Today I had the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Barry Kallander, the CEO of SpringStreet Networks. In recent months the speculation surrounding the potential sale of the Nerve.com spinoff have resulted in quite a few erroneous rumors flying around and I asked Barry to clear the air.

Barry came to SpringStreet in November 2004 with extensive turnaround experience working with IT vendors such as Paceline Systems and StorageNetworks. In fact, much of the negative press SpringStreet received in November was due to Barry's justified cost-cutting measures, namely reducing staff from 22 down to 14 employees. Contrary to what you may have read, SpringStreet has 120 partners and adds a few more each month.

While they currently operate on cash flow, Barry made it clear that SpringStreet is looking to pair up with a strategic partner who most importantly understands their demographic, has advertising competency and the vision to take SpringStreet to the next level. That weeds out several potential suitors that might have a few million to make an acquisition, of which there are more than you would think.

Dating site vendors such as Relationship Exchange, AEWebworks and DatingREV have made getting into the dating market as easy as visiting a website and filling out a few forms and you're off to the races. Scaling hardware and databases is one thing. SpringStreet, on the other hand, has done a fantastic high-touch job building a solid network of partner sites, something that the site-in-a-box vendors have been unable to accomplish to date. This is no small feat when you take into consideration all the nuances of partner management.

SpringStreet offers their partners something most other dating networks are unable to deliver, traffic. SpringStreet does not show up in Comscore and Hitwise traffic rankings because the traffic shows up as personals.salon.com Roadrunner or love@aol.com. Many of their partners count the dating revenue as the number one source of revenue.

They recently landed Car Talk, one of my favorite shows on NPR as a partner.

Demographics for SpringStreet members are 21-34, sophisitcated and edgy, comfortable with technology and have lots of discretionary income. When dating sites and advertisers get past hitting their heads against the wall attempting to increase conversation rates and figure out how to sell stuff to singles like some of the alternative sites, SpringStreet members will appear more valuable than they might be perceived today.

Big advertising deal to be announced soon.

If a SpringStreet partner ditches for whatever reason, they are not orphaned but placed into the large database of singles and migrated to another url, so customers never feel like they are being hung out to dry if a partnership goes south.

I keep hearing that there is a company out there "right around the corner" who is going to eat SpringStreet's lunch and take over the aggregated database, media-focused partners market. Until a Premiere Singles gets it's act together, or eHarmony or Yahoo! does another out of the box deal with a major media network, SpringStreet is still alive and kicking. I've always told anyone who would listen that their profile is the best in the business. Simple, short, clever and entertaining. No personality matching of any kind. It's more of an introduction site than a dating site. Refreshing, really, after all the search/profile/matching science brouhaha going on lately.