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ABC15 - Feb 22 - AshleyMadison.com has offered Phoenix $10M to change the name of the airport from Sky Harbor International Airport to "The Ashley Madison International Airport" for a period of five years. Stephanie Riobodal, a representative with the City of Phoenix, confirmed they received an offer to rename the airport. The offer was rejected, though officials have not specified the reason.
The full article was originally published at ABC15, but is no longer available.
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This is the news for February 16th through February 22nd, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
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PR WEB - Feb 22 - The UK's largest extra-marital dating site, IllicitEncounters.com received an unexpected influx of nearly 1,000 new female profiles since February 14th. The number of dormant profiles that were reactivated had also risen. What is fueling this sudden activity? The root cause seems to be forgetful and inattentive husbands neglecting their wives on one of the most romantic days of the year. These women take to the internet to find romance and compassion to fulfill their needs. IllicitEncounters.com beganin 2003, and now has over 420,000 members across the UK.FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB
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WSJ - Feb 19 - "comScore says OKCupid had 735,000 unique visitors in Jan, up from 538,000 a year ago,” the Times reported. OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan “said comScore was significantly undercounting the site’s traffic.” He also supplied Google Analytics numbers that show a much higher monthly count - ~4.3M last month. ComScore and Nielsen have long said that sites’ own numbers overstate matters, because what look like unique U.S. visitors could be automated programs known as bots, or the same person using a different computer, or the same computer after cookies have been deleted, or logging in from overseas. "This is a longstanding dispute", said Matt Belkin, VP of emerging business for Omniture, which helps sites manage their traffic numbers. Other traffic monitors take different approaches. Compete uses a panel, like comScore and Nielsen, but also Internet service providers’ logs. Quantcast taps into its wide network of cookies embedded on partner sites to create a mathematical model to correct for all the factors that make cookies overstate traffic. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ
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CTV.CA - Feb 13 - Typing or texting to Twitter is becoming a go-to way to flirt and find love as people become more comfortable in the Web 2.0 world. "Flitter," a flirting game that was hosted by speed dating company FastLife, gave singles the chance to tweet flirty messages to others at the event. FastLife founders Justin and Annabelle Parfitt said flirting through Twitter allows people to come out of their shells and begin to interact.
The full article was originally published at CTV.ca, but is no longer available.
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TIMES ONLINE UK - Feb 14 – Facing a stagnant US online dating market, the top US dating sites are focusing more efforts in the UK. Comscore has reported a 1% drop in the global dating market, but the UK is showing a strong 16% growth. Match.com and eHarmony.com, each with a reported 20 million members, dominate the estimated £1 billion a year matchmaking business in the paid site space. PlentyofFish.com holds the crown for the free dating space, attracting 933,000 visitors in Britain last month alone. Kate Bilenki at Plentyoffish said the site appeared to be picking up business that would otherwise have gone to the paid sites. “If you are on Match then you may find that the same people are also on eHarmony. So a lot of people are signing up with us as well because we are free,” she said. eHarmony added 130,000 new UK members in January, bringing their subscriber base to 800,000. Match.com has long been established in the UK and boasts roughly 6.5 million members. FULL ARTICLE @ TIMES ONLINE
See all posts on Match.com
See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on PlentyofFish
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SILICON BEACH - Feb 19 - One of the topics at the iDate 2010 conference descended on Miami Beach last month was protection against scammers. Identity theft is ridiculously easy. iovation is a pioneer in managing online fraud and abuse. "The fraudsters posts a profile, usually to attract women," says Max Anhoury, VP of sales and marketing at iovation. "They build confidence. They'll use a stolen credit card to upgrade their membership level. They'll use the same card to send flowers or jewelry. And then typically there's a story about how they've been abandoned and need money wired." By examining devices -- the computers from which fraudsters generate profiles -- Iovation can detect when something is amiss. Once a computer is re-identified, the same schmuck who is trying to get money out of a lonely heart somewhere might have a difficult time pulling a scam elsewhere online. Iovation also works with other industries, such as e-retail and financial services. "In the last 90 days, we have identified 67,588 different instances of spam, over 30,000 scams and solicitations, over 13,000 profile misrepresentations, and over 5,000 cases of identity mining and phishing." FULL ARTICLE @ MIAMI NEW TIMES
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TECH CRUCH - Feb 18 - We’ve heard a rumor that online dating service and
IAC property Match.com is acquiring Singlesnet. Match is in the
habit of buying up potential competitors. The dating giant scooped up People Media last year for $80M. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
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-45% of businesses who use specific social media have acquired customers from those channels
This post also appears on FrequentFlirters.
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EHARMONY BLOG - Feb 18 - As disclosed by eHarmony to an CNBC interview with Julia Boorstin last Saturday:
* Close to $250M in revenues in 2009
* Double digit registration growth in 2009
* Profitable since 2004
* eHarmony is currently focused on building itself as an independent business.
The full article was originally published at eHarmony blog, but is no longer available.
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PRESS RELEASE - Feb 18 - meetMoi is introducting its white label service with the launch of TONY Singles, a partnership with Time Out New York. The mobile and web-based dating service is powered by meetMoi and went live in conjunction with Time Out New York's Singles issue. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE
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OPW - Feb 18 - Here's the video from the 2010 Internet Dating Conference. You can also see conference photos, and pictures from the first ever iDate Awards Ceremony.
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37SIGNALS - Feb 17 - If you’re
a dating site, you’re going up against much bigger competitors,
like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. You could spend big bucks on
advertising and marketing. But what if you start promoting by teaching? You’ve got a treasure
trove of data. That’s
exactly what OkCupid has done at its blog with posts like
The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures, How Your Race Affects The Messages
You Get, and Exactly What To Say In A First Message. The blog, which OkCupid
started in Oct, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs
and social networks. Since OkCupid started its blog, the number of
active site members has grown by ~10%, to 1.1M,
according to the company. FULL ARTICLE @ 37SIGNALS
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OPW - Feb 17 - Match acquired 27% of Meetic in February last year and then acquired People Media for $80 million in July, 2009. They took a piece of the German market last week by partnering with Neu.de. Diller showed interest in Yahoo Personals back in April 2009. Sometime soon, perhaps Match will announce a deal to power Yahoo Personals USA. Match already powers Yahoo Personals in key European markets.
The real question is, how can you possibly compete with the behemoth Match? Its has niches with People Media, Europe with Meetic and Yahoo Personals, and growth this season is looking very strong. I hear concerns about growth stalling for second tier dating sites. However, Piper Jaffray predicts U.S. spending on online dating will reach $1.7 billion by 2013, with $1.2 billion being spent in 2008. Meanwhile, Forrester expects the market to reach $1.6 billion by 2013, up from an estimated $957 million in 2008. - Mark Brooks
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