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ENTRE MUJERES - Nov 29 - DatingChile.cl claims to be the largest social dating site in the country with ~300K registered users. Net Innovation Group, the company behind DatingChile, is now launching a new site in Argentina called DatingArgentina.com. Net Innovation Group plans to launch a dating site in Colombia and Mexico as well.
The full article was originally published at Entre Mujeres, but is no longer available.
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SHARECAST - Nov 29 - Easydate non-executive Martin Higginson has taken advantage of the recent strong trading statement from the online dating company to sell nearly all of his shares. At the beginning of October, Higginson exercised options over 398,600 shares. He did not own any shares before then and he has sold 398,000 shares at 95p each, raising Ł378,000. In the first nine months of 2010, revenues grew at 30% a quarter thanks to higher marketing spending. FULL ARTICLE @ SHARECAST
Mark Brooks: Que? In fact, he sold only 30% of his shares. Plus EasyDate's CFO bought shares.
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WIRED.CO.UK - Nov 29 - When on a first date, we try to express ourselves and learn about the other person, but we're also being careful not to offend them either. This is called a bad equilibrium, a strategy that all the players can easily adopt and converge on, but it does not produce a desirable outcome for anyone. Dan Ariely and Jeana Frost decided to look at this problem in the context of online dating. They limited the type of discussions that online daters could engage in by giving them a preset list of questions. For example: "How many romantic partners have you had?"; "Do you have any STDs?"; "What is your sexual fantasy?" This forced them to risk rejection by posing questions that are outside of generally accepted bounds. What they learned is that when people are free to choose what type of discussions they want to have, they gravitate toward an equilibrium that is easy to maintain, but that no one really enjoys or benefits from. If we restrict the equilibria, we can get people to gravitate toward behaviours that are beneficial for everyone. FULL ARTICLE @ WIRED.CO.UK
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MELODIKA - Nov 28 - According to BharatMatrimony's survey on the scenario of marriage and security, 80% of the women believe that pre marriage counseling can help in minimizing cases of harassment after the marriage. Women feel more secured in life as well as at work place than the unmarried. In addition, they felt that marriage provided them the sense of security and a fence against work place harassments. 81% of participants agreed that education provides a sense of security and confidence.
The full article was originally published at Melodika, but is no longer available.
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OPW INTERVIEW - Nov 29 - One million users and counting, with a near zero marketing budget. This can happen. Intelligent Elite has made marketing magic happen. Here’s my interview with the co-founder, Dr. Eike Post. - Mark Brooks
You have a rather unusual site. You offer an IQ test, an emotional quotient test and a personality test. So I’m most intrigued with the personality test. Could you tell us a bit more about what kind of scientific basis that it is based on and how it works?
The personality test is based on the personality types proposed by Carl Gustav Jung and the Meyers Briggs typology. We have 4 dimensions that we measure with two extremes resulting in 16 different personality types.
How do you match based on those?
We currently use two dimensions for matching, sensing/intuition and thinking/feeling. The more similar, the better the match. For the other dimensions there are some researchers who say that opposites attract each other, and others who say it is better if you have similar personality types.
Matchmaking is generally regarded as being useful for more serious dating relationships but you disagree. Tell us more.
We think that matchmaking has many advantages over dating. The main advantages are saving time, better matching because we have information that the user doesn’t have or doesn’t focus on, providing the users a hook to contact the potential partner and some balance that everybody gets a chance to be contacted.
And we think all 4 advantages apply not only to the older demographic who are looking for a long term relationship but also to younger demographics who are not necessarily looking for a long term relationship. For example, we have many people on our site who are what we call passive date seekers. They don’t actively go on the site to look for people but if we offer them matches they wouldn’t refuse them. So dating is not attractive but matchmaking is.
People can log in through Facebook Connect. You have over a million users at this stage. How much do you think the Facebook Connect is responsible for that growth? And how much have you spent on marketing so far?
We spend very little on marketing because we got 95% of our users by word of mouth mostly via Facebook. However, it’s not so much Facebook Connect but more the Facebook application, which is responsible for viral growth. We have tried other viral channels such as Bebo, Hi5, and MySpace, however, it has become clear in the last year that Facebook is really the only way to go.
I heard that you spent less than 100 Euro in total on marketing for a million users. That’s quite the landmark achievement. What are your plans moving forward?
Our plan is to improve the matching algorithm further and maintain our leadership in what we call the new space of social matchmaking.
How do you define social matchmaking?
It is the combination of matchmaking like eHarmony on the one hand and social dating like Zoosk on the other.
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OPW - Nov 29 - We've pulled a list of blogs related to the internet dating industry for you. You can see the full list here.
Bellow are some examples:
Be2 blog
ChristianCafe blog
ChristianConnection blog
Easydate - Max Polyakov's blog
JBlog (Jdate's blog)
Maybefriends blog
OkTrends (OkCupid's blog)
Online Dating Insider
Online Dating Magazine
Up To Date (Match.com's blog)
WhiteLabelDating blog
Do you or your dating site have a blog, that is not listed yet? Send use the link to [email protected] and we will add it.
