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VILLIAGE VOICE -- Aug 10 -- MySpace's incorporation of Craigslist & Evite-like features and generous bandwidth allotment have made it an attractive destination. Teri Everett, a representative of Fox Interactive, said, "we're just going to go on letting them do what they do, since that's what's made them so successful."
The full article was originally published at Village Voice, but is no longer available.
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BUSINESS WIRE -- Aug 11 -- ThinkPartnership continues to ink various letters of intent. The latest Member's Edge, which it is proposing to buy for $6.5 million-half in cash, half in common stock. Member's Edge operates both a Family Discount Network and a Voicemail program.
Mark Brooks: THK owns Cherish.com and other internet dating properties.
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BUSINESS WIRE -- Aug 10 -- Robert Coshland, who served as Senior Producer at Disney's Buena Vista Games division, has left to head start up studio Republik Games, Inc. as CEO. The new company is already at work on a soon-to-be-announced online dating game and a related web community.
Mark Brooks: I'm surprised we haven't seen much connection with gaming on online dating sites yet. It should be a nice retention tool.
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SUN-SENTINEL -- Aug 10 -- A recent press release claimed that 43% of singles have Googled their new hottie before the first date. A press kit from Yahoo! Personals came in a silver cylinder with a bright red heart plastered across the front. In crisp white letters across the red heart, it read: "A New Best Friend? Yahoo! Personals presents dating advice for pet owners." When I removed the lid from the mail canister, it barked at me. I barked back. I mean, really, that was only polite, right?
Mark Brooks: People go nuts over their pets in America. Makes sense to encourage them to go nuts over each other.
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Mark Brooks: I'm one degree of separation away from Pierre Omidyar, eBay's Founder, courtesy of the CEO of Meetup.com. VC's abound, CEO's and product managers are all a referral away. Well done Linkedin.
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WIRED NEWS -- Aug 08 -- Cyworld blends homepage building and social networking with other online activities, including Sims-like role-playing. It's owned by South Korea's SK Communications and jumped from 10 million to 13 million users in 2004. A quarter of the country's 48.2 million people have signed up, including 90% of the 24- to 29-year-old age group. Users get their own page, a virtual living room called a minihompy where they can create diaries, publish images, network, host legal background music and more. Members personalize their minihompy with virtual objects they purchase from Cyworld, and enhance it with up to 10 tracks of background music they can buy and play for visitors. 100,000 tracks a day are sold through Cyworld. Cyworld's online stores accounted for 80% of Cyworld's $54 million revenue in 2004, selling such digital goods as virtual furniture, page backgrounds and avatars. The word Cy in Korean means relationship. Cyworld uses real names for users' pages, so if people meet at a party, it's increasingly likely they'll swap Cyworld addresses, not phone numbers. People ask, 'Do you Cy?' Cyworld is spreading across Asia this year. It launched in China in June 2005, hopes to reach Japan in October and has Hong Kong and Taiwan on its to-do list. Cyworld U.S. is slated to launch in early 2006.
The full article was originally published at Wired News, but is no longer available.
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PR WEB -- Aug 6 -- Meta4 Networks, a private label Online Personals service in Asia, announced partnerships with several major website operators in Greater China including ESPN STAR China, HiNet (dominant ISP in Taiwan) and China Times Interactive. Meta4 Networks is focused on operating the back end operations for online personals services and has agreements with 150 partners in 18 countries. RELEASE @ PR WEB
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BBC NEWS -- Jul 29 -- Many of the Dubai's black-shrouded UAE girls say they cannot check out the latest fashions in Zara or sip a smoothie in a cafe without being bombarded with the phone numbers of hopeful admirers. UAE population has increased roughly eightfold since 1975. Traditionally, a young man's first amorous approach to a woman is supposed to be a marriage proposal made by his parents to her parents. Bluetooth is a feature built into some mobile phones which enables the user to transfer data to another wireless device nearby. But crucially, it also enables one person to contact another within a 10 metre radius without knowing their phone number. Ahmed Bin Desmal's friends joke that he is a "Bluetooth king". The 20-year-old says he has used the technology to send notes to girls he sees in public places. "In our country it's very rude to go up and talk to them," he says. "I sent some notes, they liked them - they took my number and they called me. I say nice things - I'm into poems." Saud, 22, met the girl he describes as his girlfriend two years ago on the internet, through instant messaging software. Although they talk on the phone, he has seen her only five or six times, by following her from a distance as she shops with her family in a mall. He says she's beautiful. FULL ARTICLE @ BBC NEWS
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DALLAS NEWS -- Aug 4 -- Rhodes showed up his date revealed she had a picture online that was at least 35 years younger. Terri ended up meeting a man who was married with two children. As dating moves from clicking in bars to clicking a mouse, questions are arising about what online dating services are doing to protect subscribers from deception. The Texas Legislature joined several states that were considering legislation to require disclosure of background checks but the proposed Texas legislation died at the end of the session. The databases that background check companies use are generally out of date by up toa year. There's also difficulty in defining an Internet dating site; i.e. online chat rooms and craigslist classifieds. Proponents like Herb Vest, CEO of True.com, contend that checks will help weed out unsuitable mates. True.com’s screenings result in the rejection of ~ 5% because offelony criminal records, and another 4% who already are married. “It’s not foolproof, but I think it’s very effective,” Vest said. “We’re very serious about enforcing these rules.” Match.com and Yahoo! Personals rely on subscribers to alert them to dishonest members.
