Internet Dating Video News Summaries

Internet Dating Video News Summary #30

Hello, and welcome to Online Personals 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 sponsored by the Internet Dating Executive Alliance.

Online dating giant PlentyofFish.com is continuing to grow rapidly. The site reported that they have passed 105 million monthly logins just this month, with an average of up to 380,000 emails an hour sent between users. The latest Comscore numbers show that PlentyofFish is bigger than all of Match.com and Meetic properties combined worldwide.

Speaking of Match.com, the website recently signed an agreement to acquire Singlesnet. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. However, Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com said "while Singlesnet’s traffic is currently in decline, we believe we can reverse that trend, increase the site’s profitability, and improve the overall user experience. Adrian Ong, who joined Match.com from Soulmates Technology, after the company was acquired, will be assuming the responsibility for Singlesnet.

Singlesnet’s traffic is down from over 7 million uniques a month in January of 2009 to 4.5 million a month in January of 2010. Singlesnet has also been rogue-ish in its marketing tactics in the past, so it’s good that Match.com is taking the website under its wing. Perhaps they can polish the site up and make it less of an embarrassment to the internet dating theme.

Moving on, online dating is booming in Germany. According to Nielsen, 7.5 Million German Internet users visited at least one dating site in January of 2010. Parship, Elitepartner, and Friendscout24 accounted for 16.4% of the overall active Internet users in Germany. Friendscout24 spent 39.8M Eur in advertising last year, and acquired 1.1m unique users in January of this year, followed by ElitePartner with 893,000 uniques, and FlirtCafe with 809,000 uniques.

Hot off the press, Smartdate.com has just raised 2.2 million Euros which is the largest seed round we’ve heard of in a while. The sites uses Facebook connect to connect with user profiles, and is headed by industry veteran Fabrice le Parc who previously worked with be2. He launched be2 in France, and Benelux, and worked on a French and a US reality dating show in the past.

While business is booming in Germany, dating site scams are on the rise in Australia. Australians reported losses of ~$70M to fraud and swindling to the consumer watchdog last year. However, real losses could in fact be much higher. Scams linked to dating sites were up by 30%. More than 12,000 people lost between 1 to $10,000. Two Australians actually lost more than $10M.

A new virtual dating service known as Weopia.com just recently launched. The service is intended to over shadow the bad rap of the awkward first date. Singles won’t have to click on Weopia to find a date, they just have to send in their avatars to Weopia to partake in a virtual date, which should help determine their compatibility levels.

Now for hookups and breakups!

LavaLife is being shopped by its owner, online marketer, Vertrue. Vertrue paid $113.9M initially to acquire Lavalife in 2004. Vertrue itself was actually bought out by private equity firms, One Equity Partners, Brencourt Investors, and Rho Ventures for $855M in 2007. Lavalife’s web properties have supposedlly been on the block for about four months.

HerWay.com partnered up with Honesty Online to allow members to share authenticated identity info with other members. The partnership should make it safer for singles on HerWay.com to meet each other in person.

Herway.com isn’t alone in its attempts to protect women. Maryland’s Legislation is trying to pass a Bill that might require men of Maryland who date, or otherwise communicate with foreign women to visit their local police department. If the bill is passed, it would require online dating sites to obtain a copy of police records and fingerprints for men who are citizens of Maryland, and disclose the records to female clients. Violation of the Bill could lead to a misdemeanor. Conviction could result in a fine not exceeding $12,000, or imprisonment not exceeding 1 year, if not both.

Last but not least, Harvard Professor, Michael Norton will be speaking at the Los Angeles Internet Dating conference in June. Norton is known for works such as The Counterfeit Self and The IKEA Effect. His work has been published in a number of leading academic journals, and several media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall street Journal, and the Washington Post. Norton’s presentation at the conference will discuss the advantages of virtual dating in the world of online dating.

This edition of Online Personals Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by the Internet Dating Executive Alliance who are helping the internet dating industry grow and prosper.

That’s all for this week’s news roundup. To check out our interview with Alex Mehr, CEO of Zoosk, head over to OPW1.com. Next up, an interview with the CEO of Weopia.com. 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 #18

OPW Weekly News Roundup - Nov 19th, 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 iovation.

SNAP Interactive, which creates online dating applications for social networks, has released their third quarter results. The company had their seventh consecutive quarter of operational profit. In fact, revenue rose to more than $800,000, as compared to $784,000 the quarter prior.

