READ WRITE - The teen-focused dating app Wizz has been taken down from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store over allegations it facilitated the sexual exploitation of minors. Launched in 2019 by French developer Voodoo, Wizz billed itself as a way for teenagers to "expand your world meeting unexpected online people." However, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) recently contacted Apple and Google to report that Wizz was being used for "sextortion" scams targeting underage users, reports CNBC.
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Wizz: Tinder-like App For Teens Removed From Apple App Store and Google Play Store
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How DOWN Dating App Shifted Online Dating Culture
READWRITE - The DOWN Dating App, originally launched as "Bang With Friends" in 2013, changed online dating by focusing openly on casual hookups. It gained popularity quickly, even surpassing Tinder initially. The app's honest approach influenced other dating platforms to be more transparent. DOWN's features, like location-based matching and a three-directional swipe system (up for serious, down for casual), offer a tailored user experience. The app continues to evolve with tools like "3Some" and "Snap Match," promoting a safe, sex-positive environment.
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How To Hack Online Dating And Use Data To Find True Love
READ WRITE WEB - Feb 13 - In her book, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, Amy Webb, outlines how she "reverse engineered" online dating, reevaluated her strategy and met her future husband. Webb kicked off her digital quest for a mate by listing 72 traits she wanted her future partner to possess; everything from personal habits and marital history to work ethic. Next, she narrowed down the ten most important characteristics and listed them as "top tier" traits. Then Webb assigned a total number of points to each item. 100 for her top trait and 91 for her least-critical item in her top ten list. The second-tier traits were all assigned 50 or fewer points. The result was a 1000-point scale that would allow her to grade. Before setting up her new profile, Webb decided to evaluate the competition. Using her 1000-point grading system, she had created 10 fake profiles and interacted with 96 different women. She paid attention to things like which gender initiated conversations most and made data visualizations of the most commonly used words in the profiles of popular women. Armed with new insights, Webb set out to create what she calls her "super-profile." It was concise, used positive language and wasn't as fixated on work.
by John Paul Titlow
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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How OKCupid Helps Users Find Their Perfect Match
READ WRITE WEB - July 25 - OKCupid is well known for its data analysis. On average, says OKCupid's CTO Tom Quisel, active users have answered ~3K questions; they've hidden the profiles of several thousand users they aren't interested in; they've voted for ~4K profiles. All that data is in addition to users' personal demographic data and preferences, as well as their site usage information (how often they log in, how often they respond to messages and so on). All that data makes a simple search for a list of potential matches quite complex. In fact, says Quisel, it can take 13 billion seeks in order to load one page of results.
by Audrey Watters
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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Craigslist Shuts Down Sex Ads For Good
READ WRITE WEB - Sep 15 - Craigslist's suspension on September 4 has been made permanent. Critics of the move have pointed out that public sex ads allow law enforcement to monitor potential victimizers of children. Others pointed out that there is no question of the legality of ads with sexual contents.
The full article was originally published at Read Write, but is no longer available.
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Craigslist Under Fire For Kids On "Adult Services"
READ WRITE WEB - Aug 11 - Last week, craigslist was the subject of a primetime CNN story that criticized the site for "not doing enough" to prevent child sex trafficking, quoting a youth rights advocate who said craigslist is the primary venue for selling minors for sex. Craigslist later responded that it works "tirelessly" to prevent ads for minors in the adult services section and works with law enforcement and non-profits to fight child sex trafficking. Craigslist isn't legally responsible for any of the content uploaded by users. But advertising for illegal services is against its terms of use and craigslist says it screens all ads and rejects those that are about sex.
The full article was originally published at Read Write, but is no longer available.
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Loopt Launches "Loopt Mix"
READ WRITE WEB - Oct 19 - Loopt is introducing a new iPhone app called Loopt Mix. The new app is actually a spin-off of Loopt's "Mix" feature, which lets you browse the Loopt profiles of those around you within its original mobile social networking app. Although the company is not specifically marketing Mix as a dating app, it's clearly designed for mobile singles.
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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Social Networking Sites Dominate Mobile Web
READWRITE WEB - Oct 13 - A new report by Openwave shows that four of the top ten domains accessed via mobile devices are social networks Facebook and MySpace, Myxer, a ringtone creation and sharing site, and PlentyofFish. Oddly, the chart shows that MySpace beat out Facebook. Recent numbers from Compete showed MySpace traffic dropping from 55.6M unique visitors in August to 50.2M in September. Meanwhile, Facebook announced that they saw 65M visits from mobile phones in August, a huge rise from what was only 20M back in December 2007.
