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

Users Can Add Extra Lines to Cellphone

CONTRA COSTA TIMES -- Oct 31 -- TalkPlus is launching a breakthrough mobile phone service that allows users to have second and third lines. The start-up is targeting busy professionals who use their cellphone constantly and want to separate their business and personal lives. TalkPlus also offers blocking capabilities for people using Internet dating services. Additional lines in this case could be thrown away after a person's dating needs are met. The average price for customers will be about $10 per month. 

The full article was originally published at Contra Costa Times, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: I'm working with Vumber.com on a service designed specifically for singles, and dating websites.

Internet Video Dating Conference

DATE ZONE BLOG -- Oct 31 -- A new breed of dating website is emerging. Among the methods these sites use to support guest-to-member conversion are: 1. Give away more free lifetime memberships to women - The nightclub principle. 2. Support real value through features and experiences, not restrictions. Provide users with a more intimate and safe online setting to share themselves...with audio and video. 3. 'Catch me when I'm engaged.' Allow a guest to participate in an IM session, watch a live video profile, or engage in a chat room conversation for a specified amount of time, then redirecting the user to a membership conversion page. FULL ARTICLE @ DATE ZONE

Mark Brooks: Online dating, audio, video, mobile and location based services will combine within the next five years. Convergence of these elements will form the basis of the next generation of internet dating.  Users want to meet. They don't want to chat for hours online. They want to know if they have chemistry and are compatible, fast! They want dates with compatible singles. Those first dates could be online.

Useful Book for Startups

OPW -- Oct 31 -- Starting your own online personals site?  Read this online book first, please.  37Signals created the project management tool BasecampHQ and this is their free book on design and management. - Mark Brooks

Online Dating Safety Tips

CHICAGO TRIBUNE's RED EYE -- Oct 24 -- Here's how to stay safe when making your cyber love match:
- For first meetings, always meet in a public, populated place and don't end up at your or your date's home. Don't have your date pick you up at your home, either.
- Tell a friend or family member whom you're meeting, where you're going and when you expect to return. Bring your cell phone with you.
- Don't share your real identity or private contact information until you're comfortable with the person. Set up a third-party e-mail address you use exclusively for dating, and don't reveal your home address until you've been on a couple of dates.
- Until you've known the person for a while, don't get too drunk or leave your drink or personal belongings unattended.
SOURCE: Match.com Safety tips and Online personals industry analyst Mark Brooks

Soon, you will be able to get an anonymous phone number—a Vumber—so that you can talk to new dates without them knowing your real phone number. Calls to your Vumber will ring to whatever cell or landline you choose, but the caller will only know your Vumber. You also can make outgoing calls from the Vumber so your real phone number won't appear on someone else's Caller ID. The Web site www.vumber.com will be live in November, and the service is slated for release at the Internet Dating Convention in January.

Mark Brooks: Vumber is my client. I'm guiding their strategy, business development efforts and PR. The service will be simple, inexpensive, and designed for singles (and online personals sites).

Online Dating Industry Deleting Scammers

CHICAGO TRIBUNE's RED EYE -- Oct 24 -- The online dating industry has learned to cut off scammers at the pass.  Nelson Rodridguez, CEO LoveAccess, employs a full-time staff to look for suspicious behavior, like a member sending out hundreds of e-mails a day or posting the same photo on multiple profiles. The effort results in the removal of 20 to 30 profiles a day. Match (15 million users) has staffers personally review each profile and photo before posting them to the site. ~15% of profiles are rejected each month.  A security team seeks and weeds out people who compromise the user experience for others. Some dating sites simply block all IP addresses from Nigeria, said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry analyst. But with scammers changing tactics, it's a constant game of cat-and-mouse. 419eater.com encourages people to bait scammers. Romancescam.com, posts the photos, e-mail addresses and usernames that scammers have used. The FBI hopes to tackle the problem by educating people about scams, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said. The agency helps fund a Web site called www.looks toogoodtobetrue.com and encourages people to report scams to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, at ic3.gov. 

