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The latest Cupidcast show is up on iTunes. Last night we talked with Suneet Wadhwa and Trish McDermot of Engage.com. Much of the conversation focused on the hot new “social dating” trend, a great topic for singles as well as dating industry executives. Please show us some love and subscribe to CupidCast in iTunes.
Next week our scheduled guest will be Dan Abelon, CEO of SpeedDate. I’m trying to get Francesca Salcido on the show. Francesca is a 26 year-old student from San Jose State, who pledged to date for 24 hours on Thursday, February 14, going on as many online speed dates as possible.
Because it’s Friday afternoon, enjoy a fun YouTube video of various female tech personalities going on speed dates.
Category:Blogs & Podcasts, speeddating Tags: cupidcast - speeddatingBlog reactions
4 responses so far ↓
1 Joel // May 2, 2008 at 6:48 pm
The purple cow is private online dating, not social dating. I agree with the concept of social dating wholeheartedly, but it fails when it comes to privacy and safety table stakes. Social dating is great, but it has to be pure and avoid conventional online dating’s subjectivity and superficiality pitfalls.
As we all know, conventional online dating will ultimately make you sick to your stomach. It is not private, safe, nor especially productive when it comes to meeting the right people. If you are like me and value your privacy and/or safety, then you owe it to yourself to investigate private online dating.
Consider the revelation from a published sex study: 62% of married people meet through their networks of friends. Private online dating automates this reliable and familiar scenario. With private online dating members develop their own private, “trusted” social networks and through friends of friends receive romantic introductions.
Private, for example: individual profiles are confidential; you only search for profiles inside your own trusted network; each member develops his/her own private social network of trusted friends and family; only a member’s trusted network can view his/her profile; if a member deletes a connection, it is reciprocally deleted.
Safe, for example: you don’t have to expose yourself to people you don’t know; references and testimonials will accompany romantic introductions; credibility of romantic introductions can be further verified by asking member of your network for additional information; this serves to avoid questionable activity including romance scams and online predatory behavior; photos and profiles are genuine; private network members will not make introductions if information is inaccurate; it’s moderated by your friends and family.
To my knowledge, the only vendor espousing the virtues of the niche known as “private online dating” which is a superset of what Engage.com calls “social dating” is Sparkbliss.com or privateonlinedating.com.
2
David Evans (Check me out!)
// May 3, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Joel, love the url and the concept, although I have some issues with you assumptions, same as I do with Engage. First, you have to help me get all my friends on your site. Are you going to make me import my address book? People hate that. It’s not my friends who will most likely connect me, but their friends. Anecdotal statement on my part but if my friends can’t hook me up now, how is your site going to facilitate that?
Only exposing yourself to safe known referenced introductions greatly reduced the traffic on your site, you’re a serious dater niche, albeit a nice place to be with Engage, until someone else comes in an upsets that corner of the market by going after serious 20-somethings, which is potentially a much larger audience and more inclined to experiement with new dating concepts.
3 Joel // May 3, 2008 at 3:15 pm
(moderator - please use this version not the one sent prior a moment ago)
An attribute of the private online dating model is that it is a quality play versus a quantity numbers game.
It is proactive model, but one does have to develop their network much like LinkedIn, for example. However, you do NOT have to import your address book although you can but with Sparkbliss it does not auto-email when you do so.
The concept steals from “six degrees of separation” and yes, the leverage will come from friends of your friends and so on. Your friends will occasionally set you up, but if you develop your own social network for dating then the likelihood that your friends will keep you in mind will increase and translate into more qualified introductions.
I agree this appears to be niche, but that is only because people are trapped by conventional online dating thinking. Private online dating is something anybody who is dating should consider. It is a perfect complement to any single’s strategy if they want to meet the right person. If they just want something of less integrity then options abound.
Try privateonlinedating.com and you will come to appreciate its unconventional approach and positive results.
4 Web Personals Online // May 3, 2008 at 11:30 pm
I have my reservations about social dating. The idea that this could work doesn’t make that much sense to me. Although, I guess it depends on the motives of the individual using that type of site or that type of service.
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