Online Personals Watch

Internet Dating Unplugged

GUARDIAN.CO.UK -- June 27 -- 15m people in the UK are single, and almost 5m are shopping for love online. According to Markus Frind, the CEO of Plentyoffish, 1/3 of POF users form a relationship, 1/3 do not and 1/3 give up. One in five married people between the ages of 19 and 25 met their partner online, in a YouGov poll of more than 2,000. 15% of couples met online. Research at Bath University found that internet relationships lasted, on average, seven months. Clyde Baldo, a psychologist who works with disillusioned internet daters, said "Many people are addicted to online dating. The problems lie in the fact that it is not a real relationship, but one in cyberspace. When you meet people conventionally, friends or colleagues introduce you. These factors create boundaries, so you tend to behave better. This doesn't exist on the internet.  Dr Paige Padgett of the University of Texas has conducted a survey of the personal and sexual safety of women who internet date. 30% of women who meet men on the internet have sex on the first date. Of those, 77% do not use condoms. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

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World-class Rapper Partners With PlentyofFish.com

PRWEB -- June 25 -- PlentyOfFish.com, the largest online dating site in the USA, and world-class rapper, Flo Rida, are teaming up to unveil his latest video, ‘Available’. The music video can be found at http://www.plentyoffish.com/florida.aspx. While dating sites have often been featured in movies and TV shows, ‘Available’ marks the first time that the online dating industry and the world of hip-hop have partnered up to spread their messages across both platforms. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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PlentyofFish.com Upgrades, Themes & Date Night

THE PARADIGM SHIFT -- June 14 -- Plentyoffish.com has made several major changes to the site.

1. Introduction of themes - members can use 5,000 activity points to ad themes to their profile.
2. New feature called date night - every week starting at friday 2pm PST members can signal to the community they are free for a date on the following friday night
3. New flash uploader where members can rotate, resize and crop their thumbnails.
FULL ARTICLE @ THE PARADIGM SHIFT

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Spark Networks Loses Online Daters' Love

WALL STREET JOURNAL -- June 10 -- Spark Networks is losing subscribers even as Internet dating as a whole is growing.  Spark said it's trying to rebalance its portfolio to be less reliant on JDate. However, its segment weighting seems to be shifting more because of the relative speed of subscriber losses. Stock is down about 9% year-to-date and ~47% over the last 52 weeks, reflecting the prolonged poor performance, and has a market capitalization of $47.1 million. "I live in hope for them," said Mark Brooks, editor of the blog OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and an industry consultant. "But quite consistently, they've shown not particularly enthralling results." Spark's Q1 revenue dropped 20%. Meanwhile, revenue at Match slid just 1%. Ad-supported free sites like PlentyOfFish.com, which saw unique visitors nearly double to ~2.9 million in April from a year earlier, are a threat. Spark is focusing ad spending on a handful of its niche sites to bring them to scale and has all but given up on AmericanSingles.com.

Mark Brooks: Spark Networks acquired Engage.com a few months back, and acquired Hurrydate in February 2007.  What should Spark Networks do next? Your comments please.

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Userplane Ist Kaput

OPW -- May 4 -- Heads up! Rumors have come in from multiple sources that Userplane is folding. Its too small for AOL to consider selling, and apparently not worthwhile them continuing to run. Its a shame really. Companies like Toksta and Ekko.tv stand to benefit from the void Userplane will leave. Markus Frind says that IM was his biggest mistake. He's getting far more pageviews now he's pulled it. But paid sites are less interested in page views, so perhaps its still worthwhile paid sites using IM. There are a number of IM alternatives we're reviewing. We'll be presenting our findings at the upcoming Internet Dating Conference, and on the Courtland Brooks blog. (Full Disclosure: Plentyoffish.com is a current, long term client of Courtland Brooks. Userplane is a former client of Courtland Brooks)

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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Internet Dating Industry Weekly News - 5 Mins

Online Personals Watch News Summary, May 1st, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

Meetic tops in UK. Public health professionals turn to social networks to help combat HIV/AIDS. White Label Dating moves up. Viximo introduces modular virtual goods platform for the web and iPhone. iovation introduces risk assessment module. Diller eyes Yahoo Personals. IAC Q1 results out, subscription base up 6%, but revenue down due to exchange rates.

Markus Frind, Plentyoffish Interview

VANCOUVER VIEW -- May '09 -- Markus Frind is the CEO and founder of Plentyoffish.com, which is one of the largest and most successfull free dating sites on the Internet, popular primarily in Canada, the UK, Australia and the United States.

Vancouver View: There are a ton of dating Web sites on the net. How did you become confident that yours would prove successful?

Markus Frind: I created Plentyoffish to teach myself asp.net; there was no plan to create a major business - I just kind of stumbled on it. In other words this was never meant to be a business and there were no expectations to run it as a business. When I started Plentyoffish, there wasn't even any way to make money from the site.

VV: How did you spread the word about Plentyoffish?