Orkut #2 Site in India

PARADIGM SHIFT BLOG -- Oct 30 -- I was a little surprised to see Orkut is the #2 site in India. Maybe it will become the #1 site there, like it has in Brazil. India has 350 million english speaking users. When I launched PlentyofFish in 2003 it had explosive growth in India. The only problem was that in a short time I signed up over 60,000 men and 1500 women and an extremely large percentage of messages from the indian men where about sex. I ended up blocking the entire country. They would have ended up destroying my site. Dating is a very local thing. Indian matrimonial sites are seeing insane growth. Jeevansathi.com IPO'ed today and Shaadi.com plans to IPO soon as well.

The full article was originally published at The Paradigm Shift, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Orkut is Google's social networking site, and was launched shortly after Friendster turned down Google's $30 million offer in 2003.

Indian Bride Sites

BUSINESS WEEK - Oct 30 -- In September Yahoo and Silicon Valley venture capital firm Canaan Partners jointly paid $8.5 million for ~10% of BharatMatrimony.com, a nine-year-old marriage Web site that also has 50 offices across India to serve those without Net access. "BharatMatrimony will help us get a larger share of the Internet market" in India, says Yahoo India Managing Director George Zacharias. Microsoft hooked up with Shaadi.com a year ago, though it didn't invest any money in the site. "Shaadi helps attract huge numbers of users," says MSN India country manager Jaspreet Bindra. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers plowed $4.6 million into Info Edge, which runs matrimonial site Jeevansathi.com. Google is said to be prospecting for a partner. Some 7.5 million people use marriage sites, up from 4 million in 2004, the Internet & Mobile Association of India estimates. Registration is free. Users pay when they want to contact a potential partner. The sites are likely to take in ~$21 million this year. But there's plenty of room to grow. Indians lay out nearly $500 million a year for offline marriage services such as print classifieds. "Today the emphasis is on compatibility and being a professional, something the Internet lets you test, as opposed to the traditional contacts," says Anupam Mittal, Shaadi.com's founder.

The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: I have an interview with the CEO of Bharat Matrimony in the pipeline. There's a lot U.S. companies can learn from these innovative Indian sites.

India Mobile Usage

BBC NEWS -- Oct 27 -- As Indians become richer, the demand for mobiles increases. India now has about 129 million mobile phone users - which equates to about one in nine of the population. However, it still lags well behind China which has 430 million users in a population of 1.3bn. Bharti Airtel boasts 27.1 million subscribers. FULL ARTICLE @ BBC NEWS

Paying Nothing for Love

NY POST -- Oct 26 -- OkCupid is free, unlike market leaders Match.com and eHarmony. This is a fairly unprecedented concept in the half-billion-dollar online dating industry, which is the third most lucrative Internet business after, of course, porn and gambling. "Online dating is just about the last bastion of paid content on the Web," Yagan said. "What we're trying to do is take down the $500 million online dating industry." OkCupid makes money from display advertising funneled through Google's AdSense program.

The full article was originally published at NY Post, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: I've added a ranking on the left bar for the top free dating sites.

Online Personals Watch Awards Methodology?

OPW -- Oct 27 -- I'll be announcing the Online Personals Watch Awards shortly. You'll be able to vote on your favorite online personals sites. The awards will be determined by:

1. User Votes
2. A Competitive Analysis of Features
3. A Panel of Executives

Users will be able to enter their favorite sites in a number of categories, TBD. I'll do an analysis of the top sites submitted and will make the full analysis and methodology available for public dissemination.  A panel of executives will be formed and will also vote on their favorite sites, except their own, of course.  My question to you is...what proportion should each of 1,2,3 contribute to the final awards?  - Mark Brooks

Bye Bye MySpace

WSJ -- Oct 27 -- After 20 year old Jenny Thompson amassed 4,000 "friends," mostly being strangers, on MySpace, she posted a farewell ode before deleting her page. There's a fringe of users now renouncing MySpace and other social networking sites, not despite their popularity, but because of it.  Juit Nagy, CP at Fox Interactive (MySpace), acknowledges  that MySpace is moving into a phase of maturity.

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

Mark Brooks: The honeymoon is over. Users will become more sophisticated and will seek higher integrity social networking sites that help them organize their networks of friends in a more meaningful manner, for more meaningful relationships. They'll still stay on MySpace, but will use 2nd and 3rd social networking sites in tandem. 

