Check out the landing page, very un-POF in terms of style. Looks nice. Two things jumped out at me. First, they claim that 30% of everyone on the web has a dating profile. I cannot believe that number, where did that come from?

Second, look at the signup form. They go against the usual behavior of asking for 1-3 fields and then asking for more on the next page. Love to know what the conversion rate for this is.

I was expecting some sort of new-age site with a woman doing yoga or meditating. Instead, I end of on a site dedicated to smokers. Now that is actually an interesting and enormous niche, but oh the betrayal.

I looked at the Terms and Conditions page and I find:

“The Site and the Service are operated by White Label Dating Incorporated, a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, whose registered office is 425 Boylston Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02116. Communications relating to the Site or Service should be sent to…”

I used to live near Boyleston street in Boston. Hey WLD, when did you get an office in Boston?

These redirects are a pack of lies. Why would anyone sign up for a site they didn’t click a link for? (Maybe a lot and this is why they do this?). Regardless, this commonplace trickery drives me crazy. The disconnect between trust and advertising and revenue, it’s quite ugly in the dating industry and is never going to stop for the tier 2 and tier 3 players as long as the tier 1 companies continue to dominate.

An analyst at Insider Monkey had to say this about the original post.

So, I believe there are obvious secular tailwinds benefiting online dating companies. Yet, Tilson’s argument for Spark Networks falls flat based on one of his basic premises.

Tilson argues that JDate is an established business that offers consistent cash flow; meanwhile, Christian Mingle offers great growth. Yet Tilson vastly exaggerates Christian Mingle’s potential.

Specifically, he states that Christian Mingle is aimed at a community over 30 times greater than JDate’s. Based on this calculation, Tilson appears to be using US census data for the number of Jews and Christians living in the United States.

It is absurd to believe that Christian Mingle could capture the Christian dating community the way JDate has captured the Jewish one.

The Jewish community is a minority in the US, while Christians are the overwhelming majority (about 2% compared to 76%). An American, then, going on any given dating website (Match, Chemistry, etc.)  is likely to find a large number of possible Christian matches. Thus, there is no real incentive for a Christian to opt for Christian Mingle over any other dating website.

Instead, Christian Mingle is likely to attract those Christians who are deeply religious — those who would see Christian beliefs as the most desirable trait in a potential mate. It’s hard to gauge how many Americans fit this description, but if one uses the number of Evangelical Christians, it’s a much smaller figure than the one Tilson’s banking on (about 20% of Americans are affiliated with Evangelical churches).

I bet Sam Moorcroft at ChristianCafe.com would beg to differ. Any other Christian dating sites want to chime in on this?

Update: Did someone in the Investor Relations department at Spark Networks eat their Wheaties? Spark Networks initiated with an Outperform at William Blair, Canaccord Genuity Initiates Spark Networks at Buy. $10 range cited. Spark shares closed Monday up 56 cents, or more than 7 percent, to $8.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. That’s the highest close for Spark Networks’ stock since the company went public in 2006.

Affiliate Summit, the premier affiliate marketing conference, was founded by Missy Ward and Shawn Collins in 2003 for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers.

Affiliate Summit East 2013 is taking place August 18-20, 2013 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.This three day conference includes an exhibit hall with affiliates, merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts.

Book Tickets now.

Then things get weird. Investor Whitney Tilson:

If Netflix is the next Amazon, who will be the next Netflix?

It could be Spark Networks (NYSE: LOV), which owns and operates JDate and Christian Mingle.

“I said, ‘This is my next Netflix,’” said Tilson, recalling his speech at the Eighth Annual Spring Value Investing Congress. “It’s an Internet-based company with a lot of upside optionality that is sacrificing current profits and taking all of the profits from an existing cash cow business and [pouring] it into a growth opportunity.”

In that sense, Tilson said that it is “very much like Netflix.”