MF: I told friends in Vancover and Toronto and then it spread like wildfire. Because the only other major dating site at that time was Lavalife, it was easy to get the word out. I didn't really need to spread the word about Plentyoffish when it first started because it wasn't meant to be business and I had no way of making money off it and the entire site was being run out of my apartment off my home computer.

VV: Membership to the Web site is free. What are your sources of revenue?

MF: I make money from various forms of advertising. With billions of monthly page views, it's pretty easy to make money.

VV: Do you have any suggestions for entrepreneurs who are experiencing challenging times?

MF: Try everything and anything! Nothing is very successful at the first try. Once you get something that works, you just keep refining it till it's perfect!

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Love Is In the Air

NEW MEDIA AGE -- Apr 30 -- The UK dating services industry is worth an estimated £600 million a year and, according to Hitwise, there are more than 1,300 dating sites in operation. Meanwhile, Jupiter Research predicts the number of paying members of dating sites will reach 6 million in the next three years, rising from 2.6 million in 2006. In the midst of such vast anticipated growth, two of the biggest players — Meetic, which owns Dating Direct, and IAC, owner of Match.com — have agreed to a deal. 

Industry reaction to the owners of Match.com and Dating Direct getting into bed together seems to be one of general puzzlement. IAC plans to sell its European operations of Match.com to Meetic in return for €5 million (£4.5 million) and a 27% interest in Meetic. So why would the world's largest dating site suddenly decide to sell its profitable European operation? Ross Williams, co-founder of WhiteLabelDating, which powers dating sites for publishers, sees the strategy behind the decision. "There was a clause in the announcement that didn't make many of the headlines, but I think will tell you the direction IAC is going in: Match has the option to buy Meetic in its entirety in about three years. So this is kind of phase one of setting the limits of both businesses."

There's a general feeling in the industry that the Meetic/IAC deal will be just the first of a number of unions in a sector that has hundreds of competitors. Markus Frind, founder and CEO of free dating site Plenty of Fish, believes we'll see more forced marriages in the UK market. "A lot of dating sites have been losing traffic over the last two years and some aren't even profitable; that can't go on forever," he says. But it seems the economic squeeze isn't impacting the bigger players in this sector. eHarmony launched in the UK last October saw an almost 2% increase in the number of pages people viewed on days when the Dow Jones was down 100 points or more. Match.com has also seen a 35% increase in sign-ups since the beginning of the year.

With so many players in the market, differentiating each dating service arguably comes down to how effectively sites match individuals. While approaches differ slightly, no one player seems to be doing anything radically different. Online dating service Parship claims to have been the first in Europe to offer a scientific approach to matchmaking, with its psychometric compatibility test, taken by more than 9 million people to date. eHarmony uses an in-depth 250-question questionnaire based on 35 years of clinical psychology research. Tapping into this trend, Match.com launched its work-in-progress personality test in December 2008.

Another growth opportunity for the buoyant dating market is the 'second' generation of single people, who are gradually putting their trust online. WhiteLabelDating, which runs Fun at Fifty, has seen a "massive increase" in the popularity of its over-50s dating site. Launched in October 2008, user numbers have risen each month, with March 2009 showing visits up by 47% on the previous month.

FULL ARTICLE @ NEW MEDIA AGE 

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See all posts on Match.com               See all posts on Parship
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Internet Dating Industry Weekly News - 5 Mins

Online Personals Watch News Summary #4, April 24th, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

Skyecandy speed dating on Skype, Plentyoffish dumps IM, RSVP's Aussie business is up and SNAP / Are You Interested is also doing well. Chinese women turned off Caucasian guys, Ashley Madison goes mobile, iovation holds strong, and 7orbetter.com assures women aren’t disappointed.

Love And Money

SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY -- Apr 20 -- During this time of economic hardship, people are finding that online dating is a relatively inexpensive way to meet people. Where one night out at the bar can cost the better part of £25, membership to a dating site is only about £20 a month. It also allows matches to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time and get things in the open before they meet, instead of waiting until the third or fourth date to find out she never wants kids, or he wants them within a year. PerfectMatch.com has seen a membership increase of 51% compared to the same quarter last year, and Match.com, billed as the world’s largest online agency, has reported its strongest fourth quarter in the last seven years. Plentyoffish.com visits have increased 77% from December 2007 to December 2008, and 32% over the last three months. FULL ARTICLE @ SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

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Plentyoffish Removes IM

PARADIGM SHIFT -- Apr 16 -- On Friday I disabled the instant messenger on my Plentyoffish and today completely removed it. Within 4 days of it being inactive my UK visits increased 10% and Australia is up over 15%. FULL ARTICLE @ PARADIGM SHIFT

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Internet Dating Weekly News Summary - 3 Minutes

Online Personals Watch News Summary #1, 4 3 09 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

This weeks news covers Skout, eHarmony, IC3, and Mobestar along with my favorite April 1st joke, Steve Wozniak in the new Footloose movie.

