Online Dating Insider

Online Dating Insider Update 11-22-09

dave@digicraft.com — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:11:57 +0000

I had a super first trip to Toronto last weekend where I spoke at an FICP conference about social media and social tools. Thanks to Kris Covino at Date.com for showing me around town and taking me out for a great lunch. I got to meet up with a few other people but unfortunately wasn’t able to meet everyone I wanted to (sorry Sam!)

Love this Google/Match.com mashup, courtesy of Adam Richardson.

Skout is using Crowdflower to manage user created content. Crowdflower is a very cool company which, among other things, is built on top of Amazon Turk. Crowdsourcing done right.

A though for the day: The problem with hosted white label dating solutions is that you get what you get, can’t change course midstream, as often happens with custom development. The services which allow customers to change around the look and feel, features and offer the best marketing advice and back-end CRM tools is going to win. There are six or so white label providers out there and a few more on the way. The market is not even getting started yet, expecting many small and mid-tier sites to move to private label solutions, but only if marketing and CRM systems advice are strong, it’s the missing piece.

Tired of Farmville? Try FarmersOnly. I’ve lived in the suburbs or cities all my life and I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what goes on in a feed store, but singles who lead the flannel life might want to check out FarmersOnly.com.

Foursquare Lets Others Play With Its API. Dating sites, take advantage of this!

Patrick Perrine, great, guy, past clients, owner of the original gay eHarmony site, myPartner.com, has written a second book, Sex vs. Love: The Ultimate Showdown.

Unlike my first book, Bringing Perfect Back, Sex vs Love (SvL) is written for men, women, gay or straight! It is an easy read, with a fun and insightful look into sex, love and relationships as they exist today. SvL deconstructs and compartmentalizes sex, love and relationships in a way that helps the reader understand their individual desires and how one can go about fulfilling them through a multitude of satisfying ways.

I hope you enjoy the book, if nothing else, it will make a great stocking stuffer!

Order your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/Sex-vs-Love-Ultimate-Showdown/dp/1439259763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258394033&sr=8-1

Tweaking the blog this week, let me know if you see anything broken.

Online Dating Insider Visits eLove

dave@digicraft.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:00:14 +0000

Yesterday I drove south of Boston to visit eLove formerly known as Together/The Right One. Terry, Paul and I talked about the matchmaking business and how it’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that the offline folks need to start paying attention to online, and vice versa. In this regard, eLove really gets it and has taken steps to bridge the gap between online and off.

eLove has a long-established matchmaking services and over the past few years have made company acquisitions and technology upgrades to make up-selling online daters to matchmaking a fairly seamless process. The real-time CRM system they have in place is far superior to the old way of doing things and the transparency into the process of selling, matching and managing members has greatly improved their efficiency and bottom line.

I sat down with some of the matchmaker team and looked at the profiles they build, the type of information they use to match people and heard some funny and inspiring members stories. Then I got to see the matchmakers at work, the call center and the other back office aspects of the matchmaking business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if online dating companies start working more closely with matchmakers like eLove. Send qualified leads, if they convert, big payout for the dating site. Various major dating sites have looked into working with matchmakers, tried variations on the theme (Match Platinum), but as is often the case, online doesn’t get offline and the services appear to have languished. Someone at Match correct me if my assumption is incorrect.

I’d love to hear what dating sites have to say about working with offline matchmakers. Comments or privately. Is this something you would like to learn more about, get clarification on how it works and the benefits? Maybe partnerships with offline are better for niche or smaller sites, where a few referrals a month would be a huge revenue generator. Or maybe a serious dating site like eHarmony or Chemistry should send a few thousand leads a day to eLove and see how they convert?

Regardless of the size or type of site that could best benefit from working with a matchmaking company, I think both sides need to start talking more seriously to see how they can work together.

Thanks to eLove for the fascinating look into the world of matchmaking and sharing how you do business.

