Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Web Video Captures The Truth

STAR LEDGER -- Jan 5 -- When she hit 40, Neenah Pickett decided to find a husband by 2010. She created 52Weeks2FindHim.com so she can post self-descriptive videos and speed-date with email responders from her home via webcam. Online dating took off in the early 1990s, with users posting detailed personality profiles and flattering photos. More recently, sites like webdate.com and speeddate.com began to feature video dating, said Mark Brooks, editor of Onlinepersonalswatch.com, an industry site for online personals. "Sometimes, you go out on a date with somebody and find out they don't have a full head of hair, or are 20 pounds heavier than that photo taken years ago," Brooks said. "With a video date, you see what you're going to get. It's very compelling." FULL ARTICLE @ NJ.COM

See all posts on Webdate
See all posts on SpeedDate

Single Shot: How To Be A Cheap Date

SEATLE PI -- Oct 10 -- Dating in the New Improved Depression means learning to make do with the simple things in life, the things we've been blathering about for 30 years: long walks on the beach, snuggling in front of a fire and enjoying The Sunday New York Times. Free personal sites are one of the hottest new trends in online dating, according to Mark Brooks, editor of Onlinepersonalswatch.com. The top three contenders, as ranked by Hitwise, are Plentyoffish, DateHookup and OkCupid, but there are many more, including HOT or NOT, Webdate, Matchdoctor, Bookofmatches and Smooch. FULL ARTICLE @ SEATTLE PI

See all posts on PlentyofFish    See all posts on Webdate
See all posts on DateHookup    See all posts on Matchdoctor
See all posts on OkCupid          See all posts on BookofMatches
See all posts on HotorNot         See all posts on Smooch

Bring Your Dream Date Home, Digitally

SEATTLE PI -- Jan 3 -- Dating on Demand lets singles record two- to five-minute personal profiles (at home or at a special event) which people can watch Comcast digital cable (or at datingondemand.com). Anyone is eligible to participate, as long as they're a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age, have never been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor or been slapped with a restraining order. Surfing profiles is free, but if people want to respond, they have to register on HurryDate.com and pony up a fee ($20 a month). It's still a relatively new service, so there aren't a ton of videos to peruse yet. FULL ARTICLE @ SEATTLE PI

Mark Brooks: I took a look over Dating on Demand 3 weeks ago while in Silicon Valley and in each of the age categories there were just a couple of profiles. Saddeningly lacking profiles, but this is a great idea. The profiles we saw were entertaining. All the profiles we viewed were taken at parties at which attendees were encouraged to do a video.  I think video dating will take off. We put this to a vote at iDate Barcelona 2007 on the final panel and most of the executives in the audience disagreed. People are too shy to put their video online. Ah well. Webdate still seems to be the best example of a video dating site. (Full Disclosure: Webdate was a client of Courtland Brooks)

Match Mobile is Live Today!

OPW -- July 30 -- The new Match Mobile is live. This version is powered by Trilibis, the same makers of the Webdate Mobile app and the popular social networking app Peepsnation. The most significant change is that users can now (at last) browse the entire Match.com database. The prior, Enpocket powered service, only allowed searching of ~300k contacts that had specifically signed up for Match Mobile.

I've not heard much in the way of positivity about mobile dating in the last couple of years. In a sea of disappointing mobile apps, patchy connections and poorly thought out mobile devices, Match Mobile is a standout. Very satisfactory. Match is moving in the right direction with their mobile strategy. Now I wonder... what are they rolling out for the Japanese market? Next years Asian Internet Dating Conference will most likely be in Tokyo, or possibly in South Korea around May 2008. I'll review some Asian mobile apps then. See the SF Chronicle article.

In this 45 second video you'll see the search, search results and profile viewing on Match Mobile.

Dating Speeds Up On Cellphone

ASSOCIATED PRESS -- July 11 -- Get the weather. Get a picture. Get a date - this instant. Of America's ~213 million mobile phone users, 3.6 million used a mobile dating service in May 2007 (M:Metrics). Mostly men 18 to 34. Internet dating Web sites Webdate and Match.com have mobile services, and there are a handful of stand-alone ventures such as Meetmoi, Zogo and Jumbuck Entertainment's Fast Flirting, as well. FULL ARTICLE @ ARIZONA REPUBLIC

Mark Brooks: For the scoop on mobile SNS and dating you might want to check out the Social Networking Conference coming up July 26-27th in San Francisco. 

