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ALL FACEBOOK - June 17 - Snap Interactive, the developers of the “Are You Interested?” app has successfully grown a $5M a year dating application, shifting from a free model to a subscription model, using Facebook as a cheap source of new user acquisition. Earlier this week the company formally announced their continued growth in cash receipts. FULL ARTICLE @ ALL FACEBOOK
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OPW - Jun 18 - June Sarpong, an actress and broadcaster, discussed the opportunities in developing game shows and television shows about dating which would be hosted by an online dating company. The key to success is finding the right producer and network on which to develop the show. These shows are a unique opportunity for additional revenue streams through brand sponsorships as well as terrific user engagement and traffic generation. June also advised dating sites to learn a lesson from television shows and continue to foster relationships with users after they have found someone and left your site with the end goal of the user returning to the site should the relationship end.
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OPW - Jun 18 - Jerry Kowal, Senior VP of Digital Media for Endemol USA conducted a question and answer session about developing promotions and content across multiple media venues. Some examples given were reality TV shows and viewer sweepstakes. Jerry discussed the complications and benefits associated with partnering with TV networks, including one of the largest challenges in content ownership and control. There are definite opportunities for additional revenue channels with the right partnerships and ideas in place.
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OPW INTERVIEW - June 18 - SpeedDate brings people together to participate in first dates over their webcams. The service resides at the intersection of two very interesting and important trends. The rise of computer based webcam use, and the rise of phone based webcam use. Have you seen the iPhone 4? That’s a real game changer that should bring growth to the likes of SpeedDate, Woome and other sites that offer webcam based dating services. - Mark Brooks
How big of a deal is mobile for SpeedDate?
It’s an extremely big deal for us. We’re fairly focused on mobile. We launched as a destination site on SpeedDate.com but over the past year mobile services have been an increasing part of our business. 20 to 30 percent of our activity each day is coming from mobile.
How do you define activity?
I would define activity as people registering for the site as well as using the services offered by SpeedDate.
So that’s 20% defined by activity which is log ins. How about the money split? Are you seeing the same sort of money split?
I can’t give exact details on the financial side but it is definitely a growing part of the business overall. We’ve found that the people who use our mobile services are not more or less likely to pay for the service than people on the site. But I think it’s an area where there is a lot of potential for the online dating industry in general. I think it will become a bigger focus for other companies in the industry as time goes by.
I’ve heard rumors that some mobile dating apps monetize better than others. Do you have any comment on that?
We’re monetizing pretty well for both the iPhone and mobile as well as for the site. We’re not seeing a huge difference there. However, there are some challenges on the mobile side. The marketing and distribution channels are not nearly as built out over the web. I wouldn’t say it’s the Wild West but it’s still a pretty early stage in terms of the inventory that is available and how easy it is to expand.
How is it going with the iPad app?
It’s going well. I think it’s a really exciting platform in terms of what’s available. On the iPhone we have 1.3 million downloads. I’m not sure how long it will take for the iPad to get there but I think there is a lot of potential.
If we were to look at mobile versus online; has there been any surprises to you for usage patterns between mobile and traditional online users?
The interesting thing is that there are a lot of females who are using the iPhone and iPad applications.
You must be excited about the new iPhone having a camera on the front. It fits perfectly with your application. What are your plans for the new iPhone?
Yeah we’re really excited about it. I think all killer dating apps should be mobile so you can use it anywhere and anytime you want. The killer experience from the app should also be live and interactive. I think when you marry those 2 together, the interactive side and the mobile side, then the world basically changes for singles.
Do you have any plans to integrate into SMS as well?
Yeah, that is something we’ve been thinking about. As time goes by and we obtain more potential users
outside of smart phones then SMS will become more attractive for us.
What words of advice would you give to the industry for anyone considering creating a new mobile app?
Experiment and innovate with the user experience.
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OPW - Jun 17 - Jeff Titterton, VP of Marketing for Zoosk, revealed the principles Zoosk follows to stay competitive and thrive as a dating business on the social web. According to Jeff, it is important to plan for quick changes and realize that nothing lasts forever. He encourages companies to take advantage of new, scalable opportunities and avoid distractions.
Another key principle is establishing a direct relationship with your users. It is necessary to remain in the business long term. Jeff also stressed the importance of experimenting with new ideas. It is beneficial to run a lot of experiments that are quick and affordable while yielding usable information. He encourages companies to not be afraid of failures, but to learn from them.
Companies also need to figure out their unit economics by determining which pricing models will work for their particular site and making sure acquisition costs are lower than the lifetime value of the member. Finally, Jeff Titterton advised companies to develop multiple distribution channels. Take full advantage of quality traffic sources, but realize that these sources can dry up.
