Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Jess Meet Ken Ditches Its Website, Launches Mobile App

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Nov 3 - Online dating startup Jess, Meet Ken has ditched its website in favor of launching a mobile app. The app allows women to create profiles of single men they know but are not romantically interested in, who could be good matches for other women. Women can then ask to be introduced to a man that another woman vouches for. The company is backed by $250K in funding and plans to raise more this year. Jess, Meet Ken intends to launch a premium, paid-feature model down the road.

by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal

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Jess, Meet Ken Now Has 10k Users

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Feb 10 - Ken Deckinger met his wife Jess through a female friend. "It worked for us, and we'd love to share the experience we had with other people," he said. They launched Jess, Meet Ken, a dating site that allows women to act as matchmakers. The site has reached 10K users in less than a year. The company aims to close a $400K seed funding round with angel investors in the coming weeks in order to boost sales and marketing and expand the service beyond Boston.

by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal

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Spark Networks Shutters Hurrydate

OPW - Jan 7 - All things have a beginning and an end, and today marks the end of Hurrydate after 14 years in business. The company was started by Ken Deckinger and Adele (Testani) Tongish. This speed dating company was acquired by Spark Networks in 2007. 

Ken left Hurrydate in 2009 and in 2013 started JessMeetKen, a promising little dating app where women put forward their male friends as venerable for dating. So all the guys have at least one woman vouching for them. We like this 'social dating' spin because it effectively bridges the age-old divide between social networking and Internet dating. Social networks have a vouching process that dating sites lack. Dating sites give users privacy, so its tough to get that social vouching process to work in the world of Internet dating. Ken met his wife in a similar process, and they've branded themselves heavily into the dating site storyline, which is great!

Adele left Spark/Hurrydate in 2013. I'll ask her what she's up to and update this post shortly.

These kinds of events businesses can be quite onerous to run. The problem is, Internet dating is a very different kind of business and is a superior business. You should only ever hook an events business to your Internet dating business as a branding piece, and then make damn sure the events are A1 experiences. Otherwise the entire exercise will rapidly become an entire waste of time and actually quite detrimental to your core business.  A certain very vocal and social portion of your audience loves events. Its a good idea to captivate them. They're a good audience to have in your fold, provided you please them.  But don't expect your events business numbers to outshine your Internet dating business.  They won't. And the events business will be the one that keeps you up at night. Therein lies the challenge, for the motley few.

Meanwhile, premium speed dating company Fastlife endures under POF, Predating was sold by Cupid back to its original owner, Speeddater.co.uk s still being operated by Cupid/Together Networks for the UK, 8 Minute Dating somehow endures, and long-standing regional speed-dating outfits like 10 minute dating (San Francisco) malinger and die. 

Thanks to Carl at Slowdating.com for giving me a heads up on this morsel of news.

UPDATE: Adele is working with Ken again, and is actually the person responsible for introducing Ken to Jess! :-)

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Jess, Meet Ken Officially Launches Its Non-Creepy Dating Site

BOSTINNO - Dec 11 - Dating site Jess, Meet Ken initially went live last February. Now, the website is officially launching with more features. Women who know great guys answer a few questions about them, which then generate profiles that other users can scope out. Single women can browse through the database of eligible bachelors with the assurance that another woman has advocated for them.

by Rebecca Strong
See full article at Bostinno

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Jess, Meet Ken: A Female-Friendly Online Dating Site

FAST COMPANY - Sep 10 - What women want, is to meet men who are pre-vetted by other women, according to Jess and Ken Deckinger. On their new site, called Jess, Meet Ken, women can recommend eligible bachelors they know; single woman browsing the site can then either reach out to the man himself or to the woman who vouches for him. Jess, Meet Ken is designed to redistribute power in online dating by requiring women to initiate contact: Men are not allowed to send unsolicited messages to women. In 2001, Ken founded the first speed-dating website, HurryDate, which was later acquired by Spark Networks. Jess is a marketer with a Harvard MBA.

by Elizabeth Segran
See full article at Fast Company

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Jess, Meet Ken Prepares To Seek Funding

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - July 31 - Ken Deckinger, co-founder and CEO of dating site Jess, Meet Ken, said his site has grown to "many thousands" of users since the launch in February. Jess, Meet Ken allows women to create profiles of single men they know but are not romantically interested in, who could be good matches for other women. The startup aims to launch a formal fundraising round in the fall — mostly targeting angel investors. Deckinger previously co-founded speed dating and online dating service HurryDate, that was acquired in 2007 by Spark Networks.

by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal

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JessMeetKen Lets Women Call The Shots

MORNINGNEWS - Apr 2 - JessMeetKen is a new dating site that allows women to create dating profiles for their male friends. The website founder Ken Deckinger talked with WGN Morning News team about the site and why men don't know how to sell themselves.

See full article & watch the video at MorningNews

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On "Jess, Meet Ken", Women Are The Matchmakers

EXAMINER - Mar 18 - Jess, Meet Ken is a new dating site. Jess and Ken Deckinger are a real married couple. The idea for creating the site came from their own experience of finding each other. Years ago, a female friend created a profile for Ken on a site, where a woman could recommend a guy who she liked but wasn't interested in dating. Soon, Jess emailed her to find out more about Ken. On Jess, Meet Ken, the set-up is simple. Women sign in with Facebook. If they want to recommend a guy, they answer 10 questions about him. Men need a female friend to recommend and post them on the site.

by Kelly Seal
The full article was originally published at Examiner, but is no longer available.

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Jess, Meet Ken: Women Play The Matchmakers

BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Feb 3 - On a new dating site, Jess Meet Ken, women create profiles of single men they know but are not romantically interested in, who could be good matches for other women. Women can then be introduced to a man that another woman vouches for. "Women know how to sell a guy better than a guy knows how to sell himself," said Ken Deckinger, the site's founder. Deckinger previously co-founded speed dating and online dating service HurryDate which was sold to Spark Networks in 2007.

by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal