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.
This edition of the weekly news roundup is kindly sponsored by messmo Media
Mobile Dating is growing gangbusters now, and it’s all about location. iPhone apps abound, and smart phones, led by the iPhone are driving internet and social dating into ubiquity at last. In a 2007 review the global mobile dating market was pegged at £200M in worth. That figure rose to £332M worldwide in 2008 and is expected to more than double over the next five years reaching £784M by the year 2013.
Ashley Madison, the actress, is suing the website of the same name for the humiliation she has endured because of AshleyMadison.com. But now the website is suing her in return for using their trademark to “inappropriately garner goodwill” to support her acting career. How can they possibly do this? Well, Ashley Madison, the actress, has apparently only been using the moniker as her stage name since, 2005. Ashley Madison have had their name trademarked since 2002.
Hey, I came across a handy little social media monitoring tool that you may want to use to see how your name or brand name, is fairing in the social media-sphere. SocialMentions.com measures the strength, sentiment, passion and reach of keywords that you can type in to the site. Check out our post on Online Personals Watch on the 15th of December for the results that we got when we typed in 17 different internet dating brand names. eHarmony, Gaydar, and Hotornot were the strongest of the brands we measure, meaning they were the most likely to be being talked about at any one time. Zoosk was by far the most likely brand to have people saying nice things about them, apparently. Anyway, give it a shot, measure your social media prowess at SocialMention.com, and post your comments on OPW pretty please. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this tool, and any other social media monitoring tools you know of.
Need a new COO? Sandra Williamson, the former COO of TRUE is on the market. We’ve listed her email and Linkedin contact on OPW so you can contact her directly.
Now for hookups and Breakups!
Spark Networks has launched spark.com as an amalgamation of American Singles and date.ca and they’ve thrown in some magic potion. A compulsory compatibility test. All members must take a free Color Code Personality Test. Online Personals Watch is interviewing the president of Spark Networks and the interview will run in January. We’ll be asking about this new site, and asking about the sites that they acquired, Engage.com and Hurrydate.com. So, watch this space.
London based development partnership Luvdoo teamed up with Redberry Digital Agency to launch a twitter based dating service called Luvtweets. Luvtweets allows users to define themselves in their own terms; using a user defined tagging system rather than the traditional pre-defined criteria of dating sites. The service intends to utilize the Twitter API and include new functionality to tackle some of the documented issues with current online dating services.
Blackbox Republic has joined forces with several venues around the world such as Vibe Entertainment, Concept Entertainment, Subspace, Skin, and Paradise lounge to present entertainment features to it s members. In exchange, entertainment partners will gain access to the “create once, promote everywhere” option. This value will greatly reduce the investment of time needed to post event details on several locations across the web. Just in case you missed the announcement, Blackbox Republic just recently debuted as a “label free” dating website.
As a reminder, the voting for the iDate awards is now also open! You have until January 7th to get your voting in. Let your voice be heard. Submit your picks for the best dating site, best matchmaker, best dating software provider, most innovative company and more. Awards will be handed out in a special ceremony on Jan. 28 in Miami.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. To listen to our interview with the the Founder and CEO of Manhunt.net Jonathan Crutchley and Adam Segel, head over to OPW1.com.
This edition of Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by messmo Media. Make real money with mobile dating. Talk to Brendan O’Kane of messmo media.
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.