A great time was had by all at the eAmore Dating Industry Summit in New York. 150 people got together in Brooklyn to listen to dating industry executives, startups, financiers and vendors.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the event. The main gripe was that the schedule ran too long, and this will certainly be addressed at the next event. From my perspective this was easy to overlook while engaging with a roomful of bright young and passionate dating entrepreneurs for a few hours at a hip event space under the Brooklyn Bridge.

I felt like an elder statesman. Some presenters were 12 when I started covering the dating space. I ended up spending a lot of time on stage and tried to educate and provide perspective by sharing what I’ve learned working with dating sites over the years.

One issue that was continuously reinforced throughout the night is that entrepreneurs tend to avoid focusing on previous attempts in their market. This can be useful if they leverage their myopia in positive ways, or may lead to pain-inducing times if they don’t understand how the market has evolved. That’s where I can help.

Some of my rapid-fire “state of the dating industry” presentation ended up repeating key points Sam Yagan made in his keynote. Example: Social exhaust data is interesting in dating profiles but no one is leveraging it to its full capacity. Mobile is easy to get into, difficult to succeed. The Q&A with Sam was super, he is one of the nicest and smartest people in the industry. We could have listened to Sam talk for an hour straight, he’s that good.

Here’s part 1 of a recap for those of you who were unable to attend. Leave a comment if you have found other write-ups of the event and I’ll add at the bottom. Speaking of attending, people came from all over the US and several people who went to iDate LA came to eAmore on their way home which was great!

As an optimist cynic who thinks he’s heard it all, I learned an incredible amount from some very bright people hell-bent on changing online dating for the better.

The event turned me on to a number of new concepts based on previously-attempted ideas that failed to get significant traction in the marketplace. Examples: mobile matchmaking, white label providers, introduction services and dating site meta-search. Reality is that sometimes it takes a few iterations of an idea for it to take off. Society has to be ready, technology advances, having enough money, the right founders and team and plenty of luck are required to succeed in the dating industry.

Mobile was a hot topic. Most services had or are planning some sort of mobile apps. HowAboutWe talked about their new mobile app.

Andrew Weinreich, founder of mobile dating service MeetMoi was the moderator. Kudos to Andrew for his efforts to keep the event moving along and insightful Q&A sessions.

Parlor.fm is soup-to-nuts voice-based social networking. Almost too much to comprehend in a quick demo. Founder brought LoveDetect to market, a concept I love to this day.

LoKast, creators of disposable social networks impressed. Great for parties and events.

MeepMe has a new take on flirting at events. Lots of UPenn/Wharton people at the event.

A Small World-inspired Invite-only services like Refreshing Note and Clique NYC caught my attention. Great examples of leveraging local networks and the social graph.

I enjoyed finally meeting Lori from Cheek’d. She has great energy and while I was lukewarm from the start on “dating business cards”, her foray into Facebook is worth paying close attention to.

Moonit is based on better relationships through astrology, and does a good job masking the new-age feel of most astro-based services. They have a new API available to dating sites. I can’t believe I didn’t get a chance to say to Dana, who I’ve spoken with a number of times but never met.

Same goes for so many people. I was on stage too much and didn’t get to mingle enough until the very end of a long night. If I didn’t get a chance to say hi, please don’t take it personally. I’d love to talk with you if you are doing something interesting in the dating space.

Spent time with Kareem Ahmed, the founder of Inbox Cupid, a Groupon-style service where members are the deal of the day. I am totally bullish on the concept, huge potential. I would be surprised if the company didn’t attract investment interest in the near future. Kareem called me the Simon Cowell of the dating industry. I’ll take that as a compliment.

Special thanks to Adam Ludwin at RRE Ventures for talking about some of his criteria for investing in dating-related companies. RRE’s money in HowAboutWe is being put to good use. There has been a lot of discussion in the crowd about if suggested date ideas are a strong enough driver of growth.

One key indicator that HAW is on to something is that dating sites are copying the idea.

eFlirt Expert’s “How to pick a dating site” eFlirt Engine service won my vote for most likely to succeed. Built in a “startup weekend” environment, singles need a place where people can go to select the dating site that is right for them.

I love Lokast and a few other demos were great, but there are 60 million people not dating online in the US and we need to get people educated and comfortable with online dating. Then they can go hog-wild with mobile apps and Twitter and all the rest. Plenty of room for new and novel startups, that’s for sure.

Luv@FirstTweet leverages Twitter to build your profile on the go and then match you with other people. I’m slowly warming up to the idea that Twitter can play some sort of role in the matchmaking process.

MyYearbook and Hotlist both talked about social sites with a dating component. Hotlist is a social discovery engine that enables you to view where your Facebook friends and crowds have been in the past, are checked-in right now, and plan to go in the future. MyYearbook, which has that Myspace feel it it, gets over a billion pageviews/month.

I’ll follow up with some more thoughts on eAmore in a follow-up post. Did you attend? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought, it will help us improve the next one.

My hat is off to Maria for putting together a solid event, thanks for all your effort. I’m already looking forward to the next event. In the meantime I’ve got some smaller get-togethers and webinars planned, stay tuned.

