OPW Interview - AnastasiaWeb - General Director, Alexei Negin

OPW INTERVIEW -- Sep 15, 2006 -- Alexei Negin is the General Director of AnastasiaWeb, a top three Russian internet dating site. I was curious how his service works and how it's different from other dating sites. Here's my interview with Alexei. Please comment with your questions for Alexei. - Mark Brooks

What is Anastasia?
It's the fastest way to meet Russian women via the internet. It's an online dating website that allows people from Russia, North America, Europe and other parts of the world to connect and correspond with each other. People from different countries can write letters to each other in their native language and the letters are delivered and translated. We have a network of over 200 agents in the former Soviet Union who make sure the messages get delivered.

Who are your target customers?
Most of our male customers are based in the U.S. or Canada. We also have some male customers from the EU, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We have female customers from all over the former USSR. We have slightly more women on the site then men, which is actually a part of why the site is successful. We currently have more than 10,000 active women profiles on AnastasiaWeb; however our overall database is much larger. We only display the profiles of women who are actively using the site.

We don't allow every applicant to become a member. We verify profiles and personal information and allow only those individuals that pass the verification process. We do everything we can to protect our customers.

What is the age range?
We don't allow men or women under 18 and I would say that the average female age would be about 24 or 25 years old. So these are rather young women. The male audience is older in general. The average age would be between 34 and 40, in that range. In Russia and Ukraine it's very common that women date and marry men that are older.

What's AnastasiaWeb's founding story?
We were founded in 1993 by a Russian/American couple, Elena and David Besuden. Elena and David met through an introduction service in 1992 and were married the same year. Initially, Anastasia used catalogs to introduce profiles to men in the US. This format was used at first, because the internet wasn't so well developed. The first AW web site was launched on Jan 21, 1997. Also, in 1997, Anastasia International formed a partnership with IT Online, to handle its business operations in Russia and the CIS. There are now more than 90 employees working in the US and Russian offices, handling web development, maintenance, marketing, customer service, verification and other administrative services.  Elena and David grasped the idea of online dating rather early and succeeded.

How do you make money?
We make money on the correspondence. Each letter being delivered is translated. Most of the women do not have a computer or regular access to the Internet, so we formed a network of agents that could deliver and translate messages. We charge for a letter but we actually provide more than just a delivery service. We provide additional services that go along with the letter itself. One of the services is a direct telephone communication service, which allows clients to speak to each other with the help of a professional translator. It's like a conference call. Women don't pay at all. The cheapest correspondence service level is $3.99 per letter and the most is $8, but membership to the site is free. They can use a lot of other additional free services.

How do you protect the users from potential scammers?
There are many companies who used to say, "We don't have fraud. We're fighting fraud and 100% scam free." We can't say that, we are not 100% fraud free. But we realize the problems and we make every single effort to protect our customers. We have initiated a fraud fighting campaign and have invested heavily on investigation, protection and different ways of tracking fraud. We can protect the correspondence; we can make sure that the message is delivered and that it is translated in the proper way.

A women coming to an agency provides her personal ID that will be scanned and entered into the database. We verify that she's not under age and we also verify that she's not married. We verify information about her kids and other information. Then the agency will estimate the language ability of the women. It's a rough estimate but we like to provide this information to our members. The agency tries to verify that the photograph is definitely her photograph and that it's not an outdated photograph.  Then they enter her profile on the AnastasiaWeb site. Our verification agents in the Moscow office will call her within three days. They will review all the information. We have a call center that is devoted to calling the women and further verifying that they're legitimate clients. They will verify identity, ask if the woman wants to participate, and verify other important information. The profile is then considered a checked profile and will be activated when our system updates in two or three days. 

