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The full article was originally published at Red Nova, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Sports and Fitness are solid online dating niches. Well done Doug ;-) Entrepreneurs looking to start online dating sites should shoot for niches...or wield multi-million ad spend budgets.
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News 10 -- July 28 -- For many single people the question isn't who's dating online, but who isn't? Kane says she tried Internet dating but decided it was too risky. She says dishonest online daters forced her to go back to more old fashioned methods to meet men. "The more important thing is to check them out before you just go and meet them," said CyberCuse owner Glenn Santa. "I think that's where people get in a lot of trouble they see their picture they read the profile and they say hey let's meet tomorrow and that's dangerous that's really dangerous and we're finding that out now." Match.com says no dating is 100 percent safe and suggests you protect your anonymity until you feel comfortable meeting someone. They also recommend doing an Internet search on any potential match.
Mark Brooks: All this talk of how dangerous online dating is. It's still the safest venue for meeting people if used wisely. The industry is working to improve safety options.
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The full article was originally published at Capital Times, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Cupid.com is taking the regional approach also.
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USA TODAY -- July 28 -- BeautifulPeople functions more like an invitation-only social club. The criteria are shamelessly superficial: a recent photograph (bikinis and bare biceps encouraged) and body statistics. The site also accepts "people with personal/professional qualities that stand out from the majority" - like "Sandhill," an entrepreneur with a goofy grin who says his income is $1 million-plus. An applicant's photo and profile is posted for three days. Members grade candidates of the opposite sex.
Mark Brooks: How wonderfully shallow.
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BUSINESS WIRE -- July 26 -- The company powering online dating personals for websites such as Nerve.com, The Onion and Salon.com has been acquired by privately held Various Inc., the parent company of FriendFinder. Spring Street Networks is the leading provider of private-label online personals solutions for a network of more than 200 media companies, including outlets in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami. Terms of the merger between the two privately held companies were not disclosed.
Mark Brooks: Wow! I heard Spring Street was up for grabs. Well done to Dr Conru for sealing the deal. I though CGI Holding would be all over this one, by they just bought Vintacom so probably have their hands full.
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PR WEB -- July 25 -- Two growing movements are currently sweeping American pop culture - internet social networking and the rise in popularity of poker. A new web site, k9poker.com, attempts to bring these two concepts together. ComScore reports more than 29.1 million unique visitors to online gambling sites in April, out of a total audience of 165 million. K9Poker.com combines the two concepts in a novel way by helping people connect and become poker buddies.
The full article was originally published at PR Web, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: The community is online and the games are real world. This site just hooks people up for real world games. Now if someone can combine online poker and social networking they'll have something. Has anyone done this yet?
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TIMES NEWS NETWORK -- JULY 26 -- The time, place and reason are all just right. Leather couches, candle-lit ambience and a rainy weather on a Sunday evening, just the perfect time for romance and that is what the 30-odd people present here at a speeddating soiree are looking for! Well, for the guys attending, it’s great. As one of the 13 participants puts it, “You get the chance to meet 15 beautiful women in one night.” As for the girls? It’s not for nothing that they say girls just wanna have fun! We spot a group of four young 20-something enthusiasts who are all here, ‘just to have some fun!’ And a stray comment among those around: “Women are much more adventurous than men!” You bet! Girl:Hi! Guy: Hi! I am Manoj Girl: Hi! Manoj, I am Kiran. What do you do? Guy: Actually, I have come down from Dubai for a friend’s wedding. So, I am here for fun. (And the conversation carries on) BTW, we think this one has worked out. FULL ARTICLE @ TIMES OF INDIA
Mark Brooks: Speed dating is alive and well and working it's way around the globe.
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PR WEB -- July 26 -- Pictures online daters upload are usually terrible: vacation snaps, family portraits, group shots...everything including the high school year book. The result is that dating sites have to spend days checking, cropping and improving each picture they receive. CroppingTool software identifies the human face in a picture and automatically cuts out the surrounding beer bottles, stained sofa, clothes-covered bed or whatever happens to be lying in the background. The program can identify 90% of images with a human face, even profiles and unfocused blurs, and improves bad color balance to create a much better head shot than the single sent in. RELEASE @ PR WEB
Mark Brooks: Merav Knafo has done an awesome job with www.lookbetteronline.com and has the respect of the industry. She can be reached at [email protected] fyi.