Abe Smilowitz, Webdate COO - OPW Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- May 21, 2007 -- This is the third of five feature interviews on the topic of scamming. Abe Smilowitz is COO of WealthyMen.com, Fling.com and Webdate.com. - Mark Brooks

What kind of scamming do you encounter across Fling.com and WebDate.com and WealthyMen.com?
Like with every other dating site, it’s an issue that we’re always combating. The two types of scamming that occur are end user scamming and webmaster scamming.

The end user scamming is usually individuals that are coming in primarily from foreign countries pretending to be either attractive women, primarily, or attractive men. They chat and email back and forth with individuals and gain their trust. Then they ask for money or favors or any sort of particulars, but it’s primarily money that they’re looking for.

We obviously try to combat those fraudulent users by having several self reporting tools on the site where other users can report scammers with fake pictures, people that have solicited them for money or solicited them to go to other sites and that sort of thing. We feel that the best method is having the users self report because when you’re doing thousands of sign ups a day it becomes very difficult to manually scan every single sign up and follow what they’re doing.

Some of them are actually quite good. They use authentic photos and they write a full profile or copy someone else’s profile and it seems like a real person. We have users also that work for us that are surfing the site and use the site themselves and chat with other users and kind of get a feel for it and some of them have actually been duped by some of the scammers. They’re chatting and they think that it’s an attractive young woman and they’re talking back and forth for a week and then she comes out with, “Oh I need $200 for my mother’s operation.”

I don’t know if there’s a fool proof way to get rid of them 100%. I think the best way to do it obviously is to have people actively monitor the site, use the site, have the users self report and have a no tolerance policy where if someone’s doing that, a moderator will go and check out the profile, check out the series of emails or chats that they’ve sent back and forth and if it’s found that they are partaking in that kind of activity, they’re automatically disabled and we disable their IP address if possible.

Have you noticed that the number of incidents of scamming increasing or is it level or declining?
I know that it has actually decreased on our site because once we figured out that this kind of activity was going on we’ve actively been pursuing it and monitoring it. We do various types of IP monitoring. We banned several countries from using the site. That’s really the best way to try and get rid of these guys. That in conjunction with moderators and active users reporting back to our customer service and letting them know, “Hey this particular person is a scammer,” or, ”this profile is a bad profile,“ and we go in and police it.

How serious of a problem do you think it is for the industry as a whole?
I don’t think it’s a problem that’s going to destroy the industry but I think that it’s definitely a problem and I think it’s going to continue to be a problem. The only real way to prevent it 100%, I guess, would be to set up some kind of police state where you would have the government run some kind of check on you to make sure you are who you are.

I think that it’s going to be a problem and I think the industry needs to do the best that they can to combat it. It would be good to have obviously some kind of sharing of information because I’m sure there’s other sites and other executives at sites that have figured out different methods of combating it. I’m sure I’ve thought of things that other people haven’t.

The pooling of ideas is always a good thing and would help the industry as a whole but I think it’s always going to exist on the sites and the best you can do is try to educate the users about it.

Anyone that’s asking you for money, you should really obviously never give them money unless you’ve met the person, you know the person and you feel comfortable doing that. But someone you don’t even know, you never met and you’ve just been chatting with them online for a week or so, I don’t think it would be a good idea to send them cash. I think a lot of this really comes down to the users level of responsibility and common sense about what they’re doing. I understand that some of these users are lonely and at weak points where they’re looking for someone to talk to.

It’s a difficult problem and I think the users need to be more aware of it and need to be a little more standoffish and never divulge financial information or give any money to anyone on a community site.

What can the industry do as a whole?  Have you tried reaching out to other sites to share the IP addresses of scammers, for example?
No, I personally haven’t but I think that would be a good idea. I think it would need to come from an independent source. I don’t know that it would necessarily make sense for me as a site owner to go ahead and contact some of my competitors and go through that. I think that it would probably be more credible if it came from a third party independent source.

Do you know of any providers of such a service?
No, I don’t know of anyone that actually does that.

