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

RSVP To Merge With Oasis Active

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - June 24 - RSVP, the online dating site owned by Fairfax Media, is poised to sign a merger agreement with rival Oasis Active, which is backed by Ten Network Holdings. RSVP is wholly owned by Fairfax, while Ten controls ~40% of Oasis, sharing the registry with other investors including co-founders David Heysen and Daniel Haigh, as well as former Star City, Engin and Solution 6 boss Neil Gamble. The merged entity would be worth ~$90M, with Fairfax to retain ~50% holding. Ten will control ~20% with Mr Heysen and Mr Haigh also retaining stakes.

by Sarah Thompson, Jake Mitchell & Gretchen Friemann
See full article at Sydney Morning Herald

Oasis Active Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Dave Heysen, said: “Oasis has always admired the RSVP brand in Australia and look forward to working with a business that has been one of the major players in the Australian market for more than 15 years. Together we can ensure that we continue to develop our products to cater for a wider range of the Australian singles market as well as collectively develop ways to best leverage rapidly changing technology.”

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

eHarmony's Average Online Dater

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Sep 11 - According to eHarmony, the average Australian online dater has never been married, is in their early-to-mid thirties and works as a teacher. The second and third most popular professions are nursing and retail for females, truck-driving or in a trade for males. The numbers and professions on RSVP paint a slightly different picture. The most popular profession is healthcare followed by education, science and then trades and services. The most popular age group is 25 to 34-year-olds, followed by 35 to 44.

by Sarah Berry
The full article was originally published at Sydney Morning Herald, but is no longer available.

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There's No Love Lost For Online Date Frauds

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Dec 6 - 1600 Australians reported losing $17M in the online search for romance this year, up from $15M last year. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is asking the online dating and romance industry to comment on draft guidelines for cleaning up the industry. A group of industry representatives has been working on draft guidelines since July. The ACCC would like dating agencies to provide clients with warnings about scams, and verify online profiles to ''detect and disrupt the activities of those seeking to engage in fraud''. It also wants dating agencies to set up internal complaint handling procedures. The ACCC expects to launch new guidelines early in the new year.

by Lucy Battersby
See full article at Sydney Morning Herald

Social Networking Apps Bring The Close Closer

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Nov 25 - Blendr enables users to check their smartphones and then text other users a few metres away. If they hit it off, they can meet up for a date within minutes. Blendr is the heterosexual version of Grindr, which has more than 2M gay users in 192 countries. Joel Simkhai, who founded Grindr and Blendr, says the main difference between the two apps is that the straight version is less focused on casual sex. Other geosocial networking apps, such as OkCupid Locals and HowAboutWe are popular.

by Rachel Wells
See full article at Sydney Morning Herald

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Government To Censor iTunes App Store

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Mar 9 - Australians will soon be able to complain about mobile game apps they take offence to and get them removed from app stores such as Apple's iTunes if they're deemed "refused classification". And if mobile game apps are classified anything above MA15+ and the government doesn't introduce an R18+ games classification (which it plans to vote on in July), then any game app rated over MA15+ will also be refused classification. What is unclear, however, is how the Classification Board will classify apps that aren't necessarily games like Grindr.

by Ben Grubb
See full article at Sydney Morning Herald

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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Perfect Matchmakers Tap A Rich Seam Of Lonely Hearts

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Mar 6 - Trudy Gilbert is Sydney's own millionaire matchmaker, responsible for marrying off famous faces, executives of blue-chip companies and the social elite. Her company, Elite Introductions, is an exclusive dating service where membership is a cool $4995 per year and applications for membership have grown 25% in the past three months. More than 90% of her members want to go on a second date with the person they are matched with. She has had eight marriages, one baby and says 7 out of 10 members are in long-term relationships.

by Rachel Olding
See full article at Sydney Morning Herald

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Asia: Falling Fertility Rates And Shrinking Populations

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Jan 15 - Taiwan's fertility rate, the average number of children born to its women in their lifetime, fell to 0.91 last year, far below the rate of 2.1 needed to sustain population size. Hong Kong has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, and faces a population decline from 7M to about 6M by mid-century. Japan's population shrank by a record 123K people last year. From a peak of 128M in 2006, the Japanese population will shrink to under 100M by mid-century, by which time its over-65s will have grown from 25% of population to ~40%. Registered marriages last year were the fewest since 1954. In mainland China, population is still growing and will peak about 2030 at ~1.39 billion - 1.46 billion. Australians and Americans are keeping their end up in baby production, with fertility rates close to two children per woman, and high immigration rates. By mid-century we are likely to see 36M people in Australia (from the present 22.5M) and 439M in the US (from 310M). FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Daterate.com.au: Anonymous Feedback On Dates