Dog Lovers Dating Site For Sale

dave@digicraft.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:07:30 +0000

For Sale: online dating site. Launched in 2006, the world’s first dog lovers dating site was born with a mission to bring single people together from all over the world who shared a passion for dogs.

Niche: Dog lovers.

Potential Market size: 43 million single dog lovers in the US alone.

Membership: Thousands of active members.

Revenue model: Subscription based, free to join.

Subscription fee: $9.95 per month recurring (less for 3 month, 6 month and 12 month subscriptions)

Why selling: Owner fell in love with a member, buying a home together!

SEO: Google Search Engine Ranking – First page, first and second positions on Google search result for “dog lovers dating” and “dating for dog lovers”. First page, ninth position on Google search results for “dog lovers”.

Background Information: Owner started site after tragic early death of their dog Monty. Identified importance of sharing life with another dog lover – someone who could understand exactly what it felt like to love and to lose a dog.

This is a great opportunity for an entrepreneur with marketing skills and the resources to dominate this niche with the site.

Addressing Expressions of Interest: If you are interested in this opportunity and would like more information please email monty3532@googlemail.com.

Online Dating Insider Twitter Feed Now Featuring Lists

dave@digicraft.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:16:59 +0000

Instead of posting link-dumps to the blog every few days, notable nuggets of news will be published to @datinginsider. Fear not the Twitter-averse, those tweets will show up in the sidebar of Online Dating Insider as well. You can scroll back through the most recent 15 posts and easily click through to the full tweets on Twitter.

If you are involved in the online dating industry in any way, subscribe to @datinginsider and I’ll follow you and if I think you make the cut, I’ll add you to one of the Twitter lists I’ve started. Right now the only lists are marketing , safety & security, and onlinedatingbiz. I’ll probably make some changes to the lists, but this is a solid step in the general direction of posting long-form articles on the blog and moving quick hits to Twitter.

I still need to figure out how to add tweets to the RSS feed, which has not changed from around 1,000 readers for several years now. I’m going to try a new push to see if I can get to 2,000 readers, or maybe everyone interested in the business of online dating is already subscribed and I have to work on attracting other users.

Is DNA Dating Drawing Near, or Still Olfactorily Repugnant

dave@digicraft.com — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:55:44 +0000

Slashdot article New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests. I love /., as it’s called, check out these comments:

Yeah… Submit your DNA profile to a for-profit corporation that lets you do things with it through a web interface. Your info will never be hacked. Your info will never be sold. Your info will never be given to government agencies. Trust us.

I didn’t RTFA, because I can proudly say that I was involved in the group that produced MHC mediated sexual selection studies that ScientificMatch.com uses to claim their rationale. A few comments: First, if Scientific match has any wits about them, they’ll also consider other information. I don’t think anyone’s stupid enough to think there’s a single correlate to mate selection. But the worry about people who are too different is poorly founded – MHC diversity is strongly retained throughout most human lineages.

I believe that DNA testing will possibly be a single component of matching/compatibility systems of the future. I met with ScientificMatch founder Eric Holzle when he was getting started. Nice guy, great market potential, but at a much lower price. ScientificMatch is over $1,000, which is why it’s no getting much traction at the moment.

Holzle didn’t have any success stories to share. In fact, he is planning to phase out the dating part of the site he started in 2007 to market the tests directly to matchmakers and couples. He promises a refund of the $1,995.95 lifetime membership.

Something told me that wasn’t going to work, but he had to try.

Sense2love is going to offer the GeneParter $99 test starting next month. Read the Sense2Love blog. All of a sudden ScientificMatch looks like it’s ridiculously overpriced.

Then there’s Basisnote (translated) and a few others wanting to compete in the space. I’ve talked to most of them.

If you thought the battle to bring identity verification to online dating was brutal, just watch the science guys try to sell their ideas. All of the dating site business development people have heard the pitch, and they politely decline the offer, because it’s going to scare the hell out of their members and create massive branding problems.