How high on the priority list should it be for the industry to try and eradicate scammers?
I think that it’s something that should be high on the priority list to heighten the credibility of our sites. You want to obviously give your users the best experience possible and you want the site to work for them.  I mean, what are they going to your site for? They’re going there to meet another person and have either some kind of friendship or romantic relationship with another individual that meets the criteria of what they’re looking for. Your end goal is to achieve that for users. Obviously, when someone is tricked and cheated at their most vulnerable time, that’s not a good experience for users, and that’s not the type of reputation site owners want to have amongst users. So I think it’s a very important issue.

Mobile Social Networking Conference

PRESS RELEASE -- Apr 11 -- The SocialNetworkingConference.com will be held on July 26-27, 2007 at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown San Francisco and will focus on management, technology and marketing for the mobile and wireless social networking industry. Attending the event will be senior executives from the social networking industry and online personals industry, wireless telecommunication, cell phone and PDA manufacturers, software companies, venture capitalists, marketing firms and entrepreneurs. Speakers include executives from: Nokia, USPTO, Bebo, FAS Research, Tickle, Userplane, Juice Wireless, Sinofriends/96333.com (China), AirG, VideoEgg, Social Networking Watch and Rate.ee (Estonia). Topics include: Mobile social networking business development, future PDA and cell phone generations, mobile browsers, wireless carriers and business models for building mobile communities, SMS, MMS, content distribution, software development and contract negotiation for the integration of social networking sites with wireless networks.

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.com

Finding Love by Cell Phone

PC WORLD -- Feb 13 -- Mobile dating is gowing partly because of newer cell phones w/cameras, broadband connections and clearer displays. Tole Hart at Gartner said, "Mobile dating will continue to grow because Internet communities like MySpace and Jumbuck Island will grow." Trilibis said Webdate Mobile surged 23% in the past year to 92,000 registered users. Analysts at Frost & Sullivan put global mobile dating revenues at $31 million in 2005, and is expected to grow to $215 million in 2009. Market research firm, Visiongain, said that ~13% of U.S. dating service members accessed Web sites through their cell phones. Sprint offers Webdate Mobile for $3.99/mo and Jumbuck Island for $3.99/mo. Jumbuck Island said 40,000 unique visitors per day use it's Fast Flirting service worldwide. IceBreaker Inc. debuted Crush or Flush on Jan 16th. FULL ARTICLE @ PC WORLD

Mark Brooks: The introduction of the Nokia N95 and Apple iPhone with provide added impetus for the transition to the mobile web and mobile dating.

Which Dating Sites Convert the Best?

OPW -- Jan 2 -- Online Personals Watch is for online personals marketing managers and executives to stay ahead of the news, and for the press to research the industry. It's not really designed for end users. Having said that, I make a few bucks from affiliate text links. $5k last year. Not too shabby. I thought I'd share the conversion numbers with you, for open discussion. I'm listing companies with which I had more than 1000 click throughs. I'm told affiliates will usually send an affiliate program 300 clicks before drawing initial conclusions on conversions. Here's the rankings drawn from stats for January 1st 2005, through December 25th 2006.  I'll redo them for a smaller date range later this quarter. 

	Dating site	Affiliate System	Total Commission	Total Uniques	Income per Unique
#1	PerfectMatch	Commission Junction	$899	2567	35c
#2	SexSearch	In House	$1,580	4690	34c
#3	TRUE	Commission Junction*	$1,459	5626	26c
#4	AdultFriendFinder	In House	$1,523	6144	25c
#5	Yahoo Personals	Commission Junction	$1,595	6780	24c
#6	eHarmony	Commission Junction	$502	3536	14.2c
#7	American Singles	Commission Junction	$285	3591	7.9c
#8	Match	Link Share**	$503	4887	7.7c
#9	Cupid	Direct Track	$210	3334	5c
#10	Joint: Webdate and Love Access	Both In House	$0	2923/1916	0c

  * I switched out to TRUE under Primaryads.com and they are paying out a little better.
** I've not had a good experience with LinkShare.

