ASOCIATED PRESS -- Nov 23 -- IAC/InterActiveCorp will invest $100 million to expand in China. IAC's 30 Web brands include Match, Citysearch and Excite. IAC will also launch its Ask.com search engine in China within two years. With 162 million people online, China has the world's second largest population of Internet users after the U.S.
Mark Brooks: Match acquired China's eDodo.net in February. Meetic paid $20 million for YeeYou in January. See interview with Meetic's CEO.
« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
IAC Expanding in China
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Paul Falzone Appointed to Board Of Professional Matchmakers
OPEN PRESS -- Nov 22 -- Paul A. Falzone, CEO of The Right One, Together Dating and eLove has been appointed to the Matchmaking Institute's Board of Professional and Certified Matchmakers. The Matchmaking Institute is a school of matchmaking and relationship sciences and was founded in 2003. The Right One / Together Dating (300,000+ members at 60+ U.S. locations) is the largest brick and mortar dating service in the industry along with elove.com, their online hybrid.
The full article was originally published at Open Press, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: The Matchmaking Institute trains and certifies matchmakers. The board will help set standards for the brick and mortar matchmaking industry.
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Dating Direct Has A New Mobile Payment Solution
TRADING MARKETS -- Nov 21 -- MIG, a multimedia mobile interactive services provider, delivered the first on-portal mobile payment service for Dating Direct, called Payforit. The key features currently include: trusted user functionality, flexible subscription engines, consumer identification.
The full article was originally published at Trading Markets, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Email me at [email protected] if you'd like a free copy of my 20 point analysis of 15 payment processors.
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A Kiss-Off To Online Dating
BUSINESS WEEK -- Nov 20 -- The era of Web 1.0 is over, online dating is dead. Going on sites like Facebook or MySpace it's like going to a bar with your friends, whereas a dating site is like walking past a bunch of animals in cages at the zoo. According to comScore, the number of people visiting online dating sites dropped 6% in September. Unique visitors to Yahoo Personals and eHarmony fell 21%, Match.com had a 16% drop, and True.com's visitors plummeted 46%. ComScore does show some names like Plentyoffish.com growing, but these are new sites with far smaller user bases. I doubt PlentyofFish will ever get to the size or valuation of a Match.com.
The full article was originally published at BusinessWeek, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Match had $89.1 million revenue in Q3. That's ~$360 million a year. PlentyofFish is now making $10 million+ a year. I doubted Markus would ever get into the top 10 when I met him in 2004. I underestimated him. PlentyofFish is #2, Match #4 on the Hitwise USA rankings. On Comscore USA rankings, Match is #2 and PlentyofFish is #8. In the UK, Hitwise ranks PlentyofFish.com as the #2 dating site, and Match comes in at #5. And PlentyofFish comes in at #1 in Canada according to Comscore, with Lavalife at #2 and Match at #13. See the full rankings here. (Disclosure: PlentyofFish is a client of Courtland Brooks)
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Mobestar Delivers New mDate Solution
AD HOC NEWS -- Nov 20 -- WhiteLabelDating.com, an industry leader in outsourced dating sites and owner of Singles365.com, launched a branded version of mDate provided by Mobestar. mDate is a mobile dating platform which offers live, anonymous voice and video calling. The contract will earn Mobestar £25k in November and the revenue share will be split 50/50.
The full article was originally published at Ad Hoc News, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Mobestar, Trilibis, Enpocket and Plutolife are the companies to talk to if you want to add a mobile component to your internet dating site.