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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Twitter-like Dating
READ WRITE WEB -- Sep 3 -- According to OK Cupid, only 32% of dating site messages receive a response. Of the successful efforts, the majority of first contact messages are brief. The ideal message length from men to women is between 200-300 characters and from women to men it's a mere 50 characters. In a recent blog post, the company writes, "Almost 16% of first messages are over 2000 characters (roughly 400 words), and the average is 743! We've found that the most effective messages are much shorter. After about 360 words (1800 characters), you start scaring people off, like the online equivalent of a face tattoo."
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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MySpace Classifieds Now Powered By Oodle
READ WRITE WEB -- July 28 -- MySpace's classifieds section has been re-launched and is now powered by Oodle. This partnership with MySpace gives Oodle access to a large new group of users. According to MySpace, its classifieds see about 1m visits a month and with Oodle, its inventory is going to go up to 500,000 new listings a day.
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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PlentyOfFish May Be Worth $1 Billion
READ/WRITE WEB -- Oct 29 -- In June '06 PlentyOfFish was earning ~$3.5m/yr on Google Adsense. Next year it will earn $10m+. POF gets 1.2 billion page views/month, and ~500,000 unique logins per day and is #2 in the US online dating market and #1 in Canada and UK (Hitwise). Facebook (40 billion page views/mo) has a valuation of $15 Billion thanks to Microsoft's $240m investment last week. According to Markus POF has 5-10 times the click through rate of Facebook so POF's 1.2 Billion page views is the same as 5-10 Billion Facebook page views per month. Markus concludes "Facebook is only able to generate 10 to 15 times as many clicks on ads as my site and it's valued at 15 billion." What's more, some of his direct competitors, eHarmony, Match, etc, are valued in the billions. Markus didn't put a figure on what PlentyOfFish is worth but it's clear he's thinking in the billions. Not bad for a one-man company (plus a new Customer Service Rep!).
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
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YouTube Now 4th Biggest Web Property in World
READ/WRITE WEB -- Jan 10 -- On current Alexa figures YouTube is now ranked 4th in the world, behind only Yahoo, MSN and Google itself! I also checked out the comparisons on Compete and comScore.
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: YouTube is wonderfully addictive. It's destined to reshape the media landscape. Expect to see more homespun hits springing from it, a la "Blair Witch Project."
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Top Web Apps in India
READ/WRITE BLOG -- Oct 10 -- It's an exciting time for the economy in India. India has 1.1 Billion people and the average age of the nation is just 24.9 years. Indian GDP is growing 8%+. Their are 45 to 50 Million internet users in India making it the 4th biggest country in the world in terms of total Internet users - behind only the US, China and Japan. However due to India's huge population, its Internet Penetration is among the lowest in the world at only 4.5%, and only 10 million of those users are real power users who spend money online. Another challenge is that there are 23 mainstream languages that are spoken in India. Matrimonial sites. Shaadi and BharatMatrimony.com are the most successful. India's eBay is Bazee.com (acquired by eBay). For Online Travel - MakeMyTrip, Yatra, and Arzoo.com (founded by Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of Hotmail. Jobs - Naukri. Real estate - 99acres. Online movie rentals - Seventymm.
The full article was originally published at Read Write Web, but is no longer available.
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del.icio.us Plans To Become a Social Network
READ/WRITE BLOG -- Oct 4 --del.icio.us will essentially turn into a social network, with more focus on people instead of data. The CEO recently stated, "I want to help people connect with others within the system, either to people they already know or discovering new people and communities based on interest."
The full article was originally published at Read Write Web, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Next - del.icio.us to offer personality profiling matchmaking based on bookmarks
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Social Networking Silver Bullet
READ/WRITE WEB BLOG -- Oct 4 -- Social networks are becoming an important ingredient of all sorts of consumer experiences. Here are a few social networks worth keeping an eye on: LinkedIn - For business networking. CollectiveX - Team collaboration. Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) said CollectiveX is social networking "the way it should have been done in the first place." PeopleAggregator - A meta social network system which enables you to connect other social networking services together. Wetpaint - Free hosted websites. A combination of "wikis, blogs, and social networks." e.g. WikiFido. Multiply - Sharing your life, with privacy. Imeem - Allows sharing blogs, photos, audio, and video.
What we require is a system that connects all social networks. i.e. Social groupware - like CollectiveX and PeopleAggregator.
The full article was originally published at Read Write Web, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Social networking will follow the same trajectory as internet dating. More niche sites will emerge. Users will have a presence on mainstream sites and add personas on niche sites. 'Profile portability' is needed but has never happened for dating sites. The sites want to lock in their userbase. Social networks, similarly, want to lock in their userbases. But they will take more heat from users for not allowing profiles to be ported to other sites. People like PeopleAggregator's founder (and Macromedia founder) Marc Canter have been pounding on the table for open networks and profile portability for a few years. Marc decided, if you can't join them, beat them, and developed PeopleAggregator independently.
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