“But this is a much, much smaller company,” he said. “It only has about a $170 million market cap. Basically it’s two websites — they’re almost identical websites targeting two different markets. JDate targets Jewish singles who are looking to meet other Jewish singles. That business has been around for well over a decade and has had a 90 percent or higher contribution margin for the last 11 years running, but it hasn’t grown. It is the very definition of a beautiful cash cow. JDate is worth [Spark's] entire market cap.”

Then he says that Facebook could purchase Spark Networks. As if that wasn’t improbable enough, he goes on to say that IAC (owner of Match.com), Yahoo and Google are potential acquirers.

IAC, well sure, but if you look at past IAC dating site deals, Spark Networks’ financials don’t appear similar to those of companies that IAC has acquired. Go look at the financials for the full picture.

But Yahoo and Google? Yahoo outsourced it’s dating to Match years ago and Google is in the midst of a big refocus, shuttering a number of well-liked services like Google Reader.

Interesting to see long-time shareholder Great Hill Investments sell off 2.8 million shares (or 3.5M depending on what you read) of Spark Networks stock this week. Great Hill purchased 6 million shares back in 2006.

Via Whitney Tilson: Facebook, IAC Takeover Target Could Be the Next Netflix.

When is HowAboutWe going to do a deal with Foursquare? Check-in, rich location data and a slick recommendation service.

SimpleWash will help you purge your Facebook account of content that single people, employers and mom may not approve of.

Lulu is the smart girls’ app for private recommendations and reviews on guys.

How ‘love drugs’ may one day help couples save failing relationships.

Q&A with Jason Chuck, eHarmony’s new Vice President, International.

Tinder (from IAC, Match.com’s parent company) is nice UI if you’re 24 and live in NYC, otherwise try something else. 4 Design Lessons From Tinder.

Germany’s eDarling buys itself back from eHarmony. eHarmony fired over 100 people and added new COO, Armen Avedissian, a new CTO, Thod Nguyen, Vice President of Customer Experience, Grant Langston and Vice President of Matching, Steve Carter.

FriendFinder Networks Inc. Reports Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Year End 2012. “We continue to experience pockets of success throughout our operations.” They are still losing money, $50 million for 2012. As of December 31, 2012, the Company had outstanding principal debt of $521.8 million. The financial wizards, they have a huge chest of smoke and mirrors and financial instruments to work with. It’s p0rn money and it’s riddled with debt. Well AFF has a new interface…

FriendFinder is missing out on this, Find hot local cats in your area with Adult Cat Finder.

MeetMe Management Discusses Q1 2013 Results.

Spark Networks Q1 2013 Results.

Look at this, 289 dating companies on AngelList looking for funding, I’m working with several of them.

April Fool’s joke but this would be amazing: Kayak.com Launches Online Dating Search.

Facebook Dominates Social Logins — But Google Is Closing The Gap.

Comedy Gold: OkCupid’s CEO Sam Yagan recently sat down with the Commonwealth Club to talk about the site’s success and offered some insight on another intriguing data-driven topic: “would you be willing to sleep with someone on the first date?” The discussion about correlated questions are great! So ladies, do you like the taste of beer?

Assuming this is the last interview with Mandy Ginsberg before she left Match for Tutor.com.

Here’s a dating sim and here’s another one.

Profile photos are usually pretty bad, Pixtr can fix that. They make bad profiles look good, and more un-authentic at the same time. This is a terrible idea but dating sites should offer this as a $5/month feature.

Headphones detect user’s mood. Someone do this for dating. See also Mindwave.

Face Recognition Study.

PUA alert: This video is so much better than the usual dating site crap that looks like it was produced in a dorm room on Saturday morning at 6am.

2Date4Love describes itself as the site for “people who cannot engage in sexual intercourse to meet and experience love, companionship and intimacy at its deepest level. Someone, explain.

Perhaps I need more coffee, but I am confused about the new eHarmony paywalls. It’s free to communicate but I have to pay $3.95 a month to see people’s photos. Faceless people messaging and responding to each other for free? Then pay up to $50/month to be able to see their faces? When the value proposition is posed like that, feels strange. If any dating startup said that to me, I’d say let’s think long and hard about this decision. But it’s eHarmony, and they are in the middle of a resurrection.

