Online Dating Insider

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Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.

I had a great conversation with Stephen Stokols, CEO and founder of Woome.com. I’ll post notes from our talk soon.

Did you see the article in the NY Times Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide?

Talking about how men and women are prohibited from co-mingling before marriage:

And certainly, practices like “numbering” — where a group of young men in a car chase another car they believe to contain young women, and try to give the women their phone number via Bluetooth, or by holding a written number up to the window — have become a very visible part of Saudi urban life.

… And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.

The strict interpretation of Islam is forcing singles to invent a whole new set of dating rules based on technology. Funny how that works.

Jangl, which powers the anonymous calling feature on Match.com and several social networks, has expired. The founders are going to work for Jajah, which powers eHarmony’s anonymous calling service.

Sorry to hear the news, I like the Jangl team and their PR team was top notch. Hopefully Jajah will find a place for them where they can continue to build out their vision for Voice 2.0.

What does this mean for Match.com? When I click the “Talk to Her” link on a profile page it redirects me to the subscription add-on page which still says MatchTalk. Will the feature remain or will Match start using JahJah?

More at Online Personals Watch.

People tell me around 30 people showed up. Online Personals Watch has a video. but I’m not seeing much coverage otherwise. According to on attendee, the crowd was small, only about 20-30 people but there were some nice, new faces. Mostly social networking companies, a few Asian, and a few Eastern European / European. Not too many American faces. Leave a comment with your thoughts on the show if you attended.

When I went to check out Are You Interested I saw that they have a signup for Match.com as part of the Facebook Application. I clicked through and as happens a lot lately, Match threw an error. I’m seeing error messages on Match often, not sure what the cause is but they are definitely losing signups because of it.

Looks like Match is advertising through Are You Interested. I’d like to find out more about the relationship between the two companies. Someone at Match please ping me with details.

Don’t Date Him Girl has launched on Facebook. The application Love Inspector is mentioned in an interview with DDHG CEO Tasha Cunningham at Onlinepersonalswatch.

We created the application to introduce ourselves to the Facebook audience, which we hadn’t really done before. The application is, what I like to call, a woman’s best friend, because it’s a daily dose of dating and love and relationships. Add it to your Facebook profile and receive the newest DDHG articles and advice (which link back to the site) every day.

It’s not really an application, but should drive some traffic back to the DDHG site.

As dating sites grow, they tend to slow down. Steve Souders, the author of the O’Reilly book High Performance Web Sites and creator of Firefox plugin YSlow has a great presentation about how to speed up your website. Dating site IT people need to read this.

Mashable has a list of 120 dating sites. Very comprehensive and doesn’t look like it’s full of affiliate links.

I received this from the Zoosk. I now have something like 25 dating applications installed on Facebook. The amount of daily emails, flirts and winks is staggering.
Zoosk has launched the beta version of www.zoosk.com. The beta site is only open to current zoosk users on Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace. Once you create a password by visiting the settings page, your date card and all your flirts will also be available on www.zoosk.com.

Please remember that this is a beta launch so there might be some kinks still. If you find any issues, please let them know so they can fix them.

In order to help you with keeping your Zooskboxes clean, we will start moving flirts untouched for more than 30 days into your trash folder starting tomorrow (April 25). Also, flirts that are older than 60 days will soon be completely removed and archived.

Happy Flirting,
The Zoosk Team

PS: Don’t forget to flirt with your daily matches! :)

Over the years I have received hundreds of emails from people launching or running dating sites and services that cater to singles. Instead of being a bottleneck I decided to launch the Online Dating Insider Dating Resources Directory. The goal of the Directory is to get people to add their companies and services to a centralized location, increasing exposure to your sites and making it easier for others to locate and learn about companies in the online dating space.

The Directory is based on the same system that powers Wikipedia. Anyone can edit any page at any time. If someone writes something that you have a problem with, either factually or simply want to clarify a point, you can edit the page.

This will work brilliantly or could be a complete disaster. I’m hoping for the former but there are always people out there who try to ruin for others. I’ll do what I can to keep them out of the Directory.

The Directory is beta, needs a logo and better formatting. Expect to see gradual improvements over time, and as always, your suggestions are appreciated but I’m not a mind reader, use the Contact Form.

Getting Started

1. Visit onlinedatingpost.com/directory
2. Create an account.
3. Go back to onlinedatingpost.com/directory
4. On the main page, find the category closest to your business. Current topics include: Private Label Dating Systems, Dating Site Scripts, Video Chat Applications, Payment Processors, Mobile Dating, software vulnerabilities, profile writing, personal ad photos, Personality Tests, Mobile Dating, Legal, Open Social, Matchmaking Software, dating e-books, dating site reviews, developers and social networking platforms.
5. Click through to a category.
6. Edit the category page, adding a new page for your company or service.
7. On the new page, add your company name, link to your website and a description of your service.
8. That’s it.

If you need help figuring out how to edit pages, check out the Help section or Google wiki editing.

I’m going to be watching how people are using the Directory and adjusting the categories and adding new sections as needed. Once the main pages in each category get too large I’ll start adding sub-categories, especially for the dating sites category, which is bound to grow quickly.