More Singles Looking For Love Online

ABC NIGHTLINE -- Mar 25 -- At a time when so many businesses need a bail out, online dating sites have never been busier. Match.com boasts 15m members worldwide with 20,000 new people signing up every day. "We’re up 20% this year which is double the increase we had over Jan last year", said Mandy Ginsberg who runs Match.com’s American operation. "People aren’t going out and they’re not spending as much money at restaurants and at bars, they are spending a lot of time online", she added. Rival eHarmony.com is also seeing double digit gains. PlentyOfFish.com is the busiest and it brags of a remarkable 2 billion page views a month. FULL ARTICLE @ OPW

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The Myth Of Ashton Kutcher

BOSTON GLOBE -- Mar 25 -- Despite all the talk of cougar culture, men still want to date younger women. Men still seek younger women, especially as those men get older themselves. "It's the general rule," said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry consultant who runs Online Personals Watch. "With men dating women, it tends to be up to six years younger but it will only be up to two years older. Guys tend to have unrealistic expectations," said Brooks, who bragged that he is one of the mythical Ashton Kutcher-types (he recently dated someone nine years older than him). "Most men are too busy looking at magazines and not busy enough looking in the mirror." Adele Testani, founder of Hurrydate said "we have actually tried to capitalize on the cougar trend and it didn't really work for us. People really want that more traditional arrangement." Kate Bilenki, a spokeswoman for Plentyoffish.com, has not seen a male profile call for an older woman. "For every 55-year old male, there are three 55-year-old women", she adds. FULL ARTICLE @ BOSTON GLOBE

Mark Brooks: Photoshopped pictures of skinny models in magazines are destroying our society.  How can singles photos on dating sites compare to these unrealistic, unnatural photos?  A hundred years ago it was the women of girth and curves that were lauded after.  'Women of the street' were skinny and most available to men and became personifications of sexual desire over the years.  Sex sells.  Sex became connected with skinny, and now we have a generation of kids trying to reach unattainable and unnatural levels of skinny.  I'd love a six pack.  But why?  I've been brainwashed into thinking its sexy.  Just as women have been brainwashed into thinking super skinny is THE look.  Its not good for the dating  industry ultimately.  Singles should feel more comfortable posting their photos on dating sites.  Your comments please.

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POF Best Ad OF 2009?

JAMIE SCHEU -- Mar 18 -- I announced the Worst Ad of 2009 not long ago, but I thought it would be a while before I could name a contender for the title of Best Ad of ‘09. But here it is. These are currently running all over Boston, mostly in and around public transportation. Not a bad way to set yourself apart in a sea of competition. FULL ARTICLE @ JAMIE SCHEU

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Despite The Recession, More Folks Looking For Love

OTTAWA CITIZEN -- Mar 16 -- "We had the busiest December we've ever had," says Linda Miller, owner of Misty River Introductions. "When times are tough, you tend to think about what's important", she says. "In down times, people want to hook up, meet other people, share expenses, do things together," says Markus Frind, founder of PlentyofFish.com, the Vancouver-based site that bills itself as the world's largest online dating service. Markus says his business is up 30% since December. FULL ARTICLE @ OTAVA CITIZEN

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Online Dating Profile Word Clouds

PLENTYOFFISH DATING TIPS -- Mar 12 -- I went on to PlentyofFish.com and copy and pasted the Interests sections of 50 female and 50 of male profiles and converted them into word clouds using the Wordle web-site. Here are the results. A word cloud is a graphical representation of the frequency amount of each word used in a given text. A word that is used 10 times in a body of text will appear much larger than a word that is only used once or twice. FULL ARTICLE @ PLENTYOFFISH DATING TIPS

• Female Online Dating Profile Word Cloud

• Male Online Dating Profile Word Cloud

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Outrageous Plentyoffish.com Advertisements In New York And Boston

OPW -- Mar 11 -- All dating sites should have some kind of filter or focus to add real value for users. Figure, every bar has an ambiance and specific kind of audience. So why should dating site be any different. The most important filter, really, is to remove the people who are derogatory or abusive towards your communities. Plentyoffish is now actually using this is a differentiating feature in their ads in the NYC subway and on taxis and buses in Boston. "We delete users unfit to date!" states the ad. Your comments please. (Full Disclosure: POF is a client of Courtland Brooks) - Mark Brooks

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Don’t Fork Over Cash For A Love Match

NBC4I -- Mar 10 -- No-pay dating sites are seeing a boom during this bust. Traffic is way up over the past year in the U.S. with a 58% spike since Nov alone. Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, says the trend makes sense. “During bad economic times, people generally like to reprioritize their goals and, as a result, relationships move up on that list,“ Tracy said. PlentyOfFish.com is one of the biggest free dating sites, recently hitting a million users in one day. FULL ARTICLE @ NBC4I   

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Plentyoffish.com Rings True With Online Daters

PR NEWSWIRE -- Mar 9 -- Plentyoffish.com is now the official #1 online dating site in both the USA and the UK according to Hitwise. Greg Guerin, a diamond consultant discovered an interesting trend. "I sell rings to people getting engaged and I like to ask people how they met." He says, "more and more couples are meeting on the Internet, and last month more couples met on POF than Match. Hardly anyone comes in from eHarmony." FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

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