Weekly News Summary 2 Oct 09 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.
Hello, and welcome to Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup. I’m Mark Brooks, and here are the latest headlines from around the industry.
We picked off a few more interesting numbers from comScore's presentation at the European Internet Dating Conference that happened last week in London. Mike Shaw from comScore told us that over 100 million users visit online dating sites around the world each month and that Europe leads the way with 42 million unique visitors a month, followed by Asia with 29 Million unique visitors a month.
ComScore also let us know the proportion of daters that use social networks as well. A growing number of online dating consumers in Europe are using social networks. Internet daters are now 24% more likely than the average internet user to use social networks. How about advertising click through rates? Only 16% of internet users clicked on at least one display ad in March 2009, down from 32% in July 2007.
Onto news about a big cat fight! This one centers around CougarLife.com, a dating site for mature women seeking younger men. Founder Claudia Open-kelder is calling on women to boycott ABC’s new T-V show, Cougar Town. What’s the “cat-tastophe” that has Open-kelder so upset? Well, a while back, ABC and Open-kelder decided to collaborate on a commercial for the CougarLife site. Yet when the finished ad was shown to ABC, Open-keld-er was told that network managers now had problems with CougarLife itself.
To watch this notorious commercial, head over to www.opw1.com. Leave a comment and let us know if you think the ad is the cat’s meow or just two big paws down.
Now, it’s time for our hook-ups and break-ups segment. Hooking up are two prominent magazines – Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. The publications are planning to launch online dating sites. Members will be matched with Men’s Health hotties or the glamorous, fun-loving females of Cosmopolitan.
Meanwhile, Online Buddies has acquired a majority stake in D-List, a social networking site for gay men under 30. The deal puts Online Buddies in charge of all marketing for D-List. Online Buddies is the parent company of Manhunt, a popular gay dating site.
Finally, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School recently spoke with Online Personals Watch. Norton co-authored the report entitled “People Are Experience Goods: Improving Online Dating with Virtual Dates.” Here is a clip from his conversation with Online Personals Watch: “We ended up finding that when we sent people on those virtual dates before they met in person, they tended to click better when we actually had them meet in person.”
“So you could go on quite a few of these brief virtual dates in a given day so that you don’t waste a lot of time scheduling coffees with people that maybe you won’t click with when you actually do. It really is this in between space between are we really interacting? Certainly more so then just exchanging emails but clearly also much less so then really meeting face to face.”
To hear the full interview, visit www.opw1.com.
That’s all for this week’s Online Personal Watch’s News Roundup. Tune in again next week as we bring you the latest and greatest from the world of online dating. No ads, no fluff, just raw news and CEO interviews. I’m Mark Brooks. Thank you.
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