What’s next for SNAP? According to CNN, SNAP president and CEO Clifford Lerner said “We are aggressively pursuing non-advertising based monetization opportunities, including virtual gifts and subscriptions. We plan to roll out these features to our user base over the next several months."

Here are some fast facts on SNAP: the company currently has 3 million monthly active users. SNAP’s chief dating application, “Are You Interested,” is available at areyouinterested.com, on Facebook and through an iPhone application.

Nielsen has released their European online dating rankings for October. Results indicate C-date is continuing to grow in popularity. The casual dating site maintained its #1 position in Spain with 449,000 unique visitors. However, C-date also grabbed third place in both France and Switzerland after not making the top three in either country in September.

In the U.K., free dating site PlentyofFish stayed on top with a 543,000 unique visitors. FriendsReunitedDating jumped up a spot to #2 with 514,000 unique visitors, while the Match.com Network had 452,000 unique visitors and was able to push DatingDirect out of the top three for October.

Also in European online dating news, Gráinne Barry & Kevin Greene, the team behind popular Irish dating site AnotherFriend.com, have opened up their checkbooks to acquire the U.K. dating site MakeFriendsOnline.com for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2001, MakeFriendsOnline at times has been ranked among the top dating sites in the U.K.

Barry and Greene already have over 60% percent of the Irish online dating market, thanks to AnotherFriend.com.

In both Europe and North America, the cougar craze is in full swing. It seems there's no shortage of younger men looking to date older women and vice versa. More than 300,000 people have signed up for dating site CougarLife.com since it launched last February. CougarLife is a part of online dating network Avid Life Media, which also runs affairs site Ashley Madison. Avid Life Media president Noel Biderman told the Ottawa Citizen that CougarLife is “poised to make millions. I don't think we've ever launched anything with this much traction this soon." 

At CougarLife, young men slightly outnumber older women 52% to 48%. British online dating service, Parship, recently conducted their own cougar dating study. Their findings showed around 20% of men in their 20s and 30s said they would date an older woman.

All you affiliates out there, this next item is for you. The Affiliate Convention will be held Dec. 3-4 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. Registration for affiliates is complimentary. This business conference and expo will cover affiliate marketing and advertising methods. The Affiliate Convention is produced by the same company that runs the Internet Dating Conference and Social Networking Conference events.

Finally, is eHarmony responsible for 2% of marriages in the United States? The Advertising Standards Authority is now claiming this percentage may be inaccurate. According to U.K. magazine MarketingWeek, eHarmony said the 2% marriage rate was extrapolated from an online study that drew 7,000 participants. The study was conducted by an independent market research company. However, the Advertising Standards Authority says eHarmony’s 2% figure is misleading, because it suggests a definitive number of marriages based upon a sole online study from several years ago.

That’s all for this week’s news roundup. For more online dating headlines and to read our interview with messmo CEO Brendan O’Kane, go to OPW1.com. There, you’ll also find our newly-compiled list of Twitter accounts from various online dating companies along with an update on open jobs at internet dating companies around the world.

This edition of Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by Iovation. Iovation, helping companies expose cybercriminals and fight fraud with device reputation.

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 #15

OPW Weekly News Summary - Oct 29th, 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 internet dating industry.

Match and Chemistry’s parent company, IAC, had a profitable third quarter, thanks to its asset sales. Yet revenue from Match and IAC’s dating sites dropped by $13 million to 81 million dollars. IAC attributed the decline to the absence of Match Europe, which was sold to French competitor Meetic last June. One bright spot for Match? Paid subscriptions grew by five percent to 1.4 million. Why is this? Match tell me it's basically because they're better at targetting users. Case in point, its interesting how they blanketed the Oodle.com classifieds site recently. Its tough for any other dating site to get a shoe-in on Oodle now that they've loaded 700,000 profiles from Match.com.

I talked with Merger Market this week about the possibility that FriendFinder Networks could sell its non-core businesses before the end of this year. It really was quite hypothetical. Sure, its unlikely but its possible. Properties that don't really fit the fold include Gradfinder and BigChurch. FriendFinder filed for an IPO last December in hopes of raising up to 460 million dollars to pay off its debts.

Noel Biderman runs Ashley Madison. He thinks FriendFinder would be wise to attempt to sell its international properties to companies focused on a particular geographic region. i.e. FriendFinder’s Latino dating site, Amigos, might have better success in the hands of a company concentrating solely on the Latino market. FriendFinder’s sites could bring in between 7x to 8x EBITDA, according to Noel.