What are your goals for AnastasiaWeb for 2006 through 2007? What kind of partnerships are you seeking?
One of our goals over the next year is to expand our "offline" activities. To provide more organized opportunities for members to meet in-person. Regarding partners, we are looking for companies that provide great traffic. We have a good affiliate program with hundreds of affiliates. We are looking to expand that. We're also interested in speaking with other western online dating companies that would like access to our large database of verified profiles from throughout the former Soviet Union. Finally, we're looking to cooperate with companies that have know-how with mobile communications and video.  Mobile phone dating will be a benefit for our customers, because it should speed-up the communications process. We want to take every step possible to help our clients really find someone special.

Comments

[Kvinna]

I wonder what is potencial scammer and who is potencial scamme?
Could any of those CEOs be a potencial scammer? Yes, even more, here are expert in Moscow that dirrectly accuse such tip of dating activities as involving in trafficing? Why have you, Mark, not asked this Mr.Negin what about protection of russian women? how they protect them agains scammers (or you think westerner male never asked for money?), sex-tourists, pimps, psyhos?
as for "offline" activities. Mark, before to post this opus have you ever seen those photos of those "activities"
http://www.ljplus.ru/img/r/a/radulova/women_tour_kharkov_0504_2.jpg
http://www.ljplus.ru/img/r/a/radulova/women_tour_kharkov_0504_1.jpg
http://www.ljplus.ru/img/r/a/radulova/women_tour_krivoyrog_0904_14.jpg
wish more - see here
http://www.loveme.com/tour/photos/

[Mark Brooks]

What activities? Why are you mentioning Loveme.com. I assume this is the company you work for. Do you intend to disparage your competition and then push your own site? That's not cool.

However, please do tell us more about these services.

Mark Brooks
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com

[Kvinna]

Not at all. I work for antidate - the russian-swedish information site about hazards and risks of international dating. And every day I receive the complaints from the woman about males abuse, scam, sexual harassments on dating sites and online marriage agencies like those Bride.ru, Anastasia and AFA. Sure, some people have advantage ruining reputation of russian women, but why not to notice that western male's scam is mounting monthly too?
Why not to notice that most of those MOB services being covered under "offline activities -socials" involve of the young women in sexual service that please the elderly foreigners that come to the former USSR for sex-tourism.
I would ask mrs from Anastasia, AFA and others agencies, what amount of their female profiles are real, without stolen photos and fake data? Why is so hard, almost impossible, to delete female profile from their data base? How much they pay to their staff and to staff of their "partners" for each letters they write to westerners instead of women?

[Kvinna]

PS. top 3 of russian dating sites is
1 Mamba.ru
2 Damochka.ru
3 Neznakomka.ru

[Nannette Thacker]

I think this is really great! I know there is a need for a safe way for Russian women and non-Russian men to meet.

Sadly, at http://www.ChristianSinglesDating.com (my site) we have had to block Russian IP addresses due to the many scammers who try to use our site, flooding their spam love letters, etc. We only let Russian women on the site who have been their prior to our IP blocking and if they have a reference from a paid member in long-standing. As a Christian site, we do realize there are missionaries and good Christians in Russia, so it is hard to block them all out.

But you know, the scam rings in Russia are quite good at using computers and spam mail applications, etc. It sounds like the Anastasia service doesn't cater to a lot of computer literate people, which makes it even more credible in my eyes.

We identified a Russian scammer on our site immediately (they come in through proxies, etc. to avoid the IP block), and a member of our site and I decided to put up a "sting" operation to catch her as a scammer. The point was to show our members the ploys they use throughout the entire "I love you" process.

The entire forum thread is here: Anatomy of a Scammer.

http://www.christiansinglesdating.com/s/forum/readThread.asp?forumcat_id=9&topic_id=3938

One thing we noticed is that they use "The Bat!" mass mail application to send their mails, they never specifically mention the name of their "lover" in their outgoing mails, and their mails never ever answer questions asked until we started demanding why they dont' answer the questions. And their mails are oh so very boring about everything and nothing and poorly put together sentences (like a Babel translation).

But I do know there are real women in Russia who do want a better life and will love someone who takes her away from that. And there are many lonely men willing to care for them. So this is a much needed service. And yes, protection is needed for both the men and women.

