A few years ago I was in New York City visiting friends, clients and family. After a long day of meetings with clients, visiting OkCupid and a few other dating site offices, I was thirsty and in need of good company.

Thankfully, I ended up meeting Sherri Langburt for a glass wine wine at a fantastic bistro on the upper west side of Manhattan. Sheri is the founder of Single Edition.

Single Edition is the premier lifestyle destination for singles: women and men of all ages who have never been married as well as those who are divorced, solo parents or suddenly single.

At the time, Sherri she was doing content and some marketing for People Media, and branched out from there, providing content to a number of dating sites.

Last year, Sherri created Single Edition Media. Today she sent out an email update that I wanted to share with you.

This February marks the one year anniversary for Single Edition Media….Over the last 12 months, we worked overtime building a social marketing agency, secured over 100 single female bloggers along the way, and we keep growing. We helped companies such as Jeep, The Fresh Diet, Ice.com, Vitamin Shoppe, AOL, Bai Beverages, Naked Winery, Biofilm, Amazon.com, Tabatchnick Fine Foods, BistroMD, Silk’n and others, differentiate themselves by delivering engaging content for their brands on blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Why should dating sites and dating bloggers care? A record number of people in the U.S. now live by themselves — and they spend $1.9 trillion a year. Businesses are beginning to take notice.

I waited for years for a singles-only advertising network to show up. It never happened on a large scale. Then Sherri came around and started putting together big singles events in NYC, content for dating sites, fun events like trunk shows and parties.

Not content with glitzy parties and selling high-quality blog posts to top-10 dating sites, she went on to create her own network of top dating bloggers and figured out a way to bring brands and bloggers together for the purpose of marketing to singles.

This required Sherri to provide the strategy and support required to make major brands comfortable with handing over their money and brand so she could put them in front of millions of singles. No easy task if you’re ever worked with large consumer brands. Nobody was doing this in the singles space in any meaningful way until Sherri came around.

So, if you’re a dating blogger, a dating coach or work with singles, check out the Single Edition Media Network. Brands wanting to connect with singles should go here. Make sure to tell her I sent you, maybe she’ll add me to her network :-)

Check out this great article in Forbes about the Solo Economy that mentions Single Edition. Us singles, we’re a multi-trillion-dollar market baby!

Related posts:

1. Single Edition Lifestyle Site
2. Match.com Names Top 10 Cities For Dating Single Moms
3. Online Dating Industry News 6-24-11

During a Skype chat with Sam Moorcroft of Christiancafe.com yesterday, he mentioned that they received a great shout-out on Britain’s Got Talent. Referencing Simon’s Cowell’s break with fiance ­Mezhgan Hussainy, when a pair of contestants said they had met on a website called Christiancafe.com, host David Walliams  said: “There you go Simon, you could find a wife on there.”This is a good as a free plug as you’re going to get on television. Read more.

Match and eHarmony spend millions on tv ads, OkCupid has a deal with Bravo and POF spent a few hundred grand to be in a recent Lady Gaga video. Wonder how much traffic these efforts drive to the sites, or is it more about brand lift/awareness?

Related posts:

1. ChristianCafe.com and Single Christian Network Merge
2. ChristianCafe.com’s Future is Boundless
3. Christian Cafe Features Twins

After a bummer of a sale to FriendFinder Networks, which has proven adept at killing off perfectly good acquisitions, Nerve.com has launched a new dating site.

Many people, myself included, consider Nerve/SpringStreet to have been the best “first wave” dating site. Anyone who knows me personally knows how much I like OkCupid and Match, which I tend to write about more than any other sites, but thats because they are doing more than any other sites! Lots of contenders to round out the top five of course, thats for another post.

Speaking of Nerve Personals/FastCupid, back in 2006 I learned that if you spend 100 points a day you become a featured member on search page or that if you spend 2000 points you get your profile highlighted for one month. Sounds like Badoo, right?

Look at eHarmony trying to be all hip and cool. This is what a brand expert would call brand dissonance.

