IDEA - Oct 18 - Here's Mark Brooks 14 minute presentation covering the state of the dating industry and our challenges, as at September 2019.
October 18, 2019
October 10, 2019
IDEA SUMMIT in Berlin Fills Within 24 Hours
IDEA - Oct 10 - The Internet Dating Excellence Association (IDEA.gp) exists to help the dating industry grow, and to help dating executives learn and share and improve their services for the benefit of their users.
I started IDEA in 2007, and we spent the first 10 years bringing dating industry leaders together socially prior to Internet Dating Conferences. Then we formalized it a couple years ago, and started running distinct gatherings. The first small gathering was IDEA WOW in Malta in November 2018. It went well, but attendees wanted more so we ran an IDEA WOW + IDEA SUMMIT in Chennai India and I co-hosted the gathering with Murugavel Janakiraman, the CEO/Founder of Matrimony, at the Matrimony.com HQ. It was a wonderful experience.
Our first European IDEA SUMMIT event will happen December 4th at the Spark Networks HQ in Berlin. I'll be cohosting with Jeronimo Folgueira, the CEO of Spark Networks. The event was released this Monday, and was full less than 24 hours later! Another small IDEA SUMMIT gathering is in the works for East Coast USA for March in 2020.
June 20, 2019
The Age of Intent - Courtland Brooks New-Book-of-the-Month
COURTLAND BROOKS - June 20 - Is there a place in the word for an A.I. matchmaker? We think so at Courtland Brooks. This new book (out since May 28th) will give you some insight into the rise of A.I. virtual chatbot technology. Get it at Smile.Amazon.com here.
June 19, 2019
Happy 15th Birthday to Online Personals Watch!
COURTLAND BROOKS - June 19 - We are now 15 years into running Online Personals Watch. It was started this month in 2004, no less. For the last 15 years we've watched the news, selected what we think are the most strategically important news items for decision makers at dating companies, and summarized them. I started OPW when I was at FriendFinder. I realized there was some great intell in the news, but noone really had time to read it. Certainly not my CEO Andrew Conru. I figured, it would be awesome if someone could condense 3 hours of reading down into 3 minutes of essential news each day. Noone was doing this, so I created OPW, which you can now reference at OPW.news. We love the dating business, and are looking forward to an amazing future with you. You can subscribe via email and social media from the right hand side bar. ;-) - Mark Brooks, CEO Courtland Brooks, Host of IDEA.
May 07, 2019
Courtland Brooks Book-of-the-Month - The Players Ball
COURTLAND BROOKS - May 7 - If you've not heard of the tawdry story of the founder of Match, then you'll like this book. Actually, even if you know it, its worth a read. Stanford law grad, Gary Kremen founded Match.com and bought a number of top tier domains. This is the story of how he started Match and his fight to reel in a particular domain that was stolen from him. See the Amazon book.
Find out more about Courtland Brooks services. Please email mark@courtlandbrooks.com for more info.
April 09, 2019
April 07, 2019
Courtland Brooks Book-of-the-Month - PR for Humans
COURTLAND BROOKS - Apr 7 - I find the best PR advisors are former journalists. Mike Sergeant is part of that fray (CNN, BBC), and has authored this brilliant advisory on how to get PR right, and be human. PR for Humans is out April 18th. (Amazon UK book, or Kindle UK). I believe the people in the personals business need to be more personal with the public, so this book seems very apt. Mike argues that we should aim to 'connect human leaders with human audiences,' and his book covers new-school storytelling, reputation building and how to 'be a hedgehog!?' Why not. Enjoy. Please let me know your thoughts. :-)
Tinder has a story. Bumble has a story. Does your dating app have a story? You must be known for something, or you won't be known for anything. Find our more about Courtland Brooks services. Please email mark@courtlandbrooks.com for more info.
March 05, 2019
Courtland Brooks Book-of-the-Month - Talk To Me
COURTLAND BROOKS - Mar 5 - The March book-of-the-month is 'Talk To Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think.' The book is out 26th March. I think we have to keep our eye on big media transitions. Voice is huge for search. Which means it should be huge for the way we enable people to search for singles. This book will walk you through the concepts around Conversational AI and what Google, Amazon and Apple are working on. Essential reading IMHO.
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch
March 04, 2019
A Great Pitch Email
COURTLAND BROOKS - Mar 4 - We get pitches for OPW.news quite a lot this time of year. Here's a great example IMHO. Short, sweet, got my attention, and shows they did a little research on us...
Hey Mark,
How much does it suck when the person you match with on Tinder or Bumble looks nothing like their pictures?
A lot, right?
That's why I've developed Filter Off, a dating app that allows users to participate in a facetime-style 60 second chat. There’s no messaging or swiping!
I know you've written about dating apps in the past, so I'd like to invite you to write about us! We launch on Saturday, March 9th at 9 pm ET. If that time doesn't work for you, we can do a private session.
Interested?
Sincerely,
Zach
--
Zach Schleien | Founder | Filter Off
February 24, 2019
Navigating (Dating) Industry Disruption, Mark Brooks HBS Interview
COURTLAND BROOKS - Feb 24 - I interviewed with the HBS testimonials team about my career in Internet dating, and my experience with the Harvard Business School PLD program. The dating industry has gone through some significant disruption with the rise of mobile dating, Tinder, and POF. Here's my story.
Mark Brooks