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KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS -- July 25 -- George, 35, and Erika, 29, provide a pleasant contrast to the ABC show "Hooking Up" (9 p.m. Thursdays) where singles juggle, mislead, evade and dump potential mates they meet online. A few years ago, George and Erika's relationship might never have happened but internet dating has gone mainstream. eHarmony knows of at least 12,000 couples married after meeting on its site. Match.com estimates it has helped hundreds of thousands of singles meet. It receives 200 e-mails or letters each month from couples telling about their engagements or marriages. Both eharmony and Match.com say the prime audience tends to be people in their 30s who have moved beyond their college social network and are still looking for a mate. More than 26 million people, or 16% of U.S. Internet users, visited an online dating site in June, according to comScore. U.S. consumers spent $470 million last year on Internet personals, making it the largest category of paid online content.
Mark Brooks: In the 90's people said, 'ugh, you're using internet dating. People are now saying, 'I use internet dating and it's OK.' In the future people will say, 'you're not using internet dating...are you insane!' Everyone will be using internet dating...but it still has a long way to go. Personality profiling, mobile phone based dating, referral/social networking based services, services that bridge the communications gap between email/IM and that first coffee date. This is the future.
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BIOS MAGAZINE -- July 25 -- Date and Rate lets you put a photo of yourself up for the public vote. The image is then displayed on the Date and Rate site in the section appropriate to your age and gender. At the end of each month the man and woman with the most votes and highest average rating will win a choice between a luxury photo shoot and portfolio worth £700, or £100 cash. Other members who want to contact them (via e-mail) are charged £1.99 per contact or £39.99 per year for unlimited contact. If they reply they will earn a commission percentage of the contact fee. The date is optional and the commission is not dependant upon meeting up.
The full article was originally published at Bios, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: A www.hotornot.com knock off with an interesting spin. Users should get commission for actually showing up on the dates...and having photos that really look like them. www.dateandrate.co.uk site is wide open for abuse. i.e. post a pretty picture, wait for the money to roll in.
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WIRED NEWS-- July 22 -- Reality TV is so terribly fake. Still, I thought it was important that I watch ABC's new series Hooking Up, which follows a dozen New York women on their year-long online dating journeys. The show barely pays attention to the internet. The show ends up as just a series of dates caught on camera. And it's like watching a handful of your most clueless acquaintances stumble through one botched romantic encounter after another.
The full article was originally published at Wired News, but is no longer available.
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SAN FRAN CHRONICLE -- July 23 -- With advances in cell phone technology and wireless networks, users can browse truncated profiles, view photos of possible dates and exchange cheesy lines via text messaging. SmallPlanet has come up with a way for its compatible users to be alerted when they are within range of each other, in most cases about 30 feet for now. Said analyst Brent Iadarola of Frost & Sullivan. "The comfort people have with online dating in the wired world is now translating to the mobile world." Subscription revenue for mobile services are expected to rise from $31.4 million this year to $215 million by 2009. That does not include revenue from text-messaging charges, which could double those figures, according to Iadarola. "Handset technology has moved in leaps and bounds to the point you can have a good user experience while on the bus or sitting in the back of car," said Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch. "People are gaming and texting now. It all makes sense at last." One promising technology is location-based dating, in which users can be alerted to a potential match just down the street or somewhere in their ZIP code. "I can go to a club, and the phone becomes a transponder," said Joe Brennan Jr., vice president of Webdate, the industry leader with 5 million users. "I can find someone I match up with, and that facilitates a meeting." But there's a hitch. Wireless carriers haven't embraced Webdate technology for now because they are unconvinced of the safety and manageability of the service. Some fear the technology could be manipulated to electronically harass users. FULL ARTICLE @ SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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REUTERS -- July 23 -- MySpace is gunning to become the Internet's next major consumer brand. Jupiter Media analyst David Card says that while there is evidence that MySpace has figured out the formula for success in social networking, it is still not clear that its popularity is sustainable. MySpace 15 million uniques and 7.5 billion page views in May, making it the fifth-largest domain in the United States, according to ComScore Media Metrix. MySpace claims more than 22 million users worldwide. "We have plans to build MySpace into a next-generation portal," said CEO Chris DeWolfe. In the works are plans for MySpace to create products and services for mobile devices and push into Europe and Asia.
The full article was originally published at Yahoo, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: A key difference between Friendster and MySpace is in the integrity of the connections. I believe Friendster users tend to be more oriented towards 'real world connections' whereas first level connections made on MySpace are more likely to have been initiated online. Friendster has battled 'fakesters' in the past to maintain this connection integrity.
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ROLLING STONE --July 22 -- A frisky romantic comedy with a great title and wonderfully appealing performances from Diane Lane and John Cusack as computer-dating matchups.
The full article was originally published at Rolling Stone, but is no longer available.
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