A previous poster asked about protection for the women, I think the new laws in regard to obtaining a fiance visa have really helped in that regard. I've heard from the upset men looking for Russian brides, but really, I think it is good. It limits the number of times they can apply in a year, and other things. Ok, I'm not totally up on it, but yes, the protections are there. LOL

As owners of sites like our site and Anastasia, we can only do our best and hope that the two involved have enough common sense to protect themselves as well.

It always amazes me when we spot a scammer, and send out a warning to our members and there's still some guy who looks at this fake profile model photo and says "Oh, she looks like a nice person, I don't know why you removed her profile and call her a scammer..." Didn't the stolen credit card, claim to be in U.S. when IP is elsewhere, and spam to 50 men in their sixties answer that question? LOL Some men (and women) just don't seem to have common sense, do they! LOL

Anyway, great luck with this website, you are providing a needed service. Sounds like a lot of offline work!

Nannette Thacker
http://www.ChristianSinglesDating.com

[Kvinna]

"But I do know there are real women in Russia who do want a better life and will love someone who takes her away from that. And there are many lonely men willing to care for them"

Dear Nannette Thacker, can you enlighten me what does this statement mean?

[Russian bride]

Kvinna, it's simple. Russian women are searching for love and family mostly, but in Russia or some other FSU countries they have a hard life, and the Russian men don't know how to treat a lady well - so they are looking for someone who'll give them love and tenderness and take them away from the life they currently live.

[zak]

i complained to anastasiaweb about prostitutes on there site,many caim to work or go to university,i offeres proof but they did not want except,one guy was engaged to a woman from berdyansk when he found out she was a prostitute he complained to customer sercvice they replied forget woman you find good woman maybe on this site'' why was this woman not investigated? according to there policy a investigation takes place then offending woman removed why was this not done, because they are defrauding you for your safety please be careful there is no policy and they ar scamming money from you

[Russian Ukraine Dating]

I think that you have a good presence in the market and I have heard good things.

Scams are everywhere and if I went to some of the russian marriage sites right now right now, I'm sure I'd find it....they just don't let you know it's happening.

Here's an HONEST look at one scam, tell me if I am right or wrong.

I can personally tell you that any company who offers REAL LIVE CHAT to its users at 9pm EST, HAS TO BE PHONEY! Is anyone gullible enough to believe that out of the 100 women you are looking at online in Russia, that 3-4 of them are online and waiting to chat with you at $39.95 for 10 minutes and at 4:00am Russian time? Most Dating agencies don't even open until 10am in Russia, so where are these girls chatting from, outside in their car cams? Does the agency wire a direct link to them in their cars out front so that by chance, some clients wnats to chat at 4am, they get a wake up call, turn the camera on and chat. Or are we to believe they are setup at home? Half the apartments don't even have high speed, and they can't be chatting at home, and even if the company had them standing by all night long in a cubicle in Moscow, as they promised them someone would call to chat with them, what girl would do this for free? or should I say, what honest girl would stay in an office all night long waiting for someone out of the blue , 365 days a year to chat with here? I know I am being a little ridiculous, but think about how it would work. Even with the best technology, and being in the computer industry myself, it isn't possible. I'd love to hear how an agency in small town Russia or Ukraine pulls this one off. THEY DON'T!

If you see a site offering real-time chat, take a long look at where you money is going as you just may be chatting with Boris instead of Doris and you'll never know the difference. But your bank accout will

Best of luck....jb

[Andrew Wilson]

A lot has changed since this article was published in 2006. As we can see from the comments anything to do with the Russian Bride business is going to attract attention.

At http://andrewwilsonnews.com can be found a report called 'Death of a Russian Bride' that looks at the mail order bride business and the changes coming along that will make the business run by firms such as Anastasiaweb almost impossible to run. For an ongoing discussion about the situation take a look here: http://ruadventures.com/forum/index.php/topic,13322.0/topicseen.html

By the way, I doubt that even in 2006 that Anastasiaweb was the 3rd largest online dating site in Russia.