Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Online Dating in India

HINDUSTAN TIMES -- Mar 3 -- Says The Pew Internet & American Life Project, of the 15 million that started or ended a romantic relationship in the past two years, 15% say the Internet played a crucial role in the event.  Of 8 million people that tied the knot, 14% indicated the importance of the Internet. In India there are scores of indigenous dating sites, catering specially to the Indian community. However, most of these are either outdated, or technically inferior to foreign/global sites. i.e.  DatingClubIndia.com.  Adsmela.com on the other hand, is more like an online version of a newspaper classifieds column, while Indiandating.com stands out with a neat layout and diverse offerings. New communication techniques are getting introduced, and handheld devices are making the entire Net experience easier and more accessible.

Mark Brooks: Shaadi.com is the top matrimonials site. 

1-in-10 Consumers Read Blogs

Sept 28 -- Participation in three of the technologies highest on the Internet's buzz list -- blogging, reading RSS feeds, and engaging in social networking -- is climbing, but two of the three haven't cracked the 1-in-10 barrier. 10% of consumers read blogs once a week or more, said Forrester Research, double the rate in 2004.

Mark Brooks: Online Personals Watch stands at 728 posts and 560 comments. What started as a little side project 15 months ago is morphing into a portal for the online personals industry.  Search Engine Watch is the model inspiring Online Personals Watch. OPW is partnered with iDate, the Internet Dating Convention.    

PrivateDateFinder.com Lures Marrieds

PRWEB -- Sept 28 -- Newly launched PrivateDateFinder.com is the first and only dating site where you can find romance without anyone else knowing. The site offers a unique way to conceal both how you pay as well as eliminating all the tracks you leave behind. RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: This is a very controversial area.  Adultfriendfinder, Sexsearch and Eroticy are loaded with marrieds.  Ashley Madison actually targets them.  PrivateDateFinder is run on the Relationship Exchange platform which is owned by Vintacom, which was recently bought by CGI Holding, which was just renamed to Think Partnership. I find the practice of encouraging marrieds to cheat of great concern.  Your comments please. 

Dr. Robyn Cautions Women on Safe Dating

PR Newswire -- Sept 28 -- Dr. Robyn encourages women to use the following safety tips for first meetings: 1) Spend time on the phone prior to meeting. But, do not give out your home or cell phone number.  2) Meet in a public place.  3) Never get talked into anything you do not want to do. 4) Do not get in his/her car.  5) Watch for red flags such as catching them in a lie.  6) Ask for several recent pictures before you meet.  7) Let someone know where and when you are meeting and anything you do know about him.

Mark Brooks: Good tips.  Anonymous phone calling service provider PhoneMatrix can help online personals sites with tip #1.  They allow users to connect via the phone without revealing their numbers via the online personals site.

Dinklink.com Debuts

PR WEB -- Sept 28 -- Dinklink.com, "Dating, with no kids attached" will help the millions of singles seeking the "D.I.N.K" (Dual Income, No Kids) lifestyle. "At Dinklink.com, people know they have two things in common with every other member on the site: no one has or wants children, and everyone has a job," says Joe Pazo, founder and CEO of Nocturnal Metropolis.  U.S. Census data indicates that approximately 77% of unmarried women 18-44 were child-free in 2002. The social landscape is changing.  The long held notion of 'family' revolving around children is being replaced, for some people, by a desire to spend more time traveling and following individual pursuits with a significant other or spouse by their side".  Memberships start at $7.99 per month. RELEASE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: A great niche that is set to get larger.  Smart move.  Now, how will he market the site to get it to critical mass?

RoommateClick.com Promotes Safe Matching

MARKET WIRE -- Sept 28 -- RoommateClick.com, a subsidiary of MoveOnIn.com, announced today it has forged a strategic alliance with Verified Person Inc., becoming the first roommate portal to offer self-initiated background checks.

Mark Brooks: Clearly, a great value add for a roommate service. Beyond TRUE.com we've yet to see another major online personals company to add background checks however.  Who will be the second site I wonder?

First Location-Based Dating in Korea

PRIMEZONE -- Sept 27 -- WaveMarket a pioneer in location-based services, today announced that the company has partnered with Psynet, the leading mobile dating application company and SK Telecom, Korea's number one mobile communications company, to launch the world's first operator-based location-based dating alert service. SK Telecom subscribers can receive notifications when they are near a potential date-match. Weekend clubbing will never be the same. Users are alerted when a fellow user with a compatible profile is nearby and an anonymous chat can be initiated real time on your mobile phone.

Mark Brooks: Wow, I need to get to South Korea and check this out!  The Asian internet dating convention is in May '06 in Beijing btw.  Location based services are the way of the future.  However, U.S. carriers have some concerns about liability.  The technology is ready though, apparently. 

Mile-high Dating Matches up Airline Passengers

USA TODAY -- Sept 27 -- AirTroductions bills itself as "JDate meets the Mile-High Club." Passengers who already have airline tickets enter flight information and a short personal profile and notifies them if there's a match on the same flight. There were just 800 members signed up at the time of this story. FULL ARTICLE @ USA TODAY

Mark Brooks: Same old story; entrepreneur starts online dating site..."now we 'just' need to find people."  Starting an online personals site has the same draw and sex appeal (well, almost) as starting a restaurant.  It's just massively more difficult (expensive) to get to profitability.  It's not about the site, it's not about technology, online personals sites are in the business of selling people to people.  No people, no product.  These days, building a credible online personals 'restaurant' requires several million dollars in advertising and/or an extreme niche focus.

Questions for Dr John Gray

I'm interviewing Dr John Gray for Online Personals Watch shortly.  The interview will be released on Online Personals Watch mid-October.  He wrote the best selling classic Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus along with 14 other relationship books. 