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OPW - Jun 17 - Michael Norton, a Professor from Harvard Business School, believes that virtual dating can improve user satisfaction in online dating. According to his research, online daters are normally very dissatisfied after first dates due to overly lofty expectations. Norton's surveys reveal a typical online dater spends 5.2 hours per week searching and 6.7 hours per week reading and writing emails which leads to a poor date lasting less than an hour. Users generally have very high expectations of other users based on profile information and communications. These expectations quickly crumble on the first real date where online interactions meet reality. Norton believes that virtual dating can be a valuable tool to calibrate a dater's expectations prior to the first date. Norton's study shows that daters who had a virtual date prior to a real date had a significantly better experience than those who only viewed profile information alone.
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OPW - Jun 17 - Online dating sites can create additional revenue streams by partnering with companies which interest their members. Club Med and Cinemark Theaters are two such companies. Ramon Franco, Manager of Key Accounts & Group Operations for Club Med, discussed the resort will work with site operators to create custom trips and events for singles. These events can be sold to site members to generate considerable revenues. Club Med also allows companies to purchase an entire resort to customize it for a large scale event. Allison Jernigan, Director of Business Development for Cinemark Theaters, outlined opportunities for site operators to partner with Cinemark to generate revenue and marketing opportunities. Cinemark offers discount pricing for tickets which can be used for promotions or offered at special pricing to members. Other promotional opportunities are available for high end markets. There is considerable revenue potential in partnerships with other companies which offer products and services that your site members are interested in.
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OPW - Jun 17 - The 2010 Internet Dating Conference in Los Angeles kicked off with an open panel discussion led by Mark Brooks. Marc Porcelli from Epic Advertising, Brad Boyd from SetforMarriage.com, Dan Winchester from FreeDating.co.uk, and Bill Cloutier from Cupid.com were the panel participants. Mark Brooks' opening question was: SetforMarriage is new to the online dating industry, where should they put their money first? According to Marc Porcelli, new sites should start with search engines, such as Google, and other large traffic sources like Facebook. He added that it is important to have the landing page optimized prior to driving traffic. Dan Winchester agreed that Google was the first place to start, along with building organic SEO and listings. Bill Cloutier suggested an alternate approach for SetforMarriage: target the Christian search engines for traffic and approach other Christian sites and work out traffic trading deals. Bill believes the Google space is too competitive for a startup to make any headway without significant expense.
Marc Lesnick, iDate organizer, asked the panel if business was growing or declining and where the emerging markets are. Dan Winchester and Marc Porcelli believe South Africa and Australia are the fastest growing markets. The overall consensus of the pane was that business continues to grow as a whole, however, the industry needs to be more innovative to really drive impressive growth in the market.
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OPW INTERVIEW - June 17 - Deepak manages all things mobile at Match.com. Match takes mobile dating seriously. For good reason. Did you know that in 2014 its predicted that there will be more people accessing the internet via their mobile phones than on desktops/laptops, according to Morgan Stanley. - Mark Brooks
How much of a priority would you say it is for Match.com to expand the mobile channel?
Mobile is definitely at the top of our list of priorities. We’re pretty much able to address any phone in the market that has a data connection.
What market observations would you say you’ve made that are driving the high prioritization of the mobile platform?
First of all, we’ve seen an increasing number of our site users turning to mobile phones as a means of accessing Match.com. So that has clearly been a driver for us.
We’ve also seen that there is a significant subset of users who have turned to mobile as their primary means of Internet access. I’m one of them. These days I always have my smart phone next to me and it has essentially become a laptop substitution device in several instances.
Which platform is growing the fastest at this stage?
The Apple iPhone platform has been a blockbuster for us. We launched an application on this platform in March 2009 and initially it was intended to be an engagement platform. People would log onto Match.com and discover we have an iPhone application so they would have the option to continue using Match.com on the phone. Also, we’ve noticed that a very large number of iPhone users who have never been to Match.com are discovering us on the iPhone platform. So we’re very happy with the outcome.
So in terms of both traffic and rate of adoption, iPhone has been growing very fast. If you were to look at the trends, both Android and Blackberry have very good traction as well.
I’m also seeing some evidence that the conversions from registrants who are paying members, on the iPhone platform specifically, is almost an order of magnitude greater than on the likes of WAP phones. Is that one of the conclusions you’ve drawn?
Yes. Because the iPhone platform has a much better user experience, in many cases it replaces site usage. So we do see that people on the iPhone perform better than people who are purely on a web-based experience.
You must be pretty excited about the iPad and the new iPhone with the camera facing forward.
