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September 30, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
In August, more than 16 percent of those active on the top five dating sites, including Yahoo Personals and Match.com, were 55 and over, and more than 5 percent were 65 and over, according to Nielsen/NetRatings Inc. That's up from 15 percent in the 55-plus category and 4.8 percent in the over-65 group a year earlier. Overall, the number of people active on top dating sites grew to 22.53 million in August from 22.28 million a year earlier. So much for growth in this segment.
This kind of reporting drives me crazy. "Imatchup.com, a dating site with 2.5 million members, said the number of users 55 and older is rising as much as 30 percent faster than its total population."
Thats like MatchLive stating revenue is up 200% and then shutting down operations a few months later. Where's the baseline? Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Research | Seniors
Posted by Dave Evans
I spent some of the $75 on music in iTunes. While listening to my purchases I decided to research Matchmaker a bit to shed some light on the events which led to their recent acquisition.
1996- Jon Boede -- who wrote the original Matchmaker BBS software -- developed Matchmaker.com. Previously, the Matchmaker system existed as a national network of BBSs began in San Antonio in the early 1980s. Link
2000- Lycos bought Matchmaker from MetroSplash for $44M. At the time, Matchmaker had a community of more than four million members who exchanged close to eight million e-mails each month and enrolled approximately 160,000 new members each month. Rated as the most engaging site of 1999 by the Industry Standard, Matchmaker.com was the stickiest of all online dating sites and the fourth stickiest of all Web sites with users turning an average of 100 pages per month. Link
2002- Terra bought Lycos for $12.5 billion. Ka-ching! Link
Feb 04- Lycos announced that it planned to exit the search space and focus on becoming a social networking site. Mark Stoever, executive vice president of Terra Lycos, U.S., explained that the move would allow Lycos to focus on the company's experience in online dating and publishing. Link
April 04- Lycos was put up for sale in April at an asking price of $170 million with investment bank Lehman Brothers acting as advisers.
August '04- Terra sold most of Lycos to South Korea's top website operator, Daum Communications for $95 million. Daum, the fifth-biggest stock on the junior Kosdaq exchange, said it would finance the deal with 70 billion won of its cash reserves and a bond issue. In the past, Daum also tried to acquire Mail.com. Link
Today- Who knows if Daum will be able to capitalize on MatchMaker. South Korea is a long way from Waltham, MA.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Research
Posted by Dave Evans
Today I was invited to participate in a MatchMaker focus group. When I was initially asked, I mentioned this blog, and my day job running ProfileDoctor.com right up front, to make sure they were ok with that, which they were. I figured that I would provide them with useful feedback while I learn more about what goes on in the minds of singles. I show up, then I'm whisked out of the room, given my $75 bucks and asked to leave. I can understand Matchmaker not wanting anyone from leaking there Secret Sauce(TM), but why did they choose to invite me in the first place? Grumble.
The focus group email stated that it was targeting people who use online dating and use instant messaging daily. Obviously Matchmaker is thinking about rolling out some sort of IM service. How much can that help?
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Rumors
September 29, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Userplane, a pioneer in providing enterprise social software for online communities, today announced that AOSpine.org, a global community of spine specialists, has deployed its Userplane Web Chatâ„¢ – a new multi-user Web text chat room system. AOSpine.org’s online community focuses on improving the quality of medical service provided to spine patients through education, research, documentation and communication. The community connects medical and research professionals from around the world, enabling them to share wisdom and the development of new tools and techniques that improve the outcome and effectiveness of spinal surgery. “The Userplane Web Chat capabilities help AOSpine.org members meet online to discuss case studies, research, best practices and the latest advancements in spine surgery,†said Michael Jones, president, Userplane. “Our entire Community Suite of applications can turn any website into an online community, enabling true interaction among participants, no matter where they’re located.â€Â
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology
Posted by Dave Evans
Back in May we mentionedthe beta ofSoulmatch. Beliefnet, Inc., the leading multifaith spirituality media company and online community, has announced the launch of Soulmatch, a values-based, spiritually-centered online dating service. Soulmatch allows users to decide whether to search by broad values and spiritual criteria or do faith-by-faith matching. Keep an eye out for Beliefnet, they are targeting an extremely lucrative market. I see they have a mobile phone-based online community which could be interesting if they mixed it with Dodgeball. "Show me all [insert faith] within 5 blocks for [coffee, chat, prayer]" for example.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site
September 28, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Incode Corporation today announced its plans today to acquire VanityDate, a special interest online dating service devoted to match-making for exceptionally successful and attractive singles. We covered this recently. Incode expects to close the acquisition of VanityDate in line with the completion of Incode's proposed acquisition by BIB Holdings, Ltd. ("BIB")(OTC Bulletin Board: BIBO). Here's more. Incode believes that community-centric niches are inclined to higher rates of conversion and retention and are therefore capable of lower subscriber acquisition costs and higher rates of return relative to generic services.
