $700 million industry is finally getting its own online TV show, courtesy of ON Networks and produced by NBC Universal Digital Studios. Titled ON Dating, the 3-8 minute show offers advice for jumping into the world of online dating and success/horror stories. The show will be hosted by dating coach Andrea Syrtash. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKETING VOX

Dating Sites Responsiveness Test

OPW -- June 25 -- I've been reviewing a number of dating sites recently. I thought it would be interesting to see how many real messages a 28 year old woman in Tampa would get on the various dating sites. The test was run from April 24th to May 22nd, from Tampa, Florida. The subject did not send any outgoing winks or messages during the test. The excel spreadsheet lists the number of winks and messages received from other members.  Also listed is a breakout of the messages that were sent as automated messages from the system. Messages that were clearly automated messages were not included in the number for 'Messages From Members.' TRUE and Singlesnet had a high number of automated messages, and a low number of real messages. PlentyofFish had the most real messages initiating contact. Here's screen captures of the profiles that were used - PlentyofFish, Lavalife, TRUE, Singlesnet, Match, LoveAccess, YahooPersonals and Engage. Download dating sites responsiveness test spreadsheet.

myPartnerPerfect CEO, Patrick Perrine - OPW Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- June 24, 2007 -- It’s Gay Pride! Time for an interview with the gay Hitch, Patrick H.Perrine, the CEO and Founder of myPartnerPerfect.com. - Mark Brooks

What is your background?
I originally started with St. John’s University where I studied psychology. My main focus was on human dating preferences, specifically drawing parallels from Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory research and Kinsey’s research on sexuality, then applying those to the LGBT community.

From there I continued on to get my Master’s in Human Sexuality Studies and started focusing again on the gay male population, doing counseling and working with individuals. Following my Master’s I continued on to get my PHD in Psychology.

myPartnerPerfect.com just launched. Why did you start myPartnerPerfect?
It was when I was doing my counseling for gay men that I uncovered that a lot of gay men, like myself, have issues based either around the lack of relationship or in the current relationships that they’re in. Once I started doing research as to how I could better serve these individuals through the counseling process, I uncovered that there really aren’t that many tools for gay men to develop healthy and happy relationships.

The online dating world was pretty void of any site that would help facilitate those relationships. That’s why I started the private matchmaking service to work with clients one-on-one to help them identify their needs and wants. We’re specifically going to work for them to develop that happy and healthy relationship that they’re seeking. That’s what brought us to today.

How does heterosexual compatibility testing differ from homosexual compatibility testing?
They’re very similar when you look at relationship styling, personality profiling and elements of relationship compatibility. The difference with gay men and with gay relationships is that there are a multitude of different cultural factors that go into how they seek and pursue a relationship.

I think one of the biggest differences we need to look at is that from the get go there aren’t too many relationships for gay people to identify with as they’re growing up, identifying and uncovering their sexuality.  There’s a major gap in representation. Just that alone affects the way that gay men are able to identify the appropriate relationship styling for them.

Who would you say are your competitors for myPartnerPerfect?
I think the direct competition for services like ours are going to be the comprehensive relationship based sites. Sites that offer profiling systems, compatibility systems that are, of course, focusing on the gay men market. I think Chemistry.com does a great job of presenting a relationship focus for the gay community unlike any other site. eHarmony obviously doesn’t provide these services for the gay community, which is what opened the door for myPartnerPerfect.

Are there any particular sites that have inspired you as you were working on myPartnerPerfect?
Definitely, eHarmony. I think eHarmony does a great job of presenting the message of commitment and there’s a large segment of the gay community that is looking for a long-term life partnership. The methodology that eHarmony uses, even though it is applied to heterosexual couples, is very similar to the methodology that myPartnerPerfect.com uses in the sense that we’re looking for compatibility based on a series of different dimensions. They were a good model for us.

In closing, what are your goals for 2007 through 2008?
Our goal is really to be able to position myPartnerPerfect as a sophisticated and classy website that caters to the gay population and not only is provides a lot of successful matches for that user base but also just presents a representation that’s different from the current online environment. We will let people know that gay individuals do, in fact, want to have committed relationships and that it does take work to make those relationships happen.

Profession Based Matching on Shaadi

CLICK PRESS -- June 19 -- Shaadi.com launched a new feature, which allows members to search for a partner based on a preferred profession. Located in the Partner Search section of Shaadi.com, this tool can now be used by all to find professionals such as Doctors, Engineers, Chartered Accountants, Pilots, Actors or any other profession. FULL ARTICLE @ CLICK PRESS