I’m excited to see how people use the Directory and hope it proves beneficial. Go add yourself and let me know if you have any problems.

In an effort to provide useful tips and advice to members, Match.com is now asking it’s members to help each other. I am all for crowdsourcing and leveraging the wisdom of the crowds. But is the Insider’s Guide the blind leading the blind?

The world’s largest dating site has announced the launch of the “Insiders’ Guide” — a new source for singles to get insider secrets and reliable advice from current Match members, as well as former members who have already found love on Match.

“At Match.com we understand the impact of word of mouth advice. It’s this trusted perspective and expertise of actual members that people take to heart and ultimately act on,” said Craig Wax, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Match.com. “The Insiders’ Guide brings this concept to life through seven tips, shared by ten successful members in an interactive web-chat format.”

Some history for new readers. I tried to partner Match with my ProfileDoctor profile enhancement services several years ago. I came to them with a scalable, personalized service that increases the value of profiles, and thereby the value of the entire site. Because a dating site is no better than the people on it and how they are represented.

If I had my way, by this time the Match account creation process would be augmented by a series of context-sensitive services based on where you are in the signup process, and more importantly, who you are.

Instead, Match too the easy route and launched Happen Magazine and licensed the Dr. Phil brand. Arguably a good idea but when is the last time anyone read Happen, or Dr. Phil did anything for Match? Is he even still associated with the site? More importantly, does anyone even care about Dr. Phil on Match? I’ve never seen his name or photo on the site for ages. MindFindBind, anyone?

I will give Match this, it’s a lot easier to throw together a few web page templates and hire editors on the cheap to produce content that it is to build out a complex system that leverages technology to make online dating more pleasurable and efficient for members. But this was a time when Match was doing a hatchet job across the board. Features like video clips and MatchLive were given the axe. So was personality testing. I believe Match is still in court about that now.

Side note - I was in New York for an engagement party last month and found myself in a cab driving past the new IAC building, which is absolutely gorgeous. I really like the people I know at Match. At least the people who are there this year. Craig Wax will be gone soon enough and someone else trying to climb the IAC ladder will replace him. Just look at Jim Safka. He left Match and Barry Diller gave him a venture capital fund. Nice work if you can get it.

I would love to work with Match for a year, attempt to fix what’s broken and then fade off into the sunset. Except I would probably fire lots of people, bring in new blood not beholden to sacred cows and completely change the direction of the organization. Suffice to say they would, nor could they at this point, ever go for that. Too many people involved, project plans stretching out several years and a certain level of inflexibility that comes with an organization as large as Match.

They have nice margins, make decent bank and the only people they upset are their customers, who continue to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars every year for the infinitesimal chance they might actually meet someone for the long term relationship on the site. Speaking of success rates, eHarmony claims its responsible for 118 marriages a day. I wonder what Match has to say about that.

The Insider’s Guide links to a page with talking heads across the top and a signup form to join Match. I’m a member and I’m logged in, why am I seeing this and where is the information? Lazy programming if you ask me.

The splash screen for the service is nice looking and the video of a relationship guru named Jason is well produced.

Great to see Match leveraging people’s webcams to produce content for them. That’s the Web 2.0 way, leverage the knowledge of the crowd. Match has provided a link to a PDF version of the guide which is great. But the content is incredibly basic, where’s the intermediate and expert level information?

I’d take verified profile photos over essay help any day of the week. The problem is people lie like rugs in their profiles. Nudging them on with incremental improvements is a good first step but Match needs to assert a level of control over the membership database in order to truly improve people’s experience on the site.

My initial thought about the guide is that if you are successful, you are not on Match anymore, you’re in a relationship. I guess some of the people profiled in the grainy webcam videos are successful matches, at least we’ll have to take their word for it.

All singles make the same mistakes with their profile. I’ll even list a few of the most common issues here to save you some time.

The first few weeks are the most important. You’re the new kid on the block and EVERYONE is watching you.

Launch your profile when it’s perfect. Show it to friends, ask for feedback, get them to leave testimonials. Only then should you let your profile loose.

NEVER lead your profile off with “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Match would do well to educate people that when your profile is viewed, it’s part of a series. Browsers have looked at a dozen profiles before yours, and a dozen afterwards. What are you doing to stand out?

“I am a handsome/ beautiful man/woman.” Thanks for that, I have eyes. Most of the time you’re not that hot anyway.

Let’s not beat around the bush. online dating is a competition of the most brutal kind. You’re at war with millions of other people. The guy in the search results next to you is the enemy.

I know all about you after the first week. I’ve seen your profile multiple times. Just because you change your headline or add something to your profile text is not going to get me to email you.

And so on, you get the drill.

Technology has advanced to the point where a simple text reader could highlight the problem areas and suggest that you don’t use the phrase “I am as comfortable in a little black dress as I am jeans and a t-shirt.”

Deeply embedding profile assistance during the creation process is the way to go. Send them out of the gate with the best profile possible.

Insider’s guide is a nice first step, but I expect more from Match. This is a band-aid on a major problem. It is a slick piece though, very well produced, and who doesn’t like watching webcam videos of cute people?

Full press release.