What questions should I ask him?  Please add your questions as comments and I'll take a pick of your requested questions.  Thanks.  Mark Brooks

European Internet Dating Convention in Prague

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the European internet dating convention. Here are the pics. The conference was better attended than last year with 65 attendees and was more heavily attended by European dating companies. Last year half the attendees were American dating companies. Execs from U.S. notables Date.com, Match.com (UK based exec), and adult sites Sexsearch and Iwantu were present. Here’s a smattering of info for you from some of my favorite presentations:

Alex Burmaster is Jupiter Research's new European online dating analyst
- Germans are most likely to be online daters
- British men are most willing to pay for online dating
- Pre-screening to provide matches is the most popular feature to help find love online

Jan Becker, CEO of German leader Friendscout24
- There are 11 million singles in Germany with 1 in 3 single in big cities
- 43% of European users on the web have used online dating (Statistisches Bundesamt 2005)
- Top sites are be2.de and Parship.de for high end 'introductory type' (personality profiling) services

Christian Vollman, CEO of iLove
- iLove had over 2 million uniques in May 2005 according to Nielsen Netratings
- iLove bills mainly via SMS billing
- Their mobile JAVA application has been downloaded 12,000 times so far

Nick Davis, Marketing Director for mobile enabler Mobestar
- Most European providers have recently launched 3G services. Japan is experimenting with 4G
- There are 10 million European 3G users with 18 million expected by 3/06

Eythor Arnaulds is VP at mobile enabler Enpocket
- 'EDEN' is Enpocket's Dating Engine, receives 2 million hits per day, has 22 operators worldwide and powers Match on an exclusive basis in the U.S.
- Airtel in India has 700,000 paying mobile dating members averaging 600 messages per user!

Final Panel Session
- Match is now operating in 32 countries in 19 languages; most significant markets being U.S., Germany and France
- Parship.de is the German leader for personality profiling based services (personality profiling)
- Parship.de charges 179 Euros for 6 months!
- In Europe, the credit card does not rule. One service collects just 30% of it's payments via credit card

Other notable presentations include
- Frederic Bien, Director of Flirt.com
- Richard Exon, Bus Dev Director for Bartle Bogle Hegarty gave an excellent presentation on TV advertising

Marc Lesnick, the internet dating conference organiser, ran a speed-networking session as an experiment on the second day.  We'll see more speed-networking sessions at future events.  Socials in the first evening and a Prague penthouse party on Friday evening completed the event very nicely. 

The next iDate is the big one: See you in Miami Feb 1-2.

Online Dating Agency is Positive About Love

INDEPENDENT ONLINE -- Sept 26 -- Ben Sassman set up an online dating agency in South Africa two years ago, for people living with HIV/Aids.  The Internet enthusiast, who works at an international recruitment agency for medical personnel by day, says his HIV-positive friends would complain of how prospective dates tended to slip away the moment they disclosed their status.  As a result, www.thepositiveconnection.co.za, was born - apparently the first online service of its kind in the country.

The full article was originally published at Independent Online, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: A great public service.

Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher Wed

Reuters -- Sept 25 -- Actors Demi Moore, 42, and Ashton Kutcher, 27, were married on Saturday, capping their celebrated two-year-long older woman, younger man relationship, two celebrity magazines reported on Sunday. About 100 of the couple's friends, including Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu and Moore's three daughters from her marriage to Willis.  The relationship between Moore and Kutcher has been seen by some in Hollywood as evidence of a liberating new trend in which older American women are dating younger men.

Mark Brooks: Has anyone done a study of this trend on an online personals site yet?

Judging a Man by His E-mail

BALTIMORE SUN -- Sept 25 -- When Dinah Larson was single, she and a friend used to read e-mails from guys and decide if they were potential dates based on their e-mailing ability. "If he wrote like he talked, and was funny? An e-mail is a first impression, like a first date face-to-face. Match.com advises members not to stay in the e-mail stage for long. "Just because it's online dating doesn't mean you're dating online," Kathleen Roldan says.  Here are some suggestions: 1. Write the way you talk. Read it aloud to see if it sounds like you. 2. Be clever but not cute. 3. Be plain-spoken, but not stilted. 4. If it's early in the relationship, keep e-mails short. 5. Punctuation and grammar matter. 6. Remember that tone doesn't always translate. 7. Use emoticons and IM acronyms like LOL sparingly.

Your Face Here

KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE BUSINESS NEWS -- Sept 22 -- MySpace has 29 million members with 110,000 new members joining each day, and more than 350,000 musicians profiles.  Intermix Media parent company) was purchased in July by NewsCorp for $580 million.  danah boyd, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, who doesn't capitalize her name, studies the demographics of MySpace as part of her research on social technology. She said most MySpace members are younger than 22, and she compared them to the young people who spent hours on the phone or hanging out in malls in the 1980s.  MySpace offers special features for musicians and bands including Mp3 players that can be added to a profile for free, giving independent musicians an easy way to get their music heard. The site also has an extensive list of area shows. 

Mark Brooks: New social networks could be built around other specific interests such as gaming.

We Must Meet: Sharp Edge to Internet Dates

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD -- Sept 23 -- At least four Sydney men have been abducted and robbed at knifepoint in an internet dating scam in the past week, police say.  The victims were lured to locations in Sydney's south-west, believing they were about to meet women after blind dates were set up via websites.  When the victims went to meet the women, they were ambushed at knifepoint, kidnapped, robbed and then later released.  None of the victims were harmed. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY HERALD

Mark Brooks: Always meet in a public place.  Let me repeat.  Always meet in a public place.