Go check out Vanity Date's website. It's "alpha", branded "survival of the prettiest" and of course no dating site should be without the usual photos of tight abs, tattoo'd lips(ouch!) and side cleavage.
In what is obviously a first for a dating site, the home page clearly states, "You must be of legal copulation age" and goes on to say "you most be good looking or you will be rejected." Talk about lowering subscriber acquisition costs, they'll have to pay people to sign up.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
Kurt tells us that:
"A bill is up in Michigan this week in committee to require dating services to require criminal background checks of the people using the service. I am a multi client lobbyist in lansing Michigan who works with the legislature daily. If you know of one of the companies interested in this legislation, pro or con, please pass my name on to them."
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Legal
September 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Care Concepts I, Inc. (AMEX:IBD) announced today that it has rescinded the closing of its acquisition of Media Billing Company, LLC and its wholly owned subsidiary Internet Billing Company LLC ("iBill") that was purchased from Penthouse International, Inc. (Pink Sheets:PHSL) in August 2004. We mentioned the original deal righthere last month. On September 20, 2004, the Company received a notice from the AMEX of its intention to de-list the Company's Common Stock from trading on the exchange, pending a hearing requested by the Company. By agreeing to rescind the closing of the iBill acquisition unless and until the Company has satisfactorily resolved all listing eligibility issues and receives all necessary AMEX approvals related to the iBill transaction, the staff of the AMEX has agreed to withdraw its notice of intent to de-list the Company's securities.
IBill is a payment option on many personals sites and is included in several CGI payment gateways. In March 2004 Penthouse acquired iBill from InterCept, Inc., a NASDAQ NMS company.
Link
This story is juicy, read on for more:
After first telling investors that porn comprised just a minor amount of iBill's business, $259 million (2003 revenue), Intercept finally confessed that porn was actually responsible for 85% of iBill's annual credit card transactions, which once amounted to as much as $720 million.
Adultfyi (not quite worksafe!)
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 24, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Hairmax International Corp.'s (OTCBB:HRMX) management is pleased to announce the development and projected launch of DATEMAX USA.COM. "Find The Date Of Your Dreams" is a state of the art dating portal with many features including mysql databases and live video, instant messaging, multiple image uploading, and more. DATEMAX USA, COM Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary, is expected to compete with other sites like Match.com, Eharmony and UDATE.com, a publicly traded company. Online personals and dating have become the biggest paid content on the Internet, with sales of nearly 215 million for the six months of 2003 and an estimated One Billion by 2005. DATEMAX USA.COM is expected to be operational within thirty days.
You know that I usually try to be fair and balanced, but why announce a dating service before it's launched? Especially when you're in the hair business and have no core competency in the online dating world, unless of course they siphon off talent from other dating services, which we now know doesn't always happen according to plans.
If they announce a live event unit like speed dating we'll know to start the countdown timer. The only thing that makes sense here is the Asian connection. The corporate parent's links to China could be interesting in terms of online dating, talk about an untapped market!
Link.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site
September 22, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Upgraded to Movable Type 3.11, simple, quick and tons of new features. Everything looks ok except for the fact that our guest blogger has yet to materialize. We'll have someone in place shortly.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category:
Posted by Dave Evans
Not online dating but close enough: Mercury News mentions that Yahoo is planning a social networking service called Mingle Link (reg req'd). John Dvorak has a nice Social Networking Is Over article just to balance things out.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Rumors
Posted by Dave Evans
Rumors abound that IAC (owner of Match.com) chairman and chief executive Barry Diller may take the company private in the near future. John Malone and Robert Bennett, the No. 1 and 2 executives at Liberty Media Corp., have recently resigned from the board of IAC/InterActiveCorp to avoid conflicts, further fanning the rumor flame. Stay tuned.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Rumors
September 21, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Google appears to be planning to launch its own Web browser and other software products to challenge Microsoft. The popular Mozilla web browser, which is "open source" and available to anyone, could be shaped to Google's specifications and be embedded with Google search, Gmail free e-mail and other Google applications.
