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

Together, The Right One and eLove Merger

BUSINESS WIRE -- Dec 14 -- Mountains West will acquire Together Dating, The Right One (offline dating) and eLove.com (their online initiative). Together, The Right One and eLove has been a dominant player in the off-line dating business since 1974 and has a total of 59 physical office locations across the U.S. (24 corporate owned and 35 franchise locations). Paul A. Falzone, CEO of The Right One stated,"Our ROI for marketing expenditures has increased significantly because our cost per acquisition of new members has decreased greatly. We now compete for leads with the online services because our conversion rates are very similar, but our memberships are at a much higher price point. This is the first step in what I believe will be the future transformation of our business and industry." Said Bradford Megahan, president of Together, "We now can provide different levels of personal service to single people of all ages with various price points."

Mark Brooks: Online services should consider reaching into the real world and providing higher levels of service to maintain the highest levels of profitability. i.e. matchmaking services. At the end of the day, singles want dates with compatible singles.  Whoever gets them there quickest, cheapest, wins.  The Right One serves punters at the $3000 pricepoint. So does Great Expectations. So does It's Just Lunch. So does Table For Six. Match is toying with matchmaking services. Love Access is committed to offering high end services.  Who's next?  Spark should consider them for JDate. TRUE could do well with higher end services. 

MySpace.com The Biggest?

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL -- Dec 13 -- Several sources are reporting (this is the TechCrunch post) that MySpace has become "the biggest site on the Internet" in terms of total page views (vs reach). FULL ARTICLE @ SEJ

SEARCH ENGINE JOURNAL -- Dec 13 -- Several sources are reporting (this is the TechCrunch post) that MySpace has become "the biggest site on the Internet" in terms of total page views (vs reach). FULL ARTICLE @ SEJ

Social Networking Service for Non-Profits

PR WEB -- Dec 8 -- The Grameen Foundation blog will commemorate the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to encourage continued public support for microfinance and poverty eradication. Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank received the prize on Sunday in Oslo.  FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: The CEO of The Grameen Foundation blogged about the ceremony and experience.  Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish is helping the team of ex-Yahoo's create a social networking service for non-profits. The blog is the first step for this pre-launch company. I'm helping out.

WOMMA Conference

OPW -- Sorry OPW hasn't been updated.  I'll be getting OPW back up to speed on Thursday.  I'm attending the Word of Mouth Marketing Conference Mon to Wed.  Mixed reactions.  Monday sucked.  Tuesday and Wednesday were very worthwhile.  More later.  - Mark Brooks

Mate1 Online Ambassadors

OPW -- Dec 9 -- I was perusing around Mate1.com and reviewed the terms of service and found this... Summary> "Mate1 hires "Online Ambassadors" to greet members and help safeguard against abuse. The mission of the "Online Ambassadors" is to interact with members and encourage their active participation on the site and encourage both old and new members to add photos and voice recordings to their profiles... The Online Ambassadors are not responsible for explicitly notifying members with whom they correspond of their status as Online Ambassadors." 

Mark Brooks: I like the idea of encouraging and helping users with their profiles. Mate1 identifies the profiles of Online Ambassadors with an OA insignia. Adult/casual dating sites are especially prone to 'abuse' with spammers and scammers. They're using the OA's to test people to see if they're scammers? Your comments please.

Spark Networks Acquires Schmooz-a-Palooza

PR NEWSWIRE -- Dec 8 -- Spark Networks has acquired the "Schmooz-a-Palooza." Launched in 1994, Stu & Lew Productions has brought together young Jewish people with its annual December 24th event, "Schmooz-a-Palooza," at the House of Blues on Sunset Blvd. Attracting over 1,000 attendees annually, Stu & Lew Productions is renowned for hosting the hippest parties in L.A.

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

Mark Brooks: Nightclub promoters are sitting on databases chock full of the sexiest singles in the country. This is a bold move and a precedent.

The Demise of Prostitution?

SEXBYTES BLOG -- Dec 8 -- Ya know, I just don’t know what to make of this article - Sex Bites; Free Net Nookie Hits Pros, By Landrigan John...
Internet dating sites - and the free nooky on offer - are slowly killing the country's sex industry. "Everyone is screaming out for work," says one parlour veteran. "It is so easy to meet for sex through internet dating sites. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad when it's free."  And the worrying decilne is confirmed by Prostitutes Collective national co-ordinator Catherine Healy, who says a reduction in the use of hookers is partly blamed on online liaisons. "Brothel owners are certainly feeling it," she says. 

Mark Brooks: SexSearch is leading the way in the demise of the sex industry. Is this a good thing? Your comments please.

Your Best Bets on Finding e-Love

COURIER NEWS -- Dec 7 -- Of the five sites surveyed -- AmericanSingles, eHarmony, Match.com, True and Yahoo Personals -- only True checks backgrounds of applicants. Three sites -- eHarmony, True and Yahoo Personals -- offer a compatibility test, which they use to try to pair members based on far more than likes and dislikes. At eHarmony, you can be deemed unmatchable, and rejected.  You can peek into each of the five sites before opening your wallet. All of them offer advice. One-month subscriptions range from $25 (Yahoo Personals) to $60 (eHarmony). Our staffer had a few complaints. She asked for a man within five years of her age, but got a reply from a Match.com member 20 years her senior. (His profile described his favorite oily massage.) She looked for matches at AmericanSingles and found two with different ages, user names and profiles -- but the same photo. 