All the sites pay out slightly differently.  Where I had an option, I opted to be paid by % of revenue generated. I've focused on Dollars per Unique for this comparison.  If you want the full spreadsheet, email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com and I'll send you the stats including the number of registrants, paying members, revenue and additional ratios. Your comments please…

Where Mr. Right is Mr. Rich

THE SEATTLE TIMES -- Nov 15 -- Critics call them gold diggers. But the women who prowl online dating Web sites like Wealthymen.com and Sugardaddie.com know what they want — and they're not afraid to flaunt it.  "I am looking for someone who will take me on trips, spa getaways, to the salon, clothes and lingerie shopping," a 'sugarbabe' on Sugardaddie. Cristine Gomez, 21, recently dated an older man she met on Wealthymen for three months, in which he paid her rent check and car payments, and picked up the bill on her college tuition. "The site," she says, "is about being spoiled." One sugar daddy requests a woman who can "easily change from a pair of jeans to a small black cocktail dress." Another describes himself as a "race car driver looking for his red Ferrari."  Men are typically forced into the role of the pursuer on mainstream dating Web sites like Match.com and Americansingles.com, where the male-to-female ratio is 70:30.  At Wealthymen women outnumber men 5 to 1. Since the site launched in March 2006, Wealthymen.com has signed up 250,000 women and 100,000 men, while Sugardaddie.com ranks well above the 100,000 mark.  FULL ARTICLE @ SEATTLE TIMES

Mark Brooks: Wealthymen was created by the same team who created Webdate.com. It's been a great niche for them. SugarDaddyForMe is also doing quite well. Guys want more attention, but surely they want it from women who aren't so obviously scouring them for their loot. Your comments please...

YouCanGetMe.com Announce Seamless Mobile Dating

PR INSIDE -- Nov 11 -- UK dating site YouCanGetMe.com new mobile dating site can be seen by keying www.youcangetme.com into a mobile phone. The mobile site is linked to the internet dating web site for use by existing members who can simply login using their current details. YouCanGetMe's move into WAP is supported by the Mobi-Date software platform, developed by IDE Mobile. Peter Ellen is MD of the parent company IDE Group. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Webdate offers platform agnostic dating with their internet/mobile offering in the USA.  Others treat mobile dating as more of a channel for 'flirty-chat.' There's good money in flirty-chat but users will require higher end services in future. 

The Net's Next Phase

I've inserted some commentary under MB

FORTUNE MAGAZINE -- Nov 7 -- In early October, at Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women Summit, blog queen Arianna Huffington led a panel called Understanding the Internet's Future, with Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior, and Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience.

WARRIOR: The Internet is still in phase two. Phase three will be about making it pervasive, where everybody in the world has access to it. To do that, there's going to be a different kind of device. [She holds up a cell phone.] At Motorola we call this "the device formerly known as the cellphone." In the next ten years the Internet will follow you. It'll be in your pocket, in your purse, on you.

MB: Mobile dating will grow to be bigger than online dating, simply because people will eventually interface with the internet on mobile device more often th on laptop or PCs.  Mobile dating and matchmaking + webcam + location based services, will be at the heart of future dating company success stories. 

MEEKER: The first computing experience for the majority of the world in the next two or three years will be on a mobile device. In 2006, 25 percent of the two billion mobile phones in use will be either 2.5g or 3g phones, broadband-enabled. The mobile market is kind of where the broadband market was two or three years ago. If we look at data-services global revenue for the mobile market today, it's a $70 billion market. Just the personalized ringtone, Screensaver, music part of the business, that's a $20 billion business globally - equal in size to the online global advertising market. That's equal in size to Yahoo plus Google plus MSN plus iVillage.

China has become the largest user of technology products and services in the world based on number of users. India will be the third-largest market some time in the next five years.

MB: Services like Baihe.com, eHarmony's equivalent in China, are getting massive user-ship. BharatMatrimony, Shaadi and Jeevansathi, along with Orkut lead the way in India.  Mobile services are also springing up and experiencing massive growth, especially amongst the younger set.

WARRIOR: We made $2 billion providing ringtones to service providers. It's interesting that people will pay $2 now to get two lines of a song to play when their phone rings, but they resist paying 99 cents for a full song on their PC or MP3 player. Why? Because it's personalizing the device. It makes a statement about who you are. Think about how to do that with video.

MB: Webdate has the best platform for webcam based internet dating. The problem with webcam based dating is that it's impossible for sites to police, and can turn XXX quickly. Still, it's the future. Voice and video are essential offerings for future online personals leaders.

WARRIOR: We just launched a device in China, where text messaging isn't possible because there are 3,000 Chinese characters. So we invented finger-writing recognition. With your finger you can write any Chinese character, and the device recognizes it. It's the fastest-selling device in China.