According to Urban Dictionary, The Wingman will always be there to “occupy” least attractive girl of the pair so that you may engage in the “hotty”. If it didn’t say eHarmony, I would have guessed the ad was for HowAboutWe. No word if eHarmony also acts as a “pre-wing“.

Look at this Christian Mingle ad. Cute “Church Girls” that look like they just got out of Bible study class and decided to sit in each other’s laps for a while, how nice. Proves that Christian sites are no different from any other dating sites and will do whatever it takes for more clicks.

Students in The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology completed a study that takes a closer look at the success stories of online daters. Reminds me of the Online Booty Call claim from years ago, “Reaching the one million member mark with only a single reported marriage is a tremendous accomplishment.”

A summary of what they found:

1.       eHarmony – Success = marriage (in 84 percent of success stories reported on the site)

2.       Match.com – Success = dating (49.2 percent of success stories are about getting a date)

3.       OkCupid –  Success = something other than marriage (only 23 percent of success stories on this site are about marriage)

Moonit’s new Social iPhone App is free and offers valuable insights into your romantic relationships. Users can view their percentage compatibility and a short, entertaining paragraph of tangible advice on what to appreciate, what to look out for, and what to work on for that particular pairing.

After receiving their relationship compatibility results, users can continue the dialogue by chatting with each other using the messaging functionality right inside the app and make plans to meet up in person.

RedLightCenter.com, the world’s premier adult virtual world, and UtherConvention.com, the world’s only convention planning and execution company that holds fully interactive virtual conventions, announced they will join together to host the first-ever Adult Entertainment Virtual Convention on Feb. 25 and 26, 2012. Event organizers confirmed this week that Seka (talk about old-school!), the mega-porn star of the 1970s and 80s, will be speaking at the Expo.

Work at OkCupid: They have been growing rapidly, and their team needs the best and brightest to help solve some of the most challenging problems in the field. Want to join ’em?

Related posts:

1. Dating Industry News November 12, 2012
2. Online Dating Industry News 2-9-12
3. Online Dating Industry News 6-24-11

When I logged into Match this morning I saw an ad for Verizon. At first I groaned at yet another  wasted ad impression, not to mention that FiOS is not available here. Looking closer, I saw that Verizon has embedded several references to Match in the ad. Thats pretty cool. Dating site ads should all be customized like this. Now that we know that OkCupid shares a member’s drug use with advertisers, I wonder what Match is sending to their ad networks to personalize display ads?

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Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone, but a new study is out that shows how much personal information is shared and sold between website and data aggregators. Especially interesting is what dating sites like OkCupid make available to vendors.

Stanford University computer scientist Jonathan Mayer has released a study concerning behavioral targeting and tracking people across the Internet.

As expected, he found that many companies are involved with monitoring every click and then selling and sharing that information to advertisers so they can target you specifically.

Click a local ad on HomeDepot.com and 13 companies get your name and email address. Type the wrong password into WSJ.com and seven companies get your email. Click the validation link in the signup email for a Reuters newsletter and 5 companies get your email.

Interact with classmates.com and 22 companies get your full name; Bleacher Report sends it to 15 companies.

OkCupid, a free online dating website, appears to sell user information to the data providers BlueKai and Lotame, including gender, age, ZIP code, relationship status, and drug use frequency. (emphasis ed.)

I’m all for trading privacy for convenience and tracking people and their actions across the Internet for things like e-commerce, but there is a fine line where tracking becomes an invasion of privacy. Websites and large data providers’ efforts are not widely regulated here in the US (as it is in EU). The ACLU is concerned, as you should be as well.

Besides tracking pot usage (what advertiser needs to know that?), OkCupid tracks pretty basic stuff. If you want to scare yourself, go look at Rapleaf or read how credit card companies are using your purchase history to target your ads.

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OKCupid Asking About Background Checks: By asking members questions about background checks, OkCupid can effectively poll people without seeming too much like an intrusive survey. Interestingly enough, this question appeared right after I was asked how freaky I am.