Privacy peeves. Policies varied. Match.com may share personal information with other companies whose names are displayed on the site. True has been certified for privacy and security protection by more than one independent group. Profile may remain active and viewable on these sites until you notify customer service to remove it permanently.

If Internet dating gives you pause, try True, whose screening of members and customer-friendly privacy policy make it especially reassuring. If you favor matches close to handpicked, eHarmony is a good bet.  If you just want the basics, try Match.com or Yahoo Personals, which have a simple, well-organized setup.

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

Craigslist Not About Money

MEDIA POST -- Dec 7 -- In what turned out to be a culture clash of near-epic proportions, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to the investment community this morning at the UBS global media conference in New York. UBS analyst Ben Schachter asked Buckmaster a standard financial world question: How does the site plan to maximize revenue? The CEO of the online classifieds site answered as follows: "That definitely is not part of the equation. It's not part of the goal. I think a lot of people are catching their breath right now," responded Schachter, as the crowd absorbed Buckmaster's remarks.  Buckmaster, on stage in jeans and a blazer, insisted that the company--which has emerged as a significant threat to newspapers and other companies that sell classified ads--doesn't especially want to make money. Schachter asked if the company considered Google AdSense ads. Buckmaster said "We've had the numbers crunched for us.  The numbers are quite staggering [but] no users have been requesting that we run text ads, so for us, that's the end of the story."

Mark Brooks: Yup, that's Craigslist for you. But it's partly that sentiment that has cause them to grow so big. Anyone who knows Craigs knows the last thing he will ever do is sell out his community. He didn't create Craigslist, the community created Craigslist. Still, how's a l'il Adsense box going to hurt. Hmm.  Just a little three ad section at the bottom. (It'll never happen, unless eBay finds a way to buy another 25% of Craigslist). Other Craigslist news.

Mark on CNN's Nancy Grace: Missing Internet Dater

CNN -- Nov 27 -- Nonnie Dotson is an army nurse, mother of a 16 month old baby, and an internet dater with profiles on MySpace and SingleParentMeet. I was asked to comment on the profiles. Here's my latest live interview on CNN's Nancy Grace. Nancy gives a recommendation, of sorts, for online dating. - Mark Brooks

Largest Dutch Dating Operator Selects Mobestar

BUSINESS WIRE -- Dec 6 -- Mobestar today announced a Heads of Agreement to provide Telefuture International a branded version of its mDate mobile video dating product with an intention to complete commercial terms by February 2007. Telefuture are a Dutch-based interactive chat and dating service provider whose cross-media Television and Mobile products dominate the Dutch dating scene. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE

MySpace to Offer Technology to Block Sex Offenders

REUTERS -- Dec 5 -- News Corp.'s MySpace said on Tuesday it will offer in the next 30 days a technology to identify and block convicted sex offenders from the popular online social network. MySpace struck a deal with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., an expert in background verification, to build the new feature.  'Sentinel Safe,' will let MySpace search state and federal databases to seek out and delete MySpace profiles of registered sex offenders and will be available within 30 days. According to MySpace, there are 550,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., and the new service will be the first national database that brings together about 46 state sex offender registers.

Paid Dating Sites Discover Local Spam

THE PARADIGM SHIFT BLOG -- Dec 5 -- Paid dating sites have now all adopted the strategy I created 3 years ago and taken it to the extreme. Check out google searches like garrison dating. Date.com  Matchmaker.com take the top spots. Followed by match.com, AmericanSingles, Meetic and Match.com UK.  Matchdoctor and others have started retooling their entire sites to try and rank high for local queries. Its like everyone just caught on in the last couple of months.

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

Online Ad Spend Growth

MARKETING VOX -- Dec 4 -- Internet ad spend will grow 28% in 2007, while the rest of the advertising market grows 3.9%. Apart from the internet, only cinema and outdoor are forecast to grow faster than the market to 2009. Paid search is the largest sector in online advertising and will account for nearly $14 billion in global ad spending in 2007.

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

Oodle Launches Personals

BUSINESS WIRE -- Dec 4 -- Oodle, the search engine for classifieds, launched Oodle Personals for consumers to search over a million public profiles from sites such as OkCupid and PlentyofFish as well as smaller community sites Nerve and GolfMates.com. Launched in April of 2005, Oodle provides an index of 19 million listings from 75,000 sources.

Mark Brooks: Lycos Dating Search has gone away. Dating sites paid on a cost per lead basis and fed them a flat file of members periodically. The lead stream wasn't what partner sites were hoping for unfortunately. Oodle seems like a better bet. No flat file, no CPL. Nice! I called them and they tell me they grew 463% since last year. They're funded by Greylock Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. Featured listings are available if you want to move your listings up in the search rankings and pay them some money.