In India we're adding five million subscribers - like connecting all of Denmark every month - with a new low-cost device. Most people cannot read and write, so we went to an icon-based browser. As for the thumb typing, it depends on the generation. I have a 13-year-old son who types faster with his two thumbs than with his fingers on a PC. One of the things he said to me was, "Mom, why do you watch TV? It doesn't do anything with you. It just sits there." That generation thinks very differently than we do.

In China mobile romance is a huge business. People pay $2 a day for online dating on a mobile device. You put your profile on the Web, and you get an alert when somebody who matches your profile is near you at a party. You can text-message them. The statistics say that one in every six messages results in a date. They're bringing on 250,000 subscribers a month on this service.  There's something called text flirtation going on at parties.

WARRIOR: We have to think very differently about the next ten years. Today about 2.5 billion people are connected on a mobile service. There are four billion people waiting to be connected.  About a quarter of them are in India and China. About half of them are in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

MB: In ten years time, game over internet dating.  Mobile dating will have cleared the table. 

FULL ARTICLE @ FORTUNE MAGAZIN

Webdate Launches Free Desktop Agent

PR NEWSWIRE -- Sep 15 -- The Webdate Desktop Agent allows subscribers to search through member profiles from their desktops without logging onto the website through a browser, an industry first.  Webdate.com has six million members and  continues to offer ground breaking features including Webdate Video Chat, Webdate Mobile and the new Webdate Desktop Agent.

Webdate and Userplane Desktop Dating Applications

OPW -- Aug 2 -- Heads up. Webdate has just launched a desktop dating app. The app. sits on the desktop and allows users to search, message and instant message other users. Userplane, meanwhile, is due to launch it's desktop application as well. - Mark Brooks

DateMobile Launches in North America

PR NEWSWIRE -- June 13 -- Date.com (two million active members) launched DateMobile, a new cross-platform mobile dating service in North America. DateMobile was created via a partnership with Plutolife is available through most cell phone carriers to both members and non-members of Date.com. During the regular Date.com signup process, members are able to sign up for DateMobile. DateMobile members can browse profiles, view suggested matches, text, flirt and chat with thousands of other singles directly from their mobile phone. It's free to send a message to other DateMobile members, but costs $.50 to receive text messages.

Mark Brooks: Strong pricing model. Looks like datemobile users will only be able to access other datemobile users though, like Match.com's offering. Makes for a great flirty chat app. Webdate allows access to their entire database of online users via webdate mobile. That's the best approach that serves serious daters that want local matches...but it costs far more to build that kind of application. 

Let More of the World Access the Web

I'm at 38,000 feet on a Lufthansa flight  (Beijing>Munich) as I make this post.  Internet service for $27 for my 9 hour flight, at 300k+ according to testmy.net. Nice.  Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, wrote a noteworthy article in todays Financial Times...

FINANCIAL TIMES -- May 22 -- Today there are more than a billion people online. But that is still less than one-fifth of the world’s population, and most of those people live in developed countries. I believe, that internet access via mobile telephony will have such an important part to play in helping close the knowledge divide between rich and poor. Mobile phones are cheaper than PCs, there are three times more of them, growing at twice the speed, and they increasingly have internet access. Mobile is going to be the next big internet phenomenon. FULL ARTICLE @ FT

Mark Brooks: Case in point, I learned at iDate Asia that there are ~50 million PC's in China, and ~400 million mobile phones. I think we'll get the mobile phone internet experience right in the next three to five years. What's right? Webdate describes itself as channel agnostic. That's the best approach. Extending content seamlessly onto the mobile phone. Easier said than done, I know.   