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NY TIMES-- Aug 5 -- When Neil Clark Warren and Greg Forgatch, the founders of eHarmony, a popular online dating site, were making the rounds last fall looking to raise venture capital, they weren't merely seeking money to bankroll a big TV marketing blitz. Rather than wait for eHarmony to go public, which might never happen, or for some bigger company to acquire it, which also might not happen, the company's founders decided to look for venture capitalists willing to cash out some of the stake they and others held in the company. They had no trouble finding eager venture investors, even though a big chunk of the investment would end up paying for vacation homes and other personal luxuries, rather than building the company. In eHarmony's case, 116 people benefited financially when the company, which was started in 1999, announced last December that it had raised $110 million. The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers. Mr. Forgatch said that was inaccurate, but he would provide no specifics. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
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BERLIN -- July 26 -- "iLove Handyflirt" is the first software product that enables simultaneous real-time chatting between up to 9 people, with no need to pay for expensive text messaging. iLove customers can order "iLove Handyflirt" and test the advantages of iLove both online and on their mobile phones. Subscribers create their own profiles, update them as needed, and send their data to the iLove online server. Users can contact any iLove member who is online. Up to 25,000 at peak times. RELEASE @ ILOVE
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SHARECAST -- Aug 4 -- The Dateline 3G service, operated by YooMedia's Dateline subsidiary, will allow 3.2m subscribers to search for their ideal partner using the video capability on their mobile handset. Managing director Neil MacDonald said, "The mobile phone is the obvious device for people interested in dating to use and the video clips really make the experience work."
The full article was originally published at Sharecast, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Well ahead of it's time, but video dating (or as webdate would like it to be known, webdating), is the future. Location based services and mobile phone 'webdating' is the next step. Very exciting stuff. Check out my recent interview on CBS on mobile phone dating.
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MARKET WATCH -- Aug 3 -- New research out of the U.K. indicates that men who spend money on so-called "worthless" gifts -- such as theatre tickets or dinners -- aren't wasting cash. Researchers Peter Sozou and Robert Seymour at University College London had males and females indicated their prospective partners' attractiveness. Males chose gifts, in terms of extravagant, valuable or cheap, based on their attraction to the females in question. Female accepted or declined the gifts and then chose whether to mate with the male. Males who gave valuable gifts regularly, would be taken Advantage of and wouldn't be able to accurately assess the females' feelings. But the offering and acceptance of "worthless" gifts -- dinners rather than diamonds -- showed who the truly interested and attracted females were. So, going overboard and blowing a lot of money is not a good idea. It sets in motion a high financial precedent that may be easily manipulated. Go easy on the spending and get to know someone new through reasonably priced or cheap activities.
The full article was originally published at Investors.com, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Good advice. As Dr Jama Clark would say, guys, don't be 'doormat.'
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ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Aug 3 -- White Buffalo Ventures appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it had complied with anti-spam laws and argued that the University of Texas violated its rights by filtering out 59,000 e-mails in 2003. The 5th Circuit panel found that the federal anti-spam laws do not pre-empt the university's policy and that the policy is permissible under the First Amendment. The Austin-based service had legally obtained the addresses from the university, but the university started blocking the e-mail messages saying White Buffalo was part of a larger spam problem that had crashed the computer system. UT issued a cease and desist order, but White Buffalo refused to comply. So UT blocked the e-mail messages.
Mark Brooks: Shouldn't the students decide?
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NET IMPERATIVE -- Aug 3 -- One in three Internet users say they would now use the Web to meet a potential date. Nielsen//Netratings questioned 3,400 people (58% men/42% women) and found that the Internet is now the joint third most popular method for getting a date. Finding a date at work was an equally popular method, while pubs/clubs and through friends were the most favoured methods overall, with 53% each. Online dating was also comfortably ahead of more traditional dating agencies, classified ads and speed dating events in terms of popularity. Alex Burmaster, European Internet analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings said: "Internet dating and personals websites are already attracting over three and a half million people per month in the UK, and our research shows it's growing at an enormous rate - both DatingDirect.com and Match.com have almost doubled their audience in 12 months." 33% admitted to lying to some degree on their profile, with women more likely to do this than men.
Mark Brooks: Pretty much what you'd expect. Online dating will always take a comfortable back seat to (the preference for) real world introductions. In reality, as the science of personality profiling comes of age, it may well eventually overtake bars and clubs for the sheer volume of introductions. The future of online dating rests on the laurels of those pioneering the next generations of personality profiling and communications methods (i.e. webcam based dating).
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