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 [...]

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TechCrunch is pushing a rumor that FriendFinder was acquired for more than a billion dollars. What a windfall for founder Andrew Conru if it’s true. Just a few months ago people were saying that Friendfinder (and parent company Various, Inc.), was not a palatable acquisition target due to the nature of the some of the [...]

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Notasinner wrote in to say that he has heard rumors that eHarmony is going to focus more on the Christian dating market. Given the background of eHarmony founders, I don’t see how that is possible, and I would think international expansion would be top of their ToDo list.
I’ve been underwhelmed with the dating industry’s foray [...]

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Mashable thinks another social networking patent has been awarded to Friendster. Supposedly the patent, filed on August 25th 2006, was issued on March 6th 2007. Friendster already has several social networking patents.

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An anonymous tipster wrote in asking:
You should ask why Vintacom has only one person left from management and why Websourced ceased to exist? The only person left at Vinta is Mike Baldock and a couple of IT people. All have gone on to better (non THK) opportunities.
I haven’t exactly been a fan of the recent [...]

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From the rumor mill: Word is filtering back from iDate that a new Jewish dating site has not been paying affiliates for while and they are considering shutting down due to financial problems.

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The marketing hypocrisy at True.com continues. Really, this is the last time I’m ever going mention it. Who am I kidding, True is the dating service the entire industry loves to hate on. But secretly want to score with their models.
Herb Vest is obviously no longer in control of the company. There is not way [...]

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Today, Markus incorrectly guessed that Union Square Ventures funded OkCupid to tune of $6 million earlier this year.
BZZZZZ Wrong.
I just got back from having a coffee (venti chai latte with soy) with OkCupid founder Sam Yagan in the Boston gardens. It was our first time meet and we lounged in the warm October New [...]

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JDate founder Alon Carmel has a new gig. Carmel resigned from Spark Networks less than a month ago. Now we know what he is up to.

The TechCrunch bunch says:

Founder Alon Carmel is a gifted designer and developer and is getting ready to launch his stealth project I4giveu. Very few details on the service were revealed, [...]

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The Match.com brain drain continues. Several key people at Match have left the company to work at another consumer brand hell bent on putting Reed Hastings out of business.
This is a continuing trend at Match, I get more Plaxo updates from the Texas internet dating giant than any other dating site.

Details are thin, but let’s [...]

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