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’m excited to be working with World Singles, who’s Arab Lounge is in the news. You’ve probably seen their advertising which is all over the place these days.

Farmers Weekly Interactive launches Muddy Matches online dating service. Love the name but the people on the home page don’t look like farmer’s to me.

Dating DNA brings online dating web-app to iPhone and iPod Touch.

VDateOnline launched free online video dating. Lot’s of sites have tried this in the past. I’m not certain that a new site based on text and video profiles is going to make a dent, especially when the site is covered with ads for Russian dating and Naughty Singles ads. Most of the profiles are text only, which is perplexing.

I was poking around affiliate advertising companies over the weekend and see that Experience Advertising, manages Date.com affiliate program.

Phone Verification Hacks: Craigslist is fighting hard to stop spammers from flooding certain categories. The dating category is mostly overrun according to various sources, and people who offer valid services like freelance designers are freaking out.

My friends at Viximo have posted a short presentation about the power of Virtual Goods. Facebook’s Are You Interested dating application continues add new features, lately I’ve noticed virtual gifts. I am addicted to Are You Interested, although the interface is bogus and the ads are annoying, but still, a great app and over 500,000 people are using it. I really like how they link back to the person’s Facebook profile so you can get out of the application and talk to them through Facebook. Zoosk hasn’t figured this out yet, which along with their Date card, makes it a tough app to use.

Online Dating could use a good reputation system.

Google Previews Friend Connect and the Facebook Open Platform is available. I haven’t had much time to check out either, but they’re both about making websites and services more social, a hot topic in the online dating world. Once I have some time with both systems I’ll be talking here on the blog and with clients about implementing parts of both systems on dating sites.

Great New York Times Story about the humans behind Google and how they measure absolutely everything in order to create the best results and user experience. What does your dating site know about you and how do they leverage this knowledge?

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