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OPW - Nov 26 - Andrew Andreev founded Mamba, the most popular dating site in Russia with ~4.5M members. In 2005, Mamba was sold for $20M to Finam, a financial investment group. Most of Russian internet startups just copy foreign models. Mamba was unique, notes Nikita Sherman, ex-president of the company. Together with rare internet games it created demand for SMS payments. Having bought “Mamba” in 2005, Finam CEO didn’t regret. In 2009 its profit reached 664M rubles ($21M) with EBITDA 48%. The number of users increased to 12M. In 2007 Finam sold 30% of Mamba for $18M to Mail.ru, which was a part of internet holding DST of Yuriy Milner. Though Mamba never made it to the international dating market, Andreev launched another dating site called Badoo.com in 2006. Today Badoo has ~80M users. "Badoo competes with Plentyoffish, the leading free dating site in Europe," says dating market analyst Mark Brooks. In 2007 Finam” bought 10% stake in Badoo which valued the company at $300M. According to conservative estimates, annual revenue should pass $200M this year. FULL ARTICLE @ OPW
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BOSTON HERALD - Nov 29 - Being single during the holiday season is such a downer, that by the first of the year, enrollment on dating sites shoots through the roof. “I call it the holiday effect,” said Sam Yagan, co-founder of OkCupid.com. OkCupid.com, which boasts 7M members, has seen an uptick after the holidays for the six years it’s been running. Match.com's enrollment from Dec. 26 through February increased 23%.
The full article was originally published at Boston Herald, but is no longer available.
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TIME - Nov 26 - At Match.com, the 50-to-65 age group is the online dating site's fastest-growing demographic, up 89% in the last five years. And on JDate.com, members in the 50-plus age group jumped 40% from 2008 to 2009. JDate's parent company also owns SingleSeniorsMeet.com, which is its fastest growing property. According to one estimate, one in four second marriages for Boomers began online. Boomers often have a more open-minded view of potential partners. "Older people are looking for a companion, a lifelong partner," says anthropologist Helen Fisher. "They are not looking for a reproductive partner, so they can look at a broader range of individuals and are more likely to pick somebody from different social economic or religious backgrounds.
The full article was originally published at Time, but is no longer available.
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GUARDIAN.CO.UK - Nov 26 - VisitorsCafe is describing itself as "Chatroulette meets eHarmony". Morgan Hermand-Waiche, founder of VisitorsCafe, has concocted a sophisticated algorithm that matches people by demographic and interests. VisitorsCafe can be installed on any site.
Q: How do you make money?
A: We have a freemium revenue model where we can display targeted advertising and some tailored products requiring a subscription fee (ie, customised design, matching process integrated with the user base of the website, enhanced security features)."
Q: What makes your business unique?
A: VisitorsCafe connects people who don't know each other but who are like-minded, therefore creating meaningful interactions. The technology matches people based on both their demographics and their video chat behaviours (extravert, introvert, smiling or not)."
Q: What has been your biggest achievement so far?
A: Although we officially launched our public beta a couple of days ago, word of mouth brought us interest among site owners weeks ahead of the launch.
Q: What's your biggest challenge?
A: Mastering the art of video chat technology to make it easy to integrate for our users.
Q: Name your closest competitors
A: Chatroulette, Omegle, Woome, Camfrog
Q: Where do you want the company to be in five years?
A: I would ideally have succeeded into connecting numerous people within their online communities.
FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
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MEDIA TRUST - Nov 28 -
Q: Tell us about PlentyofFish.
A: POF is the world’s largest dating site. We’re # 1 in Canada, the US and UK and #3 in Australia. We’ve recently launched a self service advertising platform that allows our advertisers to access the 22M people on our site.
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NATIONELLIDAG.SE - Nov 27 - Victoria Milan is a new dating site in Sweden. The site looks like any other dating site, but the difference is that it is only for married people and those in relationship. There is a market for dating site like that in Sweden. A recent survey found out that 30% of all online daters are either married or in relationship.
The full article was originally published at Nationellidag.se, but is no longer available.
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BIRMINGHAM POST - Nov 25 - plzsayyes.com is a new dating site that allows users to go on a virtual date using the ‘Secondlife’ web platform, before they meet in person. Secondlife, which has ~18M users, allows people to create computer generated versions of themselves online and a whole world has been developed for them to explore and meet people. Users of plzsayyes.com will be charged £14.99 for a year’s membership. FULL ARTICLE @ BIRMINGHAM POST
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GLOBAL TIMES - Nov 25 - Jiayuan.com, China's leading dating website, is preparing to get listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The company is expected to get listed in the first half of 2011 and plans to raise ~$100M. If the deal can be completed, it will become China's first listed dating site. According iresearch.cn, from 2008 to now, the market share of Jiayuan.com has maintained at ~50%. In 2007, the company's revenue was ~10M yuan ($1.5M); in 2009, it reached 80M yuan ($12.03M), and this year, it is expected to exceed 100M yuan.
The full article was originally published at Global Times, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: As soon as they list and start issuing quarterly reports, Online Personals Watch will provide summaries of their numbers. You can see links to financials of Spark Networks, Match, etc, on the right bar of OPW.
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