How long until an enterprising dating company builds a branded browser for singles? Built-in features could include a search box to query the service from the browser, bookmarks for people you're interested in, chat directly in the browser without visiting the site, all tied into the sites existing infrastructure.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology
September 20, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Lot's going on at Yahoo! Personals. New IMVironment, where you can search, browse, share and rate singles in your Yahoo! Chat client (what's up with the Mac version?). Also new and much improved email manager. Looks like they got some inspiration from "thought bubble" look and feel from iChat. Putting icebreakers and email together was smart, such a PITA before when they were segmented into two different pages. The courtesy reply is nice. It allows you to let people don't gently when you delete them from your inbox. Why didn't someone think of this already.
Attention Yahoo! designers, be careful with all the new features you're are layering on. Starting to look cluttered already, what with the different graphics and portal-style look going on on my personal home page.
Nice to see that they are doing user studies to learn from customers how to improve the site. Sign up now and you "might" receive $50 for giving them your two cents.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site
Posted by Dave Evans
A bit about the tech running EHarmony... Custom-built with enterprise Java tools and running on Resin, an open-source application, the site takes the answers to your questionnaire and stores them in a Microsoft SQL database as a "psychological profile." Then, on a nightly basis, using a series of algorithms, it compares your profile with the profiles of all other active users (currently, around 900,000 people are active at any given time) and spits out a list of people with similar tastes, characteristics, attitudes, and values.
Once this process is complete, the site uses SendMail, an open-source e-mail gateway, to alert you to new matches, and you're able to contact these people — and only these people — via an anonymous communication tool back on the site.
Eharmony is up to 4.5 million members, with around 10,000 signing up each day.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Technology | eharmony
Posted by Dave Evans
Is your dating site doing any special email marketing, home page pitches, etc. to leverage this concocted week? I was surprised not to see any targeting ads on the major services.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Events
Posted by Dave Evans
Here's the first of what will be several links to articles covering the fact that it's singles week. Contains lots of info from a recent Yahoo! Personals study. BTW- Where did singles week come from?
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Events
September 16, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
AmericanSingles introduced a special offer to help U.S. military personnel, currently on active duty, connect with its members for companionship, dating, or friendship with a complimentary one- month Premium Membership. While I'm all for supporting the troops, but I would think that a subscription to a videochat porn site would be more appropriate. Can you even get a decent public internet connection in Baghdad? Will Centcom censor personal ads?
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
September 13, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category:
Posted by Dave Evans
We've written about Inode before. Incode was founded in 2004 to acquire, develop and commercialize innovative and profitable subscription-based eBusinesses in the online dating, information, retail, industrial, and financial services sectors. Incode's plan is to expand on KissyKat's (pet lovers dating site) current model and subscriber base. Incode is targeting KissyKat to make a significant revenue contribution to Incode's overall portfolio of subscription-based eBusinesses, including Incode's previously announced planned industrial and financial services portals. The parent company is selling it's existing apparel business as a component of the company's proposed overall restructuring plans.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: News | partnerships
Posted by Dave Evans
Buried in an article about True I found that Match has eliminated about 30 jobs in its events and new product divisions. Makes sense if they are reconsidering running live events.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Jobs
Posted by Dave Evans
I love Spring Street Networks, and that fact that they run the personals side of great sites like Nerve and Salon.com, not to mention our local Boston.com. Lavalife seems to be doing ok with the contact-for-credits model, but I have not seen a press release from SpringStreet in ages. so I started digging. Along the way I found this link , which has some good historical information about the industry...
Match.com grossed $10.7 million in Q2 2001, for an EBITDA profit of $2.8 million, back when Cindy Hennessy was president Match.com.
Rufus Griscom saying "You may see people laying out $20 a month today, but when you layer in two-way television, people are willing to spend $50 or $60."
A newcomer to the space, entertainment network eUniverse, boasts 41,300 active paying users in the first 90 days of its CupidJunction, and claims the site went profitable in just 10 days, drawing more than $200,000 in fee-based revenue a month.
SpringStreeter's, tell us what's up.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Research
September 11, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Early reports of 130 layoffs seems to be high. Today's Dallas News states that True said Friday it laid off 90 employees, or about 60 percent of its workforce of about 150, to streamline operations. The company said the affected employees were told of the decision Friday. The layoffs were effective immediately, and employees will be given severance packages, said Taylor Cole, senior director of marketing. "We are refocusing our efforts on our core competence, which is online dating," she said. Some positions eliminated were in marketing and event coordination, which set up parties and speed dating activities.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Jobs
September 10, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
It turns out that JDate has been using pornographic model Kari Gold, 18 years old, who lives in Hungary, as a model in their banner ads. The dating site's banners pop up on news sites, major Israeli portals and on sites providing Hebrew e-mail services. It turns out that MatchNet, the company that runs the site, purchased the photographs that appear in the banner ads from a bona fide picture archive and could not have known that they were pictures of porn models.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site
Posted by Dave Evans
I received an email stating that Match.com has stopped throwing offline (Matchlive) events – no speeddating, no singles events. Could that be true, even after Chris Terrill, Match.com’s vice president for off-line initiatives at Match, recently said that his division's revenues were up 200% over last year? More on that previously written up here. I went to MatchLive and looked up major football cities like NY, Miami, SF and Dallas and every area displays the ominous statment "There are currently no scheduled events in your area." Hmmm.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Jobs | Rumors
Posted by Dave Evans
True laid off 130 people today. More details to follow as soon as I get them. email me if you have any other news.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Jobs | Rumors
Posted by Dave Evans
July 2004
1) Yahoo with 7.1 million unique visitors.
