Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

DateUnknown.com Partners With Gay.com

OPW - May 17 - DateUnknown.com, a site which films the first dates of people who meet on the internet, has partnered with Gay.com. Date Unknown will feature Gay.com members who have met through the site in video episodes. Date Unknown offers dating sites a cost effective way to show successful matches. The first episode can be viewed here.

Gay.com Has Been Offline More Than It's Been Online

QUEERTY -- Oct 15 -- PlanetOut's Gay.com spent untold sums of cash revamping its infrastructure in the past few months. Except ever since the gay hub debuted the new version of its site at the beginning of the month, Gay.com has been plagued by downtime. By our rough science, it's been offline more than it's been online. Gay.com sent an apology letter to members stating they were adjusting their hardware configurations and software code and fixing the bugs that have resulted in unplanned system outages. FULL ARTICLE @ QUEERTY

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Niche Dating Sites Grow Steadily As Mainstream Ones Flail

TECH CRUNCH -- Apr 24 -- In the internet dating space, bigger is not always best. According to the latest U.S. numbers from Hitwise, the top niche dating sites are steadily gaining market share while their big mainstream counterparts stagnate. In March 2008, the top 5 overall sites held 7% less market share than they did in 2007 (Plentyoffish and Singlesnet were the only sites to buck this trend individually). Meanwhile, the top sites (Adam4Adam, Manhunt, Gay.com, BlackPeopleMeet, BlackSingles, BlackChristianPeopleMeet, ChristianMingle, JDate, and ChristianCafe.com) from the top five major niche dating categories made considerable gains. The biggest niche in terms of total traffic is casual dating, which consists of sites like Fling, AdultFriendFinder, and SexSearch. While the top 10 mainstream dating sites gained only 0.01% of total Internet traffic over the past year, the top three casual adult sites gained 0.07%. That's a hefty 56% increase in the traffic. (Authored by Mark Brooks)
FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH 

Online Sex: My Space Or Yours?

EDGE BOSTON -- Apr 7 -- Online venues, from IRC to AOL to Gay.com to MySpace and video chats, all seem to have replaced the function of the gay bar as a way for gay men to connect with other gay men. "Gay daters were some of the earliest, if not the first, to utilize the web for meeting potential partners. In the initial days of on online dating, users searched for profiles that looked interesting and eligible to them, whether that be for a relationship of a short-term encounter", said Patrick H. Perrine, MA, CEO and Founder of myPartner.com, who has worked in the field of human sexuality since 1997. FULL ARTICLE @ EDGE BOSTON

Gay Love Online, And This Time They Mean Business

GFN -- Jan 22 -- E-Harmony's discrimination towards gay clients, has led entrepreneurs to rethink services specifically for gay singles. Patrick H. Perrine MA, PhD is the founder and matchmaker behind myPartner.com. GFN spoke to Dr. Perrine about how he went from relationship counselor to online cupid.

GFN: Why enter into the competitive Internet dating world?
Patrick Perrine: I realized there was a major underserved market of gay and lesbians singles. Nobody was providing a place with the right tools and resources to create positive relationships.

GFN: What did you learn from sites like Gay.com to make myPartner different?
PP: We did a tough competitive analysis, and we took our initial user feedback very seriously. Match.com is incredibly successful because they are constantly changing. That was a big model for us. 

GFN: Where did you get the financing to develop the site?
PP: I used my personal resources to develop the company. Recently, I did take on some angel investors.

GFN: What is your advertising/marketing plan? 
PP: We get a lot of traffic from organic search. October 1st was the start of our major online advertising campaign. 

GFN: Do you eventually want to address lesbians?
PP: It may be something we tackle in the future.
FULL INTERVIEW @ GFN

Gay.com Parent Company Sells Travel Business

PINKNEWS.CO.UK -- Oct 15 -- PlanetOut – parent company of The Advocate, Out magazine, Gay.com, and PlanetOut.com – has announced plans to sell its travel business RSVP Vacations to Atlantis Events. PlanetOut, which recently was rescued from bankruptcy by investors such as Bill Gates, is attempting to reverse declining advertising revenues. FULL ARTICLE @ PINKNEWS.CO.UK

Mark Brooks: Gay.com is down 5.6% over last year. Manhunt.net is up 38%. Free site, Adam4Adam is also up 38%. (See Compete graph). I tested Manhunt's customer service out after their CEO, Adam Segel, mentioned to me at the Shanghai Social Networking Conference that Manhunt.net has 20 minute email response times. Surely not?! But, it's true! And they picked up their phone line on the 3rd ring when I tried the customer service line. What's your site's email response time?

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

Gay Dating Site Rankings

MEDIA LIFE -- Mar 27 -- U.S. sites include Gay.com, Gaydar and Manhunt. Gay.com has British, French, Italian and Latin American operations, while ManHunt recently rolled out across Europe. Gaydar began in London and is now worldwide. Gay sites continue to see strong growth in their U.S. audiences, 18% YOY for February 2007 (Hitwise). The real opportunities are overseas. Domestically, visitors to gay sites spend nearly twice as much time per visit, 21 minutes, versus 11 minutes spent on all web sites (Hitwise). Traffic to gay sites is 82% male. The largest age group is 35-44s, 29% of visits, slightly older than the general internet population.  Out In America claims 7 million uniques a month. Gay.com, part of PlanetOut, claims 5 million uniques. 9% of visitors to the gay and lesbian category were at MySpace before they went to a gay and lesbian site, according to Hitwise.

Gay site traffic - Share of Visits - w/e 3/17/07
1. Adam4Adam - 17.90%
2. ManHunt.net - 16.78%
3. Gay.com - 16.43%
4. Gay.com Personals - 9.51%
5. Out Personals - 8.60%
6. Downelink.com - 5.75%
7. Guys4men - 2.81%
8. World Gay Men - 1.56%
9. Dlist.com - 1.35%
10. BoysGo.com - 1.30%
FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA LIFE

Mark Brooks: Patrick Perrine, CEO of MyPartnerPerfect, is doing some interesting work in the field of gay matchmaking and gay personality profiling.

Gay.com Takes Over Parliament to Support Civil Unions

GAY WIRED -- Dec 11 -- Gay.com projected a monumental banner on to the Houses of Parliament Thursday night to commemorate the introduction of legal gay partnerships to the United Kingdom.  The mural appeared at the stroke of midnight and featured two grooms tying the knot, along with the words "I DO."  FULL ARTICLE @ GAY WIRED

Committed to Gay Marriage Equality; Gay.com

GAY.COM--It was devastating when the California Supreme Court announced the day we married at San Francisco City Hall had no meaning at all as far as the state of California is concerned. After 17 years together, we did not anticipate that getting married would touch us so deeply and how powerful the reaction of our friends and family would be. A gay friend wrote us that news of our wedding is "actually making me cry ...with happiness for the two of you and what it means for all of us." A straight friend wrote that she, her husband and their kids are "jumping over furniture because we're so happy for you two!" GAY.COM