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Oct 11 - Daterate.com.au works by collecting anonymous feedback from men or women who go on dates and often don't get their calls, emails or texts returned, said Gabe Hollombe, one of the creators of the site. All a man or woman needed to do was to give their date a unique number that they could then use to fill out an anonymous survey form online. Hollombe said the site hoped to make money by charging for the unlocking of feedback or by getting targeted advertising. A similar site exists at daterate.net. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Australian Dating Site Created Fake Profiles

SMH.COM.AU - July 22 - Jetplace, the operator of dating website Red Hot Pie, has been ordered by the federal court to disclose to its users that it operated 1,371 of its own profiles on the website. Jetplace has been ordered to publish a corrective notice when each user of the website who registered between December 2004 and November 26, 2008 next logs on, and to send a copy of the notice to the email address of each user. Users can also apply for refunds if they can demonstrate that they were misled by the conduct into paying for membership of the website. FULL ARTICLE @ SMH.COM. AU

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One In Four Adults Have Used Internet To Find A Mate

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Apr 17 - A Nielsen poll found one in four adults have used the internet to find a partner and another 38% are considering using online dating. Of those who had used online dating, 33.6% reported a short-term relationship, 16.2% said they had a long-term relationship, 8.9% said they had married or were in a defacto relationship, and 2.7% had children. RSVP.com.au (owned by Fairfax Media, the publisher of the Herald) commissioned Nielsen to conduct the first comprehensive survey of online dating habits. The most popular dating sites among those polled were RSVP (54%), Adult Match Maker (21%), eHarmony (20%) and Oasis Active (19%). FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

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Ashley Madison Launches In Australia

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Apr 12 - Weeks into a "soft opening", with no publicity or advertising, Australian women have adopted the Ashley Madison agency motto - "life is short, have an affair" - with an enthusiasm founder Noel Biderman says he's not seen before. "We've never had more women than men, it's always been about two to one, male to female," Biderman said. Biderman said 40,000 Australians so far had joined the agency, which he started in Canada in 2001, fusing the two most popular children's names at the time to come up with AshleyMadison.com. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

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Online Cheating Is A Booming Business

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Mar 26 - 'LIFE is short. Have an affair!'' That is the line Noel Biderman uses to spruik his dating service, ashleymadison.com, which he claims has more than 5M philandering members, including 10,000 in Australia. An internet search throws up countless websites for cheating spouses, including meet2cheat.com.au, affairsclub.com, lonelyhousewives.com, philanderers.com and benaughty.com. ''I'm often asked if all these sites are causing more affairs,'' said the VP of Relationships Australia NSW, Anne Hollonds. ''To some extent it's easier, you can just sit at a computer. But these tend to be people who are wanting to escape their circumstances and derive the benefits from having a liaison with someone else. There have always been people who wanted to do that but they found other ways of doing it.'' FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

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Online Dating Industry Will Grow By Almost A Third

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Jan 10 - The Australian online dating industry grew by 5% last year and is expected to grow by a further 5 to 10%  this year. According to dating site RSVP survey 50% of respondents had tried online dating and 10% had met their current or most recent partner on the internet. Business analyst IBISWorld expects the industry to earn ~$100M from subscriptions and advertising this year. Cupid Media, Australia's biggest online dating company, has 33 websites that specialise in religion, ethnicity, sexual preference and physical appearance. The company started at least three new websites every year and had ~15M customers in 50 countries. IBISWorld does, however, expect the boom to slow in a few years with the increased sophistication of social networks. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Mark Brooks: People Media was recently sold for $80 million to IAC. Cupid Media is doing well. I wonder how long it will be before they are acquired? First Beat Media, World Singles, FriendFinder's network of sites, Avid Life Media are other examples of networks of niche sites that have exceled and enjoyed the benefits of the 'network effect.' Given the choice, users will often join multiple sites within a network, which means improved ARPU. (Full Disclosure: First Beat Media and Avid Life Media are current clients of Courtland Brooks. World Singles is a former client, and I worked for FriendFinder in 2003-2004).

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Redhotpie.com.au Accused Of Creating Fake Profiles

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD – Nov 6 – The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has accused dating site, RedHotPie, of misleading conduct. The site operators have allegedly created fake profiles in order to increase activity by sending flirt messages to its 1.6 million register users. The hearing is set for December 10th in Perth. FULL ARTICLE @ SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

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It's Raining Romantic Men Online

SMH -- Feb 14 -- Figures obtained from internet dating services show that in some age groups there are far more men than women searching for a partner online. RSVP reports that women are outnumbered by men 1.5 to 1 in their late 20s to mid 30s. On Lavalife, women remain in high demand even after they turn 50, when almost three times more men in that age group are logging on. FULL ARTICLE @ SMH

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