Yes, I think both present opportunities for us. iPad already runs our iPhone application as it is. The site works very well on the iPad as it is, but we’re actively looking into building a more targeted application.
The front facing camera on the iPhone is something that we’re still trying to formulate a strategy around. I can’t say that we have a very clear vision on what we would do with that new functionality.
Hopefully people are going to get more comfortable with using a phone with the front facing camera and that could really usher in a new era for internet dating.
What are your thoughts on advertising to drive traffic to your mobile products?
When we started out on the iPhone platform we were getting a lot of organic growth. People were coming into the app store and discovering us under the social networking category. That continues to be the case and there are a lot of people who find us on the app store and that is because of the high number of downloads we get.
It has to be a great way for Match to effectively capture the younger demographic and more importantly position the Match brand favorably as a hip mobile brand for the youngsters.
Mobile definitely attracts a younger audience. According to Pew Research Center’s report on millennials and their phone usage, 85% of millennials sleep with a mobile phone next to them. So we clearly see that the audience that we attract on phones are younger.
Match.com has been using Trilibis for quite a while now. It’s a couple of years now, isn’t it?
We started using Trilibis in 2007, so it’s been a while.
How is that going? What do you use them for and why?
Trilibis fills a critical niche for us. Next to the iPhone or Android, there is still a very long tail of older phones out there which are still very popular with our user base. This is a very large portion of the mobile traffic that comes to Match.com. While that traffic is getting replaced by the smart phones, it is still very significant that we will want to have a presence on these older phones. The problem Trilibis is solving is that the resolution, formatting and the layout on these devices are very fragmented.
What kind of revenue is mobile throwing off at this stage? I noticed that 2-3% of Meetic revenue was from mobile products. Can you give us any indication how that fits with Match?
I don’t have a percentage number but I can tell you that mobile is one of the fastest growing channels when it comes to acquiring new users.
How about SMS related revenue? How much of your revenue is from subscription and how much from SMS?
All of our revenues are from subscriptions. We don’t monetize SMS. We provide SMS as a free utility so it’s an opt-in model wherein you can sign up for SMS Alerts.
How engaged would you say the mobile users are versus your online users?
A typical mobile user views twice as many profiles as compared to someone who is just using the site.
Have you seen much rollover from online to mobile users?
Yes, a lot of our users start with the online experience and then they download our application and use that as a complementary channel to access Match. That is really what results in the higher number of profile views.
I’ve heard that the mobile users are in some cases willing to pay more for the convenience than they would on an online dating site for the mobile version. Have you seen any evidence of that?
Match treats mobile as another channel by which people are able to access the Match service. So we don’t really make a distinction between mobile users versus site users. I guess that question doesn’t really apply to us.
I seem to be hearing a lot about virtual gifts in the mobile space, especially with the younger demographic. What is Match’s position on virtual gifts in the mobile environment?
The virtual gifts model doesn’t fit with the current Match model. The Match model typically involves people browsing user profiles, communicating with members, winks and emails, and possibly culminating in an offline meeting. So just the way the service is set up I don’t really see virtual gifts fitting into the current model.
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OPW - June 15 - Profiler1 is an innovative service that is helping people evaluate their personalities with their facial features. The company has already signed a contract with a leading Russian dating site Loveplanet.ru and plans to attend the iDate Conference in Beverly Hills, which is taking place on June 16-18th, 2010. Profiler1 offers three different kinds of services facilitated by simply taking a snapshot.
1. "Quick Face Reading" which utilizes a special server algorithm and a facial recognition system in order to read human faces. The results cover a variety of personality traits and offer descriptions in a humorous style.
2."A Full Face Reading." This service is a more in-depth report. A personality expert is highly involved with the analyzing process. As a result, the expert is able to generate dozens of personality trait assessments.
3. "Personality Match" allows its users to choose their spouse's preferred personality traits. Personality Match then presents the most suitable matches within the requested criteria based off of the member base of an online dating website.
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PRESS RELEASE - June 16 - Meetic has completed the post-merger integration of Match.com 40% faster than it could have with its previous solution by using the Informatica Platform. Meetic, which acquired Match.com's European operations in 2009, has standardized on Informatica's open, reusable data integration platform to transparently migrate millions of user profiles from 15 countries in just four months.
The full article was originally published at Market Watch, but is no longer available.
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MARKET WATCH - Jun 15 - Quepasa Corporation, owner of Quepasa.com, an online social network targeting the Latino community, completed its implementation of the Zoosk dating service within the social network. The objective of the partnership is to extend the Zoosk community across the countries of Latin America by promoting and monetizing the Zoosk offering to the users of Quepasa.com.
The full article was originally published at Market Watch, but is no longer available.
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