Millionaire Web Site Sex Scandal

CNN, Nancy Grace -- Oct 24 -- The women, 22 to 40 years of age, met Garcia, a prominent realtor on Millionairematch.com .  A seven-count felony complaint out of Orange County, California, alleges that Joseph Raymond Garcia committed [sexual offences] against three female victims.  Mark Brooks is with us with Onlinepersonalswatch.com. The phenomena of on-line dating really doesn`t come with any warnings, does it, Mark. "Not really, no." How does the [MillionaireMatch] Web site itself work?  "...It`s a niche dating site that is targeted at men who are edging towards being millionaires and women who are interested in meeting them."  And is there any way under the sun, Mark Brooks, to verify what men are putting in as their personal information?  "In terms of them being millionaires, no, it`s more the honor system. In terms of them being convicted felons, there are sites and services that would allow dating services to do a background check. National background data is available now to check against. But the market generally isn`t willing to bear the cost.  A good background check runs upwards of $100. A very basic background check is on the order of $20."  Is there any way that this Web site bears any liability, Mark Brooks? "In a word, no. You`ll find in the terms and conditions, you know, the sites bring people together but they rely on [people using] their own good judgment if they decide to meet in real life." I understand that that`s what`s in the fine print, I understand that. But just because someone writes that down doesn`t make it so. That`s like you signing away all liability before you do a bungee jump. That doesn`t necessarily make it so, just because they write it in a contract and you pay a $15-a-month fee.

My Recommended Safety Tips were displayed on the 40 minute segment 5 times as follows:

• Don't share personal information
• Don't let them pick you up at home
• Coffe shop or public place for first date
• Let someone know where you are & have them call you an hour into the date

Mark Brooks: I knew I was in for a grilling. My first live TV interview.  Do you agree with the safety tips?  What's missing?

11th Internet Dating Convention & Social Networking Conference

PR NEWSWIRE -- Oct 25 -- The Online Dating Conference and Social Networking Convention will cover issues of business management, marketing and new technologies for the industry and will be the largest business event for online personals and internet communities. Speakers will address issues on increasing revenue and improving customer retention. The event will be held on January 15-16, 2007 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.  Speakers include:

• Susan Mernit, Director Global Product, Yahoo! Personals
• Mark Brooks, Editor, Online Personals Watch
• Karen Olcott, Director, Business Development & Partnerships at MSN
• Markus Frind, Owner, PlentyofFish
• Amy Gibby, President, eCrush
• Jonathan Caputo, CEO, Developer Shed
• Michael Jones, President, Userplane
• Clarence Wooten, Founder & CEO, CollectiveX
• David Ring, President, Sparta Social Networks
• Peter McGreevy, Attorney at Law

FULL ARTICLE @ PRWEB

Mark Brooks: This convention will be all about serving users better, and making more money!  Everybody will be there. The venue has been upgraded to the Miami Convention Center. Niiice. iDate comes of age. 

Blatant Facebook Rip-Off Gets Acquired

MASHABLE BLOG -- Oct 24 -- Beijing-based social network for college students, Xiaonei.com (~1million users), was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI), a Chinese Internet consortium. The plan is to merge Xiaonei with 5Q, OPI's own college social network. The two sites now serve 90% of the active online student population. Xiaonei is a one-year old startup founded by Tsinghua university graduate Wang Xing. Even the strategy was a clone of Facebook - Xiaonei focused on the top schools first, realizing that widespread adoption would follow. They received angel funding from investors that included an ex-CTO of Amazon.com. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE BLOG

Web of Lies

CHICAGO TRIBUNE's RED EYE -- Oct 24 -- Valerie signed up for Yahoo! Personals and found Prince Charming. But the promising online suitor who showered her with tender e-mails and bouquets of flowers turned out to be a scammer trying to bilk Benning out of tens of thousands of dollars.  Barb Sluppick, co-founder of the 5,000-member Yahoo! Romance Scams group, conducted a survey that revealed a total of $2.6 million lost in romance scams among the 331 people who responded—about $7,800 per person.  Most online dating scams originate from Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe, though Nigeria is the biggest offender, according to Mark Brooks who runs onlinepersonalswatch.com. Increasingly, Web administrators are trapping scammers before they strike, but the tricksters are unrelenting, Brooks said. "It's a bad situation because these guys have gotten increasingly sophisticated," said Nelson Rodriguez, head of loveaccess.com, where employees remove 20 to 30 suspicious profiles a day. "It's horrible for business because it's a loss of credibility.