Also in international news, statistics from September show singles in the U.K., Spain and Switzerland have had a change of heart regarding their favorite dating sites.

Here is a comparison of Nielsen’s U.K. unique audience rankings from this past August and September.

U.K., Nielsen Online/Unique Audience
August 2009

1. Friends Reunited Dating (605,000)
2. PlentyofFish (574,000)
3. Match (468,000)  

September 2009

1. PlentyofFish (576,000) 
2. DatingDirect.com (520,000)
3. Friends Reunited Dating (498,000)

As you can see, former #1 Friends Reunited Dating fell to third place after it lost 100,000 uniques visitors a month points in just a month. This drop-off allowed PlentyofFish at 576,000 uniques to move into the top spot, even though the free dating site’s unique audience ranking only improved by two points from August.

PlentyofFish also finished on top of comScore’s U.K. rankings for September. They estimated the site had 794,000 unique visitors. Why the difference between the comScore and Nielsen numbers? Well, I've run numbers with comScore and Nielson as far back as 2003 and seen as much as an order of magnitude difference between them. The differences are a lot less these days. Its really a matter of how from where they pull their numbers, and how they do their math. Ultimately, the best bet is to draw your conclusions on rankings from multiple competitive intelligence sources. Which is why I list them at Markslist.com. Just type in that domain and you'll see the latest rankings each month.

DateTheUK came in second to Plentyoffish.com in the UK with 733,000 uniques. Actually DateTheUK’s parent company, EasyDate, was honored this week by Deloitte as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the U.K. EasyDate’s revenue increased 10x from 2004 to 2008. Deloitte ranked EasyDate at #30 on their annual Technology Fast 50 list for the U.K.

As mentioned earlier, there’s also a new #1 dating site in Spain, according to Nielsen.

Spain, Nielsen Online/Unique Audience
August 2009

1. FriendScout24 (626,000)
2. Meetic (442,000)
3. TeEncontre.com (305,000)

September 2009

1. C-Date (561,000)
2. Meetic (478,000)
3. Easyflirt (466,000)

Casual dating site C-Date is now in first place after not even being ranked in the top three last month. C-Date saw 561,000 uniques in Spain for September.

FriendScout24 may have lost its #1 ranking in Spain, but the site did better over in Switzerland.

Switzerland, Nielsen Online/Unique Audience
August 2009

1. Parship (72,000)
2. FriendScout24 (67,000)
3. Swissfriends.ch (54,000)

September 2009

1. FriendScout24 (73,000)
2. Swissfriends.ch (65,000)
3. Parship (64,000) 

FriendScout24 grabbed the top spot with 73,000 uniques. Last month’s #1, Parship, fell to #3 with a 64,000 unique visitors in September.

Also of note: In Germany, eDarling and be2 replaced Loomin.de and Bildkontakte.de at #2 and #3, respectively.

Interestingly, many dating sites in Europe saw a general decline in their unique audience numbers during the month of September.

I asked comScore how many people visit dating sites worldwide and they were kind enough to share their latest worldwide number. In August 2009 there were 113 million unique visitors to dating sites around the world. Well there you have it. That's 113 million uniques. To put that number in perspective. That's more than the entire population of England, Spain and Portugal combined.

For more information, visit OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and click on the International Ranking sections, or you can just visit Markslist.com to forward into the rankings.

Over in China, there are more than 100 matchmaking Web sites. However, according to e-commerce site Alibaba.com, less than 10 Chinese matchmaking site have over a million subscribers. China's largest matchmaking site is currently Zhenai.com, which has 20 million registered users. The site’s membership plans range from free to $879 per year. iResearch predicts the overall online dating market in China in 2010 will reach 140 million users, generating approximately 176 million dollars.

Finally, you may have noticed that the Internet Dating Conference has a had a design refresh. Did you also notice the new iDate Awards. Nominations are now open. Members of the Internet Dating Executive Alliance will be nominating most of the companies over the next couple of weeks. You can also nominate companies that you feel are the best in category. There are 11 categories this year. Please go to iDateAwards.com to find out more. I'll be covering this more next week.

This edition of Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by Iovation. Iovation, helping the internet dating industry to work together to beat scammers expose cybercriminals and fight fraud with device reputation.

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.