Alex Mehr, CEO Of Zoosk

OPW INTERVIEW - Feb 25 - Zoosk is growing fast and taking no prisoners. We interviewed Zoosk back in June 2009. See the interview here. Here's our latest interview with co-founder Alex Mehr. - Mark Brooks

 

Listen to the interview

How rosy was your Valentine’s Day?
My Valentine’s Day was great personally and more importantly, on the site, we had quite a few promotions that went very well. A lot of people joined our site 4 or 5 days before Valentine’s to find that last minute Valentine.

How big is Zoosk now?
It has just crossed 50 million people.

How are you driving such an incredible growth?
It’s a combination of few different things. We do a lot of online marketing just like any other dating site and we also promote heavily through social networks.

You just did a deal with IMVU. Can you tell us more about that deal? Why go virtual?
The deal was not particularly about IMVU being a virtual world website. It was more a test for us to see how syndicating our site to other websites would work in terms of monetization and added value to the end user. If it is successful we roll it out to many other sites. And we’ve been doing it for a couple of sites so far and it’s looking great.

What are your thoughts on virtual dating in an internet dating environment?
It might appeal to a really young audience. But I think for people who want to go on dates, avatar based dating isn’t a viable method. So we are staying away from it at this point.

Zoosk was started in December 2007 and we interviewed you in June 2009. Since then you’ve raised another $30 million round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Congratulations. What are you doing with the money?
A lot of it is going to go into promoting our product, not just on social networks but also through offline channels. We also have some product development in plan that requires more capital. I don’t want to talk about the specific details but you can expect a lot from us in the coming year.

What site developments are you most proud of since we last talked in June 2009?
There has been quite a lot happening on Zoosk.com in terms of making online dating more social. We have introduced the information sharing. Zoosk has a home page just like Facebook that has feeds.

Profiles on most dating have a structured look. You go to a person’s profile and see the stats and everything about them. We provide that as well but that doesn’t provide context for initiating a contact. Let’s say you see Angelina from San Francisco, she’s 30 and her birthday is coming up in 3 days. That would be perfect for you to initiate a conversation in that context. That has been, by far, the most successful feature we’ve rolled out.

How important is the iPhone platform for you?
iPhone is the way to go mobile. It has been an interesting project for us and we’ve learned a lot. We are rolling out newer versions of our iPhone app. Our plan is to roll out at least one new version every month for the next few months. Pretty soon we are also going to develop for iPad and Android.

Could you see a day when there are more people accessing Zoosk through iPhone and iPad?
You will see a lot of people having smart phones at a very young age and accessing websites through those devices. But I don’t think this is going to happen for another 3 to 5 years. It is a long term planning but we are developing and getting ready now.

What is coming next for Zoosk? How do you intend to give Match.com a run for their money?
We don’t compare ourselves to Match.com. We consider ourselves a social network for dating. We share a lot of characteristics with social networks but at the same time the main purpose of our site is dating.

We’re doing a lot of things and one of them is making our home page smarter with news feed items and information sharing, build more things around social graph.

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Comments

[Fernando Ardenghi]

"you've raised another $30 million round of funding led by venture partners"
"We also have some product development in plan that requires more capital. I don’t want to talk about the specific details but you can expect a lot from us in the coming year."

"requires more capital" + "in the coming year"

The 2011?

Are going they to develop
some kind of (a proprietary) Business Intelligence solution?
or
some kind of (a proprietary) Bidirectional Recommendation Engine?
or
some kind of (a proprietary) Compatibility Matching method?

But

"We consider ourselves a social network for dating."

Ah, you will never find serious daters there, because serious daters do not use social networks for dating purposes.

Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

[Matthew Pitt, MD, The Dating Lab]

'Ah, you will never find serious daters there, because serious daters do not use social networks for dating'

Spot on Fernando... totally agree!

If you are serious about dating you will use a site populated by other people who are also serious about dating. Look at the quality of the profiles on social dating sites versus those on serious dating sites... the difference is obvious.

Oh and those who are serious about dating will pay to join a site with quality profiles from other likeminded serious daters.

[Datinginsider]

"Making online dating more social." This has been my mantra for years, and the social graph is what powers this. I agree with Matthew, its casual dating for the most part. Their ad spend recently has been incredible.

Zoosk is very HotorNot in nature, at the moment, I don't see it as a social network for dating. Nice catchphrase though.

IMVU is for kids and it's PC only. I agree that avatar-based dating isn't viable, with the caveat of "in its current format."

[max]

ok ok will see for how long they can keep marketing spend at current level. Problem with CPA networks/FB/google - they are just sucking money out of you. But at the end of the day it is about retention and monetization. If you can not get money back in 4 month you are in real problem and even investors will stop believe in 150m pre-money valuations. Good luck :-)
max

[twitter.com/rosswilliams]

Congrats to Zoosk - they're really taking that site places.

I would also question the real value of members on that site, they seem to be going after quantity rather than quality. I wonder who they see their true competition as? I'd see them competing more alongside POF and OKCupid than serious dating companies like Match.com.

They're also a generalist site, appealing to the wide casual dating user rather than people serious about dating - monetisation will certainly suffer as a result.

However, it's good to see companies trying out new acquisition routes and taking the risk there - if it works I imagine others will soon follow!!

Ross

[Free Christian Dating Sites]

If Zoosk develops a long term relationship with their younger audience it will be easy to reach and sell to them other products as those members evolve into the "serious dating" category.

[lise v..e. in battle of for my own healthy life]

Are you serious? That lacks logic for a trained logic thinker. Perhaps your experiences have or have not been what you seek yet. Stumbled on this site. No one is as they appear to be often. Lise