OPW – Jan 7 – All things have a beginning and an end, and today marks the end of Hurrydate after 14 years in business. The company was started by Ken Deckinger and Adele (Testani) Tongish. This speed dating company was acquired by Spark Networks in 2007.
Ken left Hurrydate in 2009 and in 2013 started JessMeetKen, a promising little dating app where women put forward their male friends as venerable for dating. So all the guys have at least one woman vouching for them. We like this 'social dating' spin because it effectively bridges the age-old divide between social networking and Internet dating. Social networks have a vouching process that dating sites lack. Dating sites give users privacy, so its tough to get that social vouching process to work in the world of Internet dating. Ken met his wife in a similar process, and they've branded themselves heavily into the dating site storyline, which is great!
Adele left Spark/Hurrydate in 2013. I'll ask her what she's up to and update this post shortly.
These kinds of events businesses can be quite onerous to run. The problem is, Internet dating is a very different kind of business and is a superior business. You should only ever hook an events business to your Internet dating business as a branding piece, and then make damn sure the events are A1 experiences. Otherwise the entire exercise will rapidly become an entire waste of time and actually quite detrimental to your core business. A certain very vocal and social portion of your audience loves events. Its a good idea to captivate them. They're a good audience to have in your fold, provided you please them. But don't expect your events business numbers to outshine your Internet dating business. They won't. And the events business will be the one that keeps you up at night. Therein lies the challenge, for the motley few.
Meanwhile, premium speed dating company Fastlife endures under POF, Predating was sold by Cupid back to its original owner, Speeddater.co.uk s still being operated by Cupid/Together Networks for the UK, 8 Minute Dating somehow endures, and long-standing regional speed-dating outfits like 10 minute dating (San Francisco) malinger and die.
Thanks to Carl at Slowdating.com for giving me a heads up on this morsel of news.
UPDATE: Adele is working with Ken again, and is actually the person responsible for introducing Ken to Jess! 🙂
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Post by Mark Brooks @ 
NEW YORK TIMES – Ambyr Club is a new speed dating service that launched last December and has since hosted seven events at trendy bars in Manhattan. "What's old is new again," said Julie Spira, a dating coach who runs a company called Cyber-Dating Expert. She noted that the first documented speed dating event was held at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills in 1998. Using data from a speed dating company called HurryDate, a 2005 University of Pennsylvania study found that most people gauge attraction within three seconds of meeting. Maxine Williams founded We Met IRL, a speed dating company for people of color, in January. "I came up with the idea in December after attending a speed dating event in Manhattan that wasn't very diverse," she said. CWAQ, which stands for "connect with a qutie," was also inspired by disappointment. Kevin Rabinovich, a freelance event producer, was let down by the lack of structure and diversity at such events.