Anything that gets in the way of converting visitors to paying members is a waste of time, or so dating sites seem to think. As with background checks, perhaps the DNA dating market is really better suited to Human Resources companies or some other more welcoming market.

Can DNA and science do an end run around tests and matching systems? I don’t know, no one else does either. Maybe OKCupid can offer it to some members and write a blog post about it.

Online Dating Industry Weekly Wrapup 11-13-09

dave@digicraft.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:46:05 +0000

This was a big week for (re)connecting with people, including Hollywood types wanting to partner with dating sites, a dating startup making some serious cash you’ve never heard of, The New York Times, TheDatingLab, Trilibis, DatingHeadshots, Milabra, Intelius (Korbster!), working on a few things with DatingDNA, a few investors, Moonit, and a bunch of people I can’t mention publicly.

On my mind: Sam at BlackBox Republic, Meetmoi, viximo and Thread (which is copying HotorNot/Zoosk/Are You Interested but doing interesting Kismeet-style matchmaking).

Farmville is down on Facebook and I’m afraid my pumpkins and cows are dying! Talk about a time-suck, hours and hours this week setting up my farm. I want to meet the woman who’s farm is next to mine. If online dating was 10% as fun as good social games…

Several dating industry people in town recently, trying to get some face time with them.

OKcupid blog: How Races and Religions Match in Online Dating.Thanks Pemo.

Andrew Chen is reading Viral Loop. If your business relies on driving traffic, read this book.

A New Vibrator by Yves Behar Arouses Our Interest.

Hitwise Internet Dating Rankings Update.
Spark Networks Reports Third Quarter 2009 Financial Results.
Startups: Your Online Dating Site Will Fail.

This is novel, The Girlfriend Calculator, a social networking utility that helps you rate the gals in your life using the personal qualities that are most important to you. The Girlfriend Calculator’s calculating engine is based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, which provides a practical way to rate the choices in any scenario by using a scale of importance for the attributes relative to the choice and then weighing those attributes against the choices.

Reason why this app will either take off like gangbusters or fail:”Theory of Reasoned Action can be represented as B ≈ BI = w1AB + w2SN where B is behavior, BI is behavioral intention, AB is attitude toward behavior, SN is subjective norm, and w1 and w2 are weights representing the importance of each term.”

I’m heading to Toronto on Sunday to speak at a Fidelity conference about social media and social tools. I love the business of online dating and things like social media/viral/games/quizzes/psychology dovetail nicely. I also don’t like to be put in just one box, too much fascinating stuff to learn and people to work with.

Buying and Selling Facebook and Twitter Friends

dave@digicraft.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:12:16 +0000

uSocial.net — the company who recently began selling followers on Twitter — has just launched a new suite of services for Facebook, enabling people to purchase friends and fans depending on their needs.

But why would someone want to buy their friends on Facebook? Well according to company CEO Leon Hill, that’s a very easy question to answer.

“Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool as anyone with a large number of targeted friends or fans can attest to.” Said Hill. “The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in.”

uSocial say they are able to very accurately target friends to be added to a user’s account by interest group or industry and also geographic location, making marketing any product or service to them extremely easy.

Orders are being taken on the site now and more information on uSocial’s new service can be gathered by going to .

My take: if you can’t make friends, buying them is probably not a good idea either. Twitter has supposedly tried to shut them down. You can get lots Twitter and Facebook friends cheap from various eastern bloc hacker botnets if thats your sort of thing. Reminds me of Myspace Friend Trains.

Match.com Application Available on Apple’s App Store

dave@digicraft.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:07:10 +0000

Old news but thought I would re-iterate here. For those of you who haven’t tried a mobile dating application, I was playing around with the Match.com iPhone application and I found it to be quite slick. Fingers crossed it fares better than the various ill-fated Facebook applications Match mucked around with.