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Yahoo Personals Updates
ONLINE DATING INSIDER -- Nov 20 -- Yahoo! Personals introduced several updates to the searching and matching features:
- One-click "We Match" displays people who strongly match what an individual is looking for
- One-click "I Match" allows users to find people who are looking for someone with their qualities
- Search filters and markers at the top of the results page that allow daters to modify the results based on recently-added (i.e. "new") profiles, online now status, and active in the past 24 hours
- Redesigned Search Results display that increases the number of visible profiles and improves scannability. FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE DATING INSIDER
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Chinese Online Dating Rankings Update
OPW -- Nov 20 -- We have just updated iResearch Chinese rankings. Here are the changes: ChineseFriendfinder moved up to #1. Love21cn moved down from #1 to #3. 96333.com is in at #3. - Mark Brooks
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Loopylove.com Hires Inferno For £3m Task
BRAND REPUBLIC -- Nov 20 -- Associated Northcliffe Digital has hired Inferno to help relaunch its dating website, LoopyLove.com. The agency will handle the press and promotion of outdoor and ambient activity which will aim to drive traffic to the website. LoopyLove is operated by online dating business Allegran, which was acquired by Associated Northcliffe last year. Allegran also operates Girls Date For Free, Dating for Parents, Pocado, and Dreams Discovered. FULL ARTICLE @ BRAND REPUBLIC
Mark Brooks: Associated Newspapers bought Allegran ~May last year. It's been downhill since then according to Alexa. Loopylove has gone from ~5,000 to ~20,000 from May 2006 to November 2007. GirlsDateForFree, from ~4k to ~15k. Pocado, from ~15k to ~45k. All seemed to take a steep dive around May, recover, and then go into gradual decline. The current Hitwise U.K. rankings are...
- U.K., Hitwise ~ 10/07
1 Sex in the UK
2 PlentyofFish
3 Gaydar.co.uk
4 DatingDirect
5 Match
6 BeNaughty
7 GirlsDateForFree
8 I Am Free Tonight
9 LoopyLove
10 FriendsReunited Dating
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Industry Jobs: MyPartner Is Hiring
OPW -- Nov 19 -- MyPartner, a new online dating and private matchmaking agency for gay men, is looking for: Executive Assistant to CEO (direct daily support to the CEO and myPartner's top matchmaking clients, salary: $15-20/hour), Membership Sales Director ($75k-$140k, base + bonus), Executive Matchmaker (provide executive matchmaking services to multiple clients, fulfilling client contracts and searches, $50k- $75k base + bonuses), Telesales Rep ($40k-$55k, base + uncapped commission).
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Frengo and Pollection Release 'Sex Appeal' Facebook App
AD HOC NEWS -- Nov 19 -- Frengo, a mobile social utility, and Pollection announce partnership to provide a mobile extension of the popular Facebook application, Sex Appeal developed by Pollection. Sex Appeal is an application that allows people to vote the sexiness level of their Facebook friends and assign points to them on a "Sex-o-Meter". Leveraging Frengo mobile, Sex Appeal users can receive mobile text alerts, invitations to play and rate others while on the go.
The full article was originally published at Ad Hoc News, but is no longer available.
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Dating Site For U.K.'s Young Creatives
BRANDREPUBLIC -- Nov 19 -- StagandDove.com is for young creative arts professionals and is a blend of member's club, online magazine and dating site. StagandDove also features restaurant reviews and articles on culture, film, fashion, music, travel and relationships, a monthly newsletter, and access to special events. FULL ARTICLE @ BRAND REPUBLIC
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Typo-squatters Are Gaming Dating Sites
PR NEWSWIRE -- Nov 19 -- McAfee released a typo-squatting research report called "What's In A Name: The State of Typo-Squatting 2007". Typo-squatters register domains using common misspellings of popular brands and redirect consumers to alternative Web sites to generate click-through advertising revenues, lure unsuspecting consumers into scams and harvest email addresses to flood users with unwanted email. The five most highly squatted categories are:
- Game sites (14% likelihood of being squatted)
- Airline sites (11.4%)
- Mainstream media sites (10.8%)
- Dating site (10.2%)
- Technology and Web 2.0-related sites (9.6%)
The full article was originally published at CNN, but is no longer available.
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New Study - Ugly People Only Date Ugly People?
NERVE -- Nov 19 -- A scientists' study decoded the behavior on rating site HotorNot.com, called "out-of-my-league" mentality. As the graph demonstrates, everyone, even hot people (left-to-right axis) gets nervous about dating "out of their league" (top-to-bottom one).
The full article was originally published at Nerve website, but is no longer available.
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Adult FriendFinder May Have Been Acquired For $1 Billion+
TECH CRUNCH -- Nov 17 -- Various Inc (AdultFriendFinder) has been acquired. This is a single source rumor, but the quality of the source suggests the rumor is accurate. Various is rumored to have revenues in excess of $300 million. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Mark Brooks: I contacted Andrew Conru to find out more. Here's my Blackberry conversation with him. (Disclosure: I worked for FriendFinder in 2003 to 2004 as a marketing manager)
MB: Please keep me posted on FriendFinder's acquisition. Good luck with it.