Dating Site Dominator is a subscription-site dating site aggregator that filters through top personals & dating websites like Match, PlentyOfFish, and OKCupid. Looks like $19.95 a month and its Windows-only download. Can’t imagine anyone would let them do this, we’ll see.

In honor of National Singles Week (Sept 18 to 24) Michelle Cove of Seeking Happily Every After is making the first 20 minutes of their feature-length documentary Seeking Happily Ever After (distributed by Lionsgate) available for FREE. The way to access it will be to go to the “Free on iTunes” section on iTunes only during National Singles Week. As if you needed further enticement, I’m in the documentary going on a recorded date.

Capples, Apps for Couples: Ofir from Israel has invented the first ever relationship status for iPhone which helps couples show each other how they feel in the beginning of their relationship.

The first Capple is called “Just Us”. Basically, when you show your friend at the bar how hot your girlfriend is, she gets a message saying “Your bf is thinking about you.” Check out Capple Factory to see the latest assortment of Capples.

Brandon Wade owns SeekingArrangement, SeekingMillionaire and WhatsYourPrice. Thats quite a collection of money-focused daters. Check this out, single college students registering on WhatsYourPrice as Attractive members using their dot-EDU email address will automatically receive a free upgrade and become certified as an Attractive College Co-Ed (Details). Brandon even came up with Labor Day Dating Tips for Unemployed Singles.

Chinese dating site Jiayuan is growing quickly, with second-quarter revenue more than doubling from a year earlier to $12.9 million and earnings growing at a similar pace. Jiayuan’s shares were up 21% Friday from when they listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market on May 11. More at the WSJ.

Badoo is up to 120 million members. It is the latest site, besides OkCupid (pictured) to take inspiration from HowAboutWe.

Understatement of the week: “However some users have reported copping sex-related spam through the service as the company’s 200 moderators fail to keep up with the growing hoard of users.”

Humorous Comcast “Dating On Demand” videos.

While poking around on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (crowdsourced small tasks) and came across many requests for profiles reviews. Prices ranged from .05-.20 cents per profile.

People have all sorts of clever ways to propose: StumbleUpon Helps Coordinate a Marriage Proposal.

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Haven’t done this most basic of searches in a while. Search results Google for the phrase “dating sites“. I love how Datehookup is the number one organic search result. DH has 1.5 million members, is the largest dating site you’ve never heard of.

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Bravo Partners With OkCupid—It’s a Match: To promote its new show “Most Eligible Dallas”, which follows a group of attractive singles (including a couple NFL players) as they navigate the Texas dating scene, Bravo teamed up with online dating site OkCupid to expand its marketing reach. Bravo calls OkCupid members “smart funny.”

I haven’t seen a dating site media tie-in like this in a while. PerfectMatch did a lot of great media partnerships in the past but has all but dropped off the map in the last few years. Hey Bachelor producers, are you paying attention?

Man Pleads No Contest To Match.com Sex Assault Case: I was pleased to hear that the predatory monster otherwise known as Paul Wurtzel is facing up to a year in prison and must register as a sex offender for life after pleading no contest to sexual assault charges stemming from his online dating escapades. I spent some time on the phone with the woman he attacked and its satisfying to see her put her attacker away. Wonder what this means in terms of her legal injunction against Match.com?

Match.com Tender Offer for Meetic S.A. Successful Based on Results of Initial Offer Period: Raise your glass to Founder Marc Simoncini, who absolutely nailed it with Meetic.

Uninhibited Matchmaking Show “Love Talk” Launches on SiriusXM: professional matchmakers Susan Rose and Jennifer Heller—co-founders of New York-based matchmaking business Rose & Heller and dating site www.susanandjen.com will host Love Talk with Susan and Jennifer, a six-week live, call-in series dedicated to helping listeners across the country find their perfect love match.

Relationship coaches are like social media consultants, its very trendy to offer advice and make a name for yourself, but now that there are literally a thousand dating coaches, who knows which ones are any good and who’s full of it? Full story.

Dating Factory Offers Co-reg API: Co-registration (POST) API update. Usually private label systems and affiliate programs require you to send traffic directly to your website or to their web-sites via the referral link with tracking ID. With the Co-reg API you will be able to up-sell or cross-sell your existing members/leads to your dating site without making people add their details again and fill out a new registration form.

