Internet Dating Video News Summaries

Internet Dating Video News Summary #22

OPW Weekly News Roundup - December 10th, 2009 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.

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.

Internet Dating Video News Summary #14

OPW Weekly News Summary - October 23rd, 2009 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.

Niche online dating network People Media has received recognition for its remarkable revenue growth from Deloitte LLP. Deloitte ranked People Media #359 on its annual Technology Fast 500 list. This list measures the fastest-growing technology companies in North America. 

Rankings are based on the percentage of annual fiscal revenue growth over the past five years. During this period, People Media grew 342 percent. Interest in targeted dating sites has exploded over the last several years. People Media’s 27 dating sites each cater to a particular community, from seniors to single parents and numerous religious affiliations.

Congratulations to social dating site, Zoosk, for reaching the big four-oh… that is, 40 million users on its service. Here are some quick stats about Zoosk. The site launched in 2007 and now draws around 12 million unique visitors per month. The revenue run rate at Zoosk is 30 million dollars, and the company expects revenue for 2009 to be between 18 and 20 million dollars.

Zoosk has been able to dominate the dating sector on networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo against a backdrop of competitors which include Hotornot, Speeddate.com, and Are You Interested.

Congratulations also go out to the newly-launched eLove.com. The service offers both online dating AND traditional matchmaking. eLove is actually running on the LoveAccess platform. The site has been revamped and soft launched and offers video profiles and both text and audio chat among other things. Those desiring more personalized attention can get help from one of eLove’s matchmakers. Users decide which mode of service they want to use: online dating, or the higher end matchmaking services.

Time now for our hook-ups and break-ups segment. Here’s a rundown of the new partnerships that were announced this week:

- Sugar daddy dating site SugarDaddyForMe now offer voice and SMS features. These services will be powered by the anonymous mobile calling platform, IcallU, by Swissmatch.

- Match renewed its distribution contract with Australia’s nine-msn network. The agreement was started in 2008 and has been renewed for 3 years, no less

- MSN Russia, meanwhile, will be partnering with Mamba, the country’s largest Internet dating company. Mamba also owns a white label system that brings together more than 20,000 partners.

- AARP, the largest organization for Americans 50 and over, has hired Dr. Pepper Schwartz to be their new Love & Relationships expert. Dr. Schwartz is also a consultant for the personality profiling site, Perfectmatch.

This hook-up really caught my attention because I think it’s about time AARP teamed up with a personality profiling dating site and ran their own co-branded site. I wonder if we will soon see an AARP and PerfectMatch co-brand?

As for this week’s break-ups, Australian dating network Cupid Media is breaking up with… it’s members? Cupid Media has been rejecting 3,000 profiles a day. The service believes these accounts have been created by fraudsters trying to dupe singles. Actually, all dating sites have a problem with this sort of thing. So the dating industry reviews profiles, uses tools like iovation and often blocks countries, wholesale.

That’s all for this week’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.

Internet Dating News Briefing #2

Online Personals Watch News Summary #2, April 10, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

Hello, and welcome to the Friday April 10th 2009 edition of Online Personals Watch’s Weekly News Roundup. Bonjo Kiffinti, we're in sunny Malta today. I’m Mark Brooks, and this is what made industry news this week.

UK newspaper, The Daily Mail recently reported that due to the economic downturn, more and more people are turning to websites offering extramarital affairs as a means of stress relief. MarriedAndLooking is one such site that has seen a 25% increase in membership in the last 6 months. Site founder David Rees stated that since his site launched 8 years ago, infidelity has gone from being a niche market to verging on mainstream. Despite the increase in the numbers of married people looking for affairs, divorce rates are also down during the recession as many people cannot afford to make it on their own, and its cheaper to keep 'em.

A report from consultancy Plus Eight Star Ltd on virtual worlds in Asia has revealed that two Korean and two Japanese companies made over $500 million in 2008 through the sale of virtual goods on their websites. These virtual goods are primarily used to customize the user’s avatar or environment in the virtual world. Meanwhile, Charles Hudson, who runs the Virtual Goods Summit, put the market for virtual goods in the USA at $200 million. That's just 1/25th of the market in Asia, according to the blog, Virtual Goods News.  How much is your dating site making off virtual good today?  Anyone want some nice virtual roses? Your comments please.

According to Jupiter Research, the mobile dating and mobile chatroom market is predicted to grow to as much as $1.4 billion by 2013. Match.com and SNAP Interactive recently launched applications for the iPhone, which will help users find more dates on the go. SNAP’s Facebook platform “Are You Interested” already has more than 13 million users. Keep your eyes on Zoosk, Are You Interested, HotorNot and the Match applications, and lets see what they start doing with virtual currency.

On advertising, The Center for Media Research conducted a study using 30 second TV ads, full-page 4-color magazine ads and Internet banner ads along with eye-tracking software to determine if and how Internet ads were actually seen by respondents. They found that net recall of TV ads was almost twice that of magazine ads.  And the banner ads? Net recall of magazine ads was almost three times that of Internet banners and fully respondants didn't see 63% of the banner ads on the sites that they visited.  Though researchers noted that their sample sizes were relatively small, this warrants some consideration as you decide the best way to market your site. No wonder eHarmony and Match are doing so much offline advertising.

Events. Lock and Key Events seem to be having continued success, despite the state of the economy. These parties, which give women necklaces with small locks and give men necklaces with small keys, provide a great ice breaker and a chance to meet dozens of singles in a short period of time. No scientific or compatibility measures are used to match up the singles. It’s more about the luck of the draw and chemistry, and being outgoing enough to find the person who has your matching lock or key. Once attendees find their match, they turn in their lock and key for a new set, and they get a raffle ticket, which can win them prizes such as spa treatments or airline tickets. Events cost between $20 and $35, and have sprung in about 60 cities across the U.S.A.  Events are a double edged sword.  They can really help you get people talking, but if you do anything less than a fantastic event, well, mediocre events will only end up behind detrimental to your brand and a considerable drain on your time. What I really like about real world events is that you can get free advertising your site on the countless free events calendars online and in local newspapers. Its a very granular advertising approach, but its free, which is great for smaller dating sites scratching to get to critical mass. Meanwhile, virtual events are doing well. SpeedDate.com and Woome.com are continuing to grow consistently.  These sites allow users to take do first dates online by using web cams and instant messaging. Its time we saw the top tier sites offer online speeddating services, again. Match tried it back in 2004. They also offered real world events, but they pulled both soon after Jim Safka came on board and had Match focused on their core business in 2004.  

A new European survey by Parship found that when it comes to love, women are 27% more choosy than men, and Irish women are the fussiest of the bunch. However, British men, were found to be the least fussy. 71% of British men valued  brains, while 71% of zee  French men place d a higher importance on beauty than brains. They also found that 40% of women would not date a man who is unemployed, which is bad news in this economy, and 20% of women now expect their partner to earn more money than they do.

That’s all for this week’s edition of OPW’s Weekly 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 served up daily. I’m Mark Brooks, il journata i-taeb, from Malta.