AC: Again untrue... I would let you know otherwise
MB: Has Friendfinder been sold? Can you categorically state that the post on Techcrunch is false and that you have not sold Friendfinder?
AC: Yes, false.
MB: Are you in talks to sell Friendfinder at present?
AC: We always have interested parties contacting us.
MB: What is Friendfinder worth in your estimation, for a cash buy out?
AC: Who knows.
MB: Can you confirm that Friendfinder's revenue is indeed over 300 million?
AC: We don't discuss numbers :)
MB: What would you turn your attentions to if ever Friendfinder was sold?
AC: Fish farming.
MB: You're not kididng, are you? :-)
AC: Actually, if I was not doing stuff online, I would actually like
to do aquaculture.
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Scammer Victim Interview
OPW -- Nov 18 -- It's easy to write off scammer victims as being a screw loose. I mean, who would be dumb enough to part with thousands of dollars with someone they had never met? But, it's happening every day, and chances are it's happening on your dating site. This scammer victim made a believer of me. She doesn't have a screw loose, she was just vulnerable. Here's my interview with her. - Mark Brooks
On what dating site were you first contacted by a scammer?
On [this could have been your dating site!]. He said he was from Paduca, Kentucky. His English was pretty good. He sent me a few emails wanting to get to know me better and I wrote him back a couple of times. He then wanted to chat on Yahoo, so we started doing that. After about our third chat, he sent me some pictures of himself and I found him to be very handsome. He would send me lots of wonderful love letters about our chats from the night before, what he wanted to do, where he wanted this to go. He said he was looking for a long-term commitment.
How long was it before he asked you to do him a favor?
A month. The first time he was working over in Ghana. He said he was an engineer from Kentucky and he was trying to come back home. He was going to get his plane ticket when somebody robbed him of something like $800 in the backseat of a taxi. He said he passed out from shock and awoke in a hospital. I received a phone call from somebody I had never spoken to in my life. The people who would call me had a very different accent from his French accent. By the time he got out of the hospital, his visa had expired. His first request for money was to bail him out of jail. They supposedly detained him because of his expired visa and he needed money to get out of jail and pay for a visa so he could return to the United States. He asked me for $2,500 and, after a long time of pleading, I wound up sending him $1,200. I didn’t know what to think at the time. He was so good with his words and made me feel so sorry for him. I wanted to see him. I had real feelings for him.
How long was it before he made another request?
I would say three weeks. I’m not sure. After he got out of jail, he had to wait for some paperwork to be processed for the $25 million check he was bringing back. It wasn’t terrorist or drug money – it was for the work he did over there – and he needed the necessary paperwork to validate the money. While waiting for that to be sorted out, he supposedly got sick with malaria and some other things and had to be hospitalized. He didn’t have the $550 for the hospital bill and they wouldn’t release him until it was paid. So, I sent him money for that.
But, that wasn’t the second time. There were other times in between. All in all, I’ve probably sent him close to $10,000.
When did you realize the fellow was bogus?
I started questioning him probably about a month ago because there were just too many excuses for why he wasn’t getting here. He was supposed to be here on such and such a date. He would send me his itinerary for his flights to New York and I would go online to look them up, to see if he was lying. He always said he paid cash at the ticket counter. Nothing was adding up, so I started questioning him on things.
And then he started to act funny. I couldn’t call him too often because it cost me too much money and he started getting all, “Okay, fine. Be that way. Bye.” And then he would call me again and just beg for help. It was one thing after another. He needed $2,500 for the certificates (Drug Free, Anti Terrorist), so I helped with that. And then he needed money for more plane tickets because the tickets he had expired while he was detained. When he finally got to London, he then discovered the ticket he had from London to New York was no good and he needed more money to get to the States. He used to call me from a Ghana number, but then he started calling me from a London number. So, I didn’t know. He said if I helped him with that, he’d find a way to get to me in Minnesota.
How long was it from when you first talked to him through to one month ago?
Four months. And to this day, he’ll still email and IM me. If you could read the emails and the IMs. They were very personal, very intimate. I’ve saved probably 30-40 emails and even more chats from him. I thought I was in love.
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