Hmm, intersting. Let me enlighten all of you on Markus’ idea of how to run his site. Markus REALLY does NOTHING — he doesn’t provide support for his members; he doesn’t screen out users who are “unfit to date” as his site advertises; he doesn’t screen for pedophiles are those who are misrepresenting themselves.

Markus doesn’t even have the basic security confirmation by email system other sites used to assure themselves that they are dealing with a reputable person.

And let’s not talk about the forums, which are run in a Nazi like fashion, where racists and bullies are allowed to target newcomers and attack them at will.

Markus has “rules” posted but his Moderators (if there are any — I personally believe Markus has a number of aliases he uses in the site to post comments and provoke users so that he can ban them) the Moderators don’t follow the rules and they don’t ask the most abusive members to follow the rules either.

And did I mention banning? Yes, the moderators will ban you for mysterious infractions like stating that racism is wrong or abuse is wrong or bullying is wrong.

Once you are targeted by the “Moderators” (Markus) your days of free speech are over — and remember (or if you didn’t know) any posts made in the forum are linked to your profile page — so Markus can set people up to participate in arguments where he triggers them and makes them look bad. Then he bans you.

I know people who have been banned for 20 -30 years!!!

If you’ve been targeted by Markus, he WILL spend an enormous amount of time chasing you down — through his sock puppets — in the forums and targeting you for attacks, libel and slander.

Just do a google search on POF and see what the members have to say. I know that everything goes when we’re making the all mighty dollar and since POF is “free” (is TIME free???) the members should just accept whatever Markus dishes out, but creating a site where members are abused and treated like they have no rights is not what I call GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Sure Markus is sucessful, like Bernie Madoff was successful.

Markus numbers concerning his sucessful rate are bogust. Markus CREATES the users himself, and WRITES HIS OWN exit surveys. It’s all smokes and mirrors designed to drive traffic and increase revenue.

You keep saying he doesn’t make a lot of money like I go on about unannounced traffic costs myself, but the fact is he’s making an extraordinary amount of money and he works a heck of a lot less than we do.

We will never get love from Markus, it’s not in his nature. One man, one island. That’s part of his intrigue.

Why sell now, I would wait until ad revenue bottoms out, buy for lower price and ride the tide back up to where it was last year.

MARKUS IN PYJAMAS!!!

Ridiculous, sensationalist articles like this are a good thing for the industry – they get people online to try online dating, usually through PoF and the rest of the industry makes money from it.

Markus doesn’t make a huge amount of money in comparison to most paid online dating sites and we don’t really know how much profit he genuinely makes (how much is he paying to get the traffic to his site, server costs, etc).

But he does well – he has his place in the industry (a little bit more love from him wouldn’t be a bad thing) but what he has achieved cannot be replicated. I think it was foolish of Match not to take over PoF or perhaps even more foolish for Markus not to sell at the right point. But PoF will beat any commercial offering because the members run the site – it’s a true community, something very few dating sites do right.

Still gives a grown man no right to wear pyjamas :)

Ross

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jackspar.

Online Dating

Measuring quality is difficult, I’ve always said it’s a blend of metrics.

Type: social, casual dating, serious dating, matchmaking
Tests: yes/no
Active daily users
# users in area code
emails/winks send
Profile freshness
# relationships (6 months or more, profiles on hold)
# marriages

Just a start, I think I’ve posted this list here several times before, off to search around, amazing how much data is on this blog that I post and forget about.

I hear you about meeting people. I’ve dated amazing women on OKCupid one week, the next I’ve met someone who is now a good friend. Can’t underestimate the social aspects. Remember when Match had a social networking component? Most people don’t. That was circa 2002 I believe.

I think the easiest way is to build what’s called a proxy server, which can go to a dating sites and by masquerading as a number of accounts or IP addresses, can make a series of searches for specific geographic areas. That way you could find out how many people between 18-32 are on siteA in metro NYC or Omaha. Other queries could be by gender, sexuality, religion, etc. It would be really cool to do them as heatmaps. That way, people would know which sites have better coverage in their area. Probably breaks terms of service for most sites but it’s for research purposes.

Can’t measure success that way, but it would be helpful, at least to me.

Caveat: If a site is successful, even I wouldn’t care what it looked like.

I think it would be interesting as well to see how many people put their accounts on hold/private/hidden because they are in a relationship and want to see where things go, using the same questionnaire.

The problem with this kind of ranking system is access to the raw data for starters, as you well know. Few sites are willing to give anyone this kind of access or information. I’ve gleaned a bit here and there, but in the end sheer numbers just don’t cut it. There has to be a comparison of sorts, i.e. a site that gets 40% of its members married off within a year of joining as opposed to one with 5% is of course going to rank higher. And how do we measure quality? I’ve got readers and friends that just adore POF and can’t say enough amazing things about it. Personally, I’ve been a member for years and have yet to get an actual date from the site, yet I’ve have made countless friends via some meet and greets hosted on their forums. I’ll also say there is an unusually high number of users looking for sex and not a relationship per say, but that may just come with the free dating site territory. No fees = less inhibitions for many. But does that mean its less successful of a site in connecting users? If both parties were only looking for sex, I’d say no.

I’ve been compiling a list of such data ala Lust in Translation style (nonfiction read that compares infidelity by country) for the past year, but am often frustrated with the lack of information and still have huge gaps in coverage. What crucial information do you think should be found on such a list – useful for both singles and dating site owners/marketers?

You are saying that free dating sites care more about their members? Snort.