Markus at Plenty Of Fish asks the question Does Eharmony outsource matchmaking? and points us to Ian Clarke’s blog. Ian, for those of you who don’t know, is the founder of The Freenet Project, the first anonymous P2P network.
Ian’s current focus is the development of SenseArray (through his company Uprizer Labs). SenseArray is a powerful new type of collaborative filter which can make use of arbitrary metadata in making recommendations. SenseArray is already being used in a wide variety of industries, ranging from online dating (we can’t name the company but you’ve heard of it), to targeted advertising companies with revenues totaling in the hundreds of millions.
Markus wonders if Ian is powering one of eHarmony’s 29 dimensions.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of the online matchmaking service eHarmony.com, describes the essential components of a successful entrepreneurial career. He believes that working with great people, taking risks, adaptability, passion and timely execution of plans can lead to success for entrepreneurs. He draws parallels between the satisfaction found through finding the right career path and a fulfilling relationship.
Points of interest:
- 30 million people visit a dating sites homepage per year
- 3 million subscribe to any dating site per year
- 10% of people rejected
- Only half actually finish the test
- Parenting service coming
- 55% brand awareness
- 100M in lost revenue from turning people away.
- IPO soon
Who wants to be the Director of Business Operations at OkCupid.com?
Several people wrote in to tell me that the numbers I quoted for Zoosk and Are You Interested (AYI) were way off. Of course AYI has way more than 100k visitors a month. All sites are notoriously underreported, why won’t companies demand better representation? One reason Zoosk shows so many users is that the Zoosk facebook app is an i-frame. It appears that measurement companies track data pulled into Facebook in the overall traffic numbers, hence the overinflated stats.
AYI put out a press release yesterday.
Operational highlights (unaudited):
- Q1 2010 gross receipts of more than $1,300,000, an increase of more than 69% compared to Q1 2009 gross receipts of $768,972.
- March 2010 gross receipts of more than $440,000, an increase of more than 23% over February 2010 gross receipts.
- Gross receipts from subscriptions and premium sales increased to approximately $1,154,000 in Q1 2010 from approximately $449,700 in Q4 2009.
- Average daily gross receipts from subscription and premium sales have increased each month since launch of our subscription model on AreYouInterested.
- Recurring revenue beginning to ramp up — should produce further revenue growth as year progresses.
Always-on iPhone apps Great For Dating. Always-on iPhone apps raise new promises, perils for location privacy
Sites like ladiesofchatroulette.com are using webcam girls on video to drive site usage. Instead of seeing some guy in a gorilla mask you see a sexpot who undoubtedly want you to upgrade to a paid subscription services or shell out $25 for a show.
Other dating sites are using Chatroulette to drive traffic by putting up screenshots of their url on Chatroulette. This is pretty smart and at the same time is going is going to hurt Chatroulette. Pretty soon it will be all marketers spamming the service. This is what happened to Twitter once it became popular.
Online virtual world Utherverse is the first social networking world to offer its users interest on bank account balances. The virtual currency, which can be transferred into real world money, will earn daily interest at 6% – 8% that is tax free. Virtual currency is earned simply by participating within the virtual world. Many users are now viewing virtual currency as a real investment.
Easydate launches four new dating sits with Orion media. EasyDate certainly is on a role lately.
IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). A good read if you have anything to do with online advertising or performance-based marketing.
The Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is in beta. This could make it easier for dating sites to provide site->member and member->member messaging of all kinds. Reliable and cheap, what’s not to like?
Algebraix: “Too Good To Be True” – Creating An Algebra For Data: I wonder if this could have implications for the online dating industry in terms of matching capabilities.