Ultimate List of Dating Industry Jobs

May 4 -- I'm rolling the list of internet dating, social networking and business networking industry jobs links into a handy little list.  Please let me know if you have any new links for the list by emailing me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com.  Thanks.  - Mark

CommunityConnect
Cupid
Friendfinder
Friendster
Hi5
Lavalife
Match
Mate1
Meetup
MySpace
PerfectMatch
PlanetOut/Gay
Shaadi
Spark Networks
Webdate
Yahoo Personals

Spark Networks Reports Q1 Results

SPARK NETWORKS NEWSROOM -- Apr 27 -- JDate revenue and average paying subscribers increased 8% and 13%. During Q1, Spark redesigned and rebranded its Christian community (ChristianMingle.com) as Relationships.com, already the most-visited Christian community.  Revenue for Q1 2006 was $16.8 million, up 2% on Q1 2005. Spark has reduced spending for AmericanSingles in order to lower customer acquisition costs. Net income was $710,000. EBITDAS profit of $3.4 million, the best to date, up 10%.  Direct subscriber acquisition costs for JDate was $13.20, up 47%, and $35.19 for AmericanSingles, up 37%.  RELEASE @ SPARK NETWORKS

Mark Brooks: One can argue that niche dating sites could be quashed by the big dating sites improving their search capability (e.g. reverse search). However, that argument doesn't take into account the power of a niche dating brand; the attraction of a focused site geared towards a particular demographic, interest, fetish, etc.  E.g. Jdate (Jewish), Webdate (first date on a webcam), ChristianCafe.com (Christians), DateMyPet (Pet Lovers), Sexsearch (Sex Lovers?).  All are powerful brands, worlds apart.  Specific interest dating sites will endure and enjoy especially good word-of-mouth marketing efficiencies, if they do a good job.  Spark (American Singles) has recognised, 'if you can beat 'em, might as well join 'em,' and is shifting it's attention to it's niche dating sites. 

Hooking Up in the Information Age - Mobile dating

WIRELESS WEEK -- Apr 15 -- In 2004 Webdate Mobile launched with U.S. Cellular. Several months later Match.com Mobile got on deck with Cingular Wireless and Sprint. Lavalife signed Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.  Webdate has since launched with Boost Mobile and Sprint Nextel and Webdate CEO Abe Smilowitz says he's pleased with the amount of revenue being generated.  Mark Brooks, editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com, estimates there are currently fewer than 1 million mobile daters, compared with 5 million users of mobile flirt applications. He draws a distinction between mobile dating applications - which typically feature photos, profiles and the ability to send messages back and forth - with simple social networking applications that let users flirt via texting. "Mobile dating applications are focused more on getting people together," Brooks says. "There's far higher adoption of chat, because it doesn't require much of an application. That's a very different animal than mobile dating." Most are available for a flat monthly rate of $4.99. Match.com spokeswoman Kristin Kelly says 42% of MatchMobile customers are 18 to 25 years old, 81% are between 18 and 35.  Webdate Mobile gives customers access to Webdate's database of 6 million profiles. "It's seamless. Mobile and online are virtually the same. That's been our approach and continues to be our approach," abe says. Osmak doesn't see much future for Bluetooth-enabled matchmaking, mainly because no billing systemis in place for such transactions.  And if having Bluetooth-enabled phones is the only thing the individuals have in common, what's the point? "The real value is in finding suitable people, not just people," says Brooks.

Hooking Up in the Information Age - Mobile dating

WIRELESS WEEK -- Apr 15 -- In 2004 Webdate Mobile launched with U.S. Cellular. Several months later Match.com Mobile got on deck with Cingular Wireless and Sprint. Lavalife signed Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.  Webdate has since launched with Boost Mobile and Sprint Nextel and Webdate CEO Abe Smilowitz says he's pleased with the amount of revenue being generated.  Mark Brooks, editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com, estimates there are currently fewer than 1 million mobile daters, compared with 5 million users of mobile flirt applications. He draws a distinction between mobile dating applications - which typically feature photos, profiles and the ability to send messages back and forth - with simple social networking applications that let users flirt via texting. "Mobile dating applications are focused more on getting people together," Brooks says. "There's far higher adoption of chat, because it doesn't require much of an application. That's a very different animal than mobile dating." Most are available for a flat monthly rate of $4.99. Match.com spokeswoman Kristin Kelly says 42% of MatchMobile customers are 18 to 25 years old, 81% are between 18 and 35.  Webdate Mobile gives customers access to Webdate's database of 6 million profiles. "It's seamless. Mobile and online are virtually the same. That's been our approach and continues to be our approach," abe says. Osmak doesn't see much future for Bluetooth-enabled matchmaking, mainly because no billing systemis in place for such transactions.  And if having Bluetooth-enabled phones is the only thing the individuals have in common, what's the point? "The real value is in finding suitable people, not just people," says Brooks.