2) Matchnet, which owns American Singles and Jdate.com, stood at No. 2, with 6.7 million visitors
3) Match.com had 5 million.
4) Monster's Tickle Personals had 4.6 million.
5) Microsoft's MSN Dating had 3.1 million visitors.
Sites that had less than 3 million visitors:
Friendfinder.com with 2.8 million
Vintacom, which owns Dating.com, Singleme.com and Dreammates.com, with 2.3 million
Eharmony.com, at 1.4 million
Friendster, with 700,000.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Research
Posted by Dave Evans
The Internet unit of Playboy Enterprises is considering expanding into the online dating business, according to Jay Jay Nesheim, Playboy spokeswoman. But there are no imminent plans, she said. Asked how an online dating service would work when Playboy's demographics are skewed so heavily toward men, Nesheim said the idea of such a service is still nascent. Should Playboy.com expand successfully into online matchmaking, it would significantly boost its online traffic.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Rumors
September 8, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
MarketingSherpa's Publisher Anne Holland just held an in-depoth teleconference with email deliverability expert George Bilbrey of Return Path. A good overview of how spam filters, ISPs and challenge-response are changing (for the good and the bad) how companies do email marketing.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Research
September 7, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
6 years and going strong!
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category:
Posted by Dave Evans
49-year old David Thomas Davies told a 56-year old Santa Barbara businesswoman he was involved in a top secret British intelligence operation and convinced her to buy him a Porsche Cayenne and give him $70,000 in cash. Also arrested was Carolyn Davies, Davies' wife, who he claimed was his personal assistant assigned to him by British intelligence agents.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Legal | Rumors
September 2, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Match announced that Jim Safka has been named chief executive officer (CEO) and will start in that position September 9. Mr. Safka has been working with the current CEO, Tim Sullivan, and the senior management team at Match.com to ensure a smooth transition. Tim Sullivan will be leaving Match.com effective September 8 and will stay within IAC to explore new business opportunities and initiatives. During this period, he grew the paid subscriber base for all IAC Personals brands from 189,500 in Q1 2001 to nearly one million in Q2 2004, while growing revenue from $29 million in 2000 to $185 million in 2003.
Jim Safka comes to Match.com from AT&T Wireless, where he served as vice president and general manager of e-commerce. Under Mr. Safka's leadership at AT&T Wireless, the company sold more wireless plans through its web site than the other five national carriers combined and ranked number one in online customer service. Prior to joining AT&T Wireless in 2002, Mr. Safka spent five years at E*TRADE Financial Corporation, most recently as vice president of marketing, where he was instrumental in growing the customer base from 200,000 accounts to more than four million. Mr. Safka started his technology marketing career at Intuit as a Product Manager for Quicken Financial Planner and Quicken.com. Prior to Intuit, Mr. Safka held brand and product management positions at Alberto-Culver, Inc., Warner Bros. Inc., and Paramount Pictures. Mr. Safka holds a Masters in Business Administration from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Southern California. He will be relocating with his wife, Mandy, and two children to Dallas.
Best of luck to the both of them.
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Jobs
Posted by Dave Evans
Online dating services are taking their customers back to the bars. Chris Terrill, Match.com’s vice president for off-line initiatives at Match, won’t give dollar figures, but says his division’s revenues have more than doubled since last year, when it ran 1,000 events. Among the 1,600 to 1,800 events this year: sushi-rolling classes, wine tastings, harbor cruises and mini-dates at a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Miami, where couples who just met can test drive a car together. Match expects the events will draw 80,000 participants combined.
For the elections, Match is inviting campaign workers to sign up volunteers at its speed-dating “singles caucuses.” Political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin spoke at a Washington, D.C., gathering. At an upcoming San Francisco event, Match.com will hand out suggested questions, hoping to replace “Where are you from?” with “How do you feel about the war on terror?”
Friendster.com runs events, too, including voting-theme parties, “Date my Friend” nights and promotions for an independent, unreleased movie.
Link
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