The new Match.com application for iPhone and iPod touch provides members with the ability to easily communicate with the more than 15 million Match.com members wherever they go. Match.com members can edit their profile from their iPhone and iPod touch and upload photos to their Match.com profile. Taking full advantage of the built-in location-based technology, the new Match.com application for iPhone and iPod touch has an opt-in feature that gives members the ability to check out other singles in their area, making setting up a first date easy.

Actually, you can’t communicate with 15 million people on Match, only those who have paid a mobile subscription fee. Moving on.

I was confused about the pricing associated with signing up via the mobile app and Match was nice enough to send along the following a while back when the application launched.

Pricing:

- All features of the app are free for everyone to use (including non-subscribers) except the messaging feature. This is the same principle as the site.

- For match.com members with a subscription and a MatchMobile add-on, the iPhone app and all its features are available for free.

- For members with a subscription (but no MatchMobile add-on), i.e. your case, we are offering 60-days of free use of MatchMobile, which should allow members to use all features of the app for 60 days from the day of first use. After 60 days, members will need to purchase the MatchMobile add-on (currently $4.99/month) to use all the features of the app.

- For new Match.com members, i.e. registered members without a paid subscription, all features of the app except messaging (i.e. email) are free to use. For a limited period, Match is offering a 14-day free trial to Match.com and MatchMobile that will allow them to use all features of the app free for 14 days. After this trial period, members will need to purchase a match subscription to continue using all features of the service.

Location-based search feature:

- The app does not disclose your location to other users. Your current location is only used to deliver matches near you (based on their location and/or registered ZIP code).

Important to remember that Match doesn’t disclose your exact location. That is what freaks a lot of people out and keeps them from trying mobile apps. Match does a pretty good job of keeping new users calm about this.

SecondLove Launches On Facebook

dave@digicraft.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:56:53 +0000

A new Facebook dating application has launched called SecondLove (link to Fan page).
The folks at SecondLove were nice enough to describe the application and compare it with Zoosk and Thread.
According to our application description:

“SecondLove connects you with singles from across the world. It gives you excellent quality free online dating experience on Facebook.”

We make it simple and easy for millions of singles to find love on Facebook. The process is quite straight forward:
1. Facebook users ‘install’ SecondLove and create a basic dating profile. Later they can add more details if they want.
2. They can search their potential love using basic or advanced search
3. Users can send messages or winks to others to express their interest
4. Users can also add certain members to their ‘Hot favorites’.
5. SecondLove users can also report other users.

SecondLove is different from Zoosk and Thread in certain ways.
1. Thread is built on the concept of connecting a user with ‘friends-of-friends’, and thus limiting them to a narrow target. We bring the traditional online dating to Facebook in its simplest form. People create a short profile and they can start searching and flirting with other user in no time.
2. SecondLove has more light and clean user interface as compared to Zoosk. Conceptually SecondLove is similar to Zoosk, except that its more simple and only available on Facebook platform.
3. SecondLove tries to blend its user interface as similar to Facebook as possible, where as Zoosk has quite ‘odd’ user interface which doesn’t blend at all with Facebook. Thread is a independent Facebook Connect site, so its a different bread in that sense when compared to Zoosk and SecondLove.

At the moment, we don’t show any ads in SecondLove .We are focusing on better consumer experience and building the user base.

There you have it. Another Facebook dating application. Go get yourself a date.

Twitter Client Tweetdeck Could be Great For Online Dating

dave@digicraft.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:50:36 +0000

I rarely visit the Twitter website directly, the majority of my interaction is via Tweetdeck or various clients on my iPhone. Tweetdeck is fantastic, it even lets me view and post to various Facebook features like activity streams and photos and even Myspace.

Tweetdeck may very well be the first mainstream desktop client we all use to manage our social lives. Which gets me thinking about subscribing to multiple dating sites and having a Tweetdeck-like app to deal with all of the email, notes on members, etc, but that is for another post.