The inexpensive price is probably because the account I logged into is very old. The pricing was $50/month when I logged in again.

Look at that, a 24-month plan. I have never seen this before. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? Somebody clicking 24-months and letting out a deep sigh. Great for revenue though. Looks like that was a test, I only see 12-month plans now.

When I signed up for the special $3/month prices, the shopping cart says:

You are now an eHarmony member and can begin communicating with your matches.

The home page says communicating is free. This is a tiny detail, but it’s the kind of thing I see all the time. Sloppy contextual coding oversight.

The WhatIf feature: They relax your search criteria to bring you more matches that might not be exactly what you *think* you are looking for. Everybody does this already, but eHarmony branded an SQL query and turned it into it’s own feature.

Here’s a look at the new eHarmony “Magazine Spread” layout. Almost feels too over-designed. Big brilliant profiles are great, but the matching remains undifferentiated from Match or POF or OkCupid, at least from my perspective. Favorite pets, sports teams, food books, whatever. These datapoints are far less important than things like energetic compatibility and other more modern matching attributes.

Looking at Eharmony profiles now take 4-clicks to fully navigate. Feels like pages are pre-fetched which is makes it feel fast. Profile home page is a big and empty, looks terrible until they get people uploading large Facebook profile photo-sized giant photos. The system rejected my Grumpy Cat photo. Not sure if that was machine-based or some $2/hour person in the Philippines that caught it quickly.

There is so much going on here. Like most changes to sites, maybe this will grow on people. Feels really crowded and awkward and needs a lot more UX work. Things I can’t live without, might as well put a shout-out to OkCupid there.

Looks like they got some inspiration from OkCupid here as well. I wonder if/how the “I love to get hammered before noon” datapoint worked into the 29 dimensions of compatibility.

It’s going to take a few days to get used to this layout. I’m kind of bummed to see EH jump on the “Let’s ask a ton of questions” bandwagon. The Q&A section is seriously broken right now, which is surprising given the systems EH has in place to manage millions of users. If it leads to better matches, great. If not, it’s just more stuff to be badgered to fill out just like on every other site.

In closing, I wonder how readers perceive eHarmony as being different from Match besides the fact that eHarmony emails you your matches and there is no search functionality.

Do people prefer to have matches emailed to them and no search, or do you like to go crazy with the advanced search to pinpoint your matches?

Is the dating world splitting up into people who prefer one method of matching over another?

I love this POF ad. All text, written in the first person, features bad grammar and I bet it’s going to drive a ton of signups.

While technically not a dating site, I received an email from Seekbromance and had to give them a shout-out. Yeah dude, this is clearly gonna be the ODI  Site Of the Week.

What a great idea. Dudes that need more dude friends. Gay dudes, straight dudes, regular dudes, any kind of dude now has a place to go find a bro to hang with. I know I could us it, 95% of my friends are women. Not enough cool bros in my life. Yeah brah! Ok enough of that.

Welcome to the Internet’s first and best site for seeking bromance. We’re all about what every dude wants: posse enlargement!

Whether you just moved to a new city, or you want some more players at your weekly poker night, or you just want to expand your posse and make friends online, seekBromance.com is for you. It’s easy to find bromance when you make a new platonic male friend.

Real men go on man dates: it’s how they make male friends.

Not sure how hot the business is going to get, but guys finding new guys to hang out with is really difficult after you turn 35 or so. Everyone is travelling for work, making babies or stuck at home taking care of said babies. Bring on the bromance.

First, the eHarmony commercial. Same old music from 7 years ago, again featuring Dr. Neil Clark Warren who is now creeping around couples obviously past the initial first several dates, he didn’t show up in any bedroom scenes.

With this week’s announcement that Martha Stewart’s joined Match, you know SNL was going to do something. This is hilarious and slightly NSFW. Match got so much free advertising this week, brilliant. They couldn’t buy this kind of exposure (or did they?)

Which do you think is going to drive more signups?