New Dating Book for Dudes: “The Art of War for Dating” by BachelorGuy.com’s Eric Rogell: New-ish dating book for dudes: The Art of War for Dating: Master Sun Tzu’s Tactics to Win Over Women. Just as they turn to Sun Tzu’s honored text for military guidance, guys can sharpen their dating skills by adapting the good general’s advice.

Google is Testing Infinite Scroll: In a move that will slightly impact second-tier SEO players, Google is testing infinite scroll rather than the page-one, page-two paradigm. If they make this permanent, it will make click-through rates decline a little more slowly and a little more smoothly.

How will dating sites leverage the latest iteration of Google Site Links?

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Single Edition is helping brands build chemistry with single consumers.  In a few short months, their vision for creating a singular focused digital agency has exceeded all expectations.  Single Edition Media now yields more than 2 million monthly impressions based on partnerships with multitudes of editorially-vetted lifestyle bloggers, connecting brands with single women and men in a way no other social media company can.  That’s millions of singles who travel, entertain, parent, date, cook,  dine out and own homes with whom your brand should connect.

Talk to Sherri Langburt and tell her Online Dating Insider sent you. She is awesome and totally on top of her game, servicing People Media, HowAboutWe and many other dating sites. Sherri will be at eAmore next week, along with many other dating industry startups and veterans from around the globe.

Cupid plc has acquired 75% of two German online businesses, OnlineLiebe GmbH and WomenWeb GmbH, for €2.75m (£2.5m). The two companies are run together by the same team in Munich, led by founder Andreas von Maltzan, who is recognised as one of the pioneers and leaders in the German dating market, having established Neu.de, Germany’s most popular dating site, which was sold to Meetic in 2007. Andreas has a track record of producing successful German online businesses and will continue to run the German sites, becoming a valuable addition to Cupid’s management team.

Build big dating site, sell, rinse, repeat. Nice job Andreas and the team.

The founder of CatholicSingles found his wife on his site. I can’t tell you how many people say they started a dating site to find their wife.

When I started working on CatholicSingles.com, I truly wanted to fill a void and bring like-minded Catholics together.  While finding my own match was a goal, I never would have guessed how that journey would unfold,” says David Nevarez, President of Catholic Sites, Inc.  ”With so many wonderful couples having married with our help, it’s very satisfying and a privilege to have my opportunity as well.  As far as I know, CatholicSingles.com is one of the only dating sites to have married off its founder!

And you thought filtering scammers on dating sites was difficult: New Japanese Pop Idol Shocks Fans With News–She’s Not Real.

Match is on a real tear lately. New photo display, broken-out profile sections and much more. This caught my eye. Is my profile complete or not?

People are always talking about advertising on Google and Facebook, but it seems like every time I settle into a Youtube session I see a ton of Plentyoffish ads and no other dating sites. Last year I remember emailing Markus because the POF ads on YT were all pixelated, he had forgotten all about them.

I wonder how many members POF picks up every day from YouTube?

My friend has a dating blog called Flirting With Disaster. She signed up for Plentyoffish and received 500 emails in 12 hours. Blog fodder for weeks to come.

The Anatomy of a Fundable Startup by Naval of AngelList. Good stuff for dating entrepreneurs.

Why Optimus Prime Is Still Single: WIRED Magazine talks to OkCupid about determining the best approach with your dating profile.

Here’s a couple of screenshots of Flowbar, a new dating/social site on Facebook. Nice badge system and earning/sharing drinks and other social features. Still trying to figure out how it works, lots of features to explore.

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Forbes blogger Kashmir Hill talks about the price of various pieces of personal information available from Rapleaf, an online tracking company with millions of consumer profiles and over one billion email addresses in its database.

Whether you have a spouse and children is worth just two cents to data buyers, while knowing you have a smartphone is much more valuable — $0.03.

I wonder if any dating sites are using this information for verification or profile development purposes. View Data Pricing From Rapleaf.

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