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SpeedDate.com has announced real-time chat for their iPhone/ iPad dating app. With over 10 million users, SpeedDate dwarfs all over video-dating services in terms of sheer size. Usual caveat applies that there are not 10 million people online when you log in, only that 10 million people have created accounts, which is why the site appears pretty sparse when you limit search to your local area. Still, its a neat service used by a lot of people. Just wait until Facebook starts doing video, that is going to be *really* interesting to watch how they roll that out.

I had lunch yesterday with someone who knows mobile space intimately. Our discussion about mobile signups is reflected in the statistic that over the last six months, SpeedDate Mobile has accounted for over 30% of all new users.

Besides Woome, SpeedDate basically created and now owns the online speed dating marketplace in a few short years. Surprising that HurryDate didn’t try this, but Spark Networks, you know, kind of in a rut the last few years. Now SpeedDate’s revenue dwarfs HurryDate and a lot of traditional dating sites

Some top-10 dating site is going to buy SpeedDate, but who?

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DateBid, the webcam auction-style dating game on Facebook, today announced the company has partnered with Betsy Russell, star of the upcoming film SAW3D, to give die-hard fans the opportunity to bid on a webcam date with the celebrity.  The winning bidder will receive a 10-minute video chat with the actress and all proceeds from the auction will be given to Going Out by Going In the charity of Betsy Russell’s choice.

Bidding on hot movie stars for charity is great, a nice promotional tie-in for Date Bid.

However, I’m not a big fan of bidding on people for dates online. I know all about leaderboards and buying your way up them, but something about paying to speed date someone online just doesn’t do it for me. Plenty of people disagree, but most of these bid-to-date/view sites are too close to the videochat camgirls doing porn. DateBid claims 700,000 profiles, thats a lot of people looking to get paid to go on online dates.

If you like casual dating on Facebook, check out Datebid. Let us know how it went.

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By now everyone knows about the wild-west nature Chatroulette, where you are just as likely to be greeted by a guy playing guitar as you are thousands of naked people doing all sorts of bizarre stuff.

There are scores of clone sites which have tried to capture on the media frenzy surrounding Chatroulette, and now there is one more.

ChatVille is a brand new Facebook game that combines the best elements of chatroulette with the gaming and viral mechanics of apps like Farmville.

ChatVille let’s you video chat with random Facebook users in a safe environment while earning compliments, unlocking badges, and leveling up through positive experiences with other users. You can also video chat with all your Facebook friends for the first time ever right from the Facebook website and post screenshots of your ChatVille adventures to Facebook albums.

Your interactions are tied to your Facebook account under the hood so there are actionable consequences for inappropriate behavior. We’ve also developed a proprietary system for weeding out the bad apples quickly and permanently.

This is exactly what Chatroulette needs to clean up it’s act, but one has to wonder what happens when the experience is squeaky clean and tied to your Facebook account. Part of what makes Chatroulette so much fun is the breadth of experiences available on the site, ranging from the sublime to the disgusting and everything in between.

Steve Shapiro, CEO of Digsby says that Chatville was built by the same team that created Digsby, the desktop app that now helps more than 2.5 million users manage over 6 million IM, email, and social network accounts from one application.

Check out ChatVille on Facebook.

Related posts:

1. Chatroulette Brings in the Clones
2. Forget Twitter, Chatroulette Is The Hottest New Dating Site
3. RandomDorm: Chatroulette for the College Set

This week I’ve been talking a lot about how to prototype a dating site. Lots of companies will throw something up on White Label Dating or Dating Factory and if it takes off, start their own site. Other companies are even lazier and more clever. They create Google ads for a new site which is simply a landing page asking for an email address. If enough people sign up, they will launch the site.

Infomercials are the grandaddy of test marketing. Lots of them state “ships in 6-8 weeks.” This is supposedly because they run the infomercial, take the orders, and if they get enough they will actually create the product.

I’m not sure if this dating-based gaming site actually has a product or not, or if the site is really down, but it caught my attention.

In Dudes Can Pay Hot Girls to Play Online Video Games With Them, VentureBeat says:

If you’re a lonely gamer dude, then GameCrush might be your ticket to meet a hot girl.

That’s the basic pitch of this social networking service, where guys can pay cash to play hardcore video games with attractive females on the GameCrush site.

The site, which launched today, lets dudes view the profiles of “PlayDates.” The profiles say what the girls’ “turn ons” are and show their photos. If you find a girl you like, you can send her a game invite. If she accepts, you get six to ten minutes of one-on-one game time.

A speeddate session based on a game, great idea. This feels like it could be a cam-girl site where the female gamers get paid to play. If not, they should consider that. Lots of men would pay a few bucks to look at a pretty face while fragging each other in Call of Duty.

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There is no more effective way to get a sense of someones tastes, preferences and personality than a five minute video chat. Only companies really doing anything with video are SpeedDate, which is getting north of 1.5 million visitors a month and the young kids are using Woome. I haven’t used SpeedDate in a while, it’s $30/month and crashed on me in the middle of a date and froze my browser. It happens, especially on my Mac with Flash, but $30 is still too expensive, especially if I want to try it out for an hour or so.

Today I checked out Chateoulette (Often NSFW). It’s a dumbed-down version of WooMe, just go to the website, turn on cam, and a random stranger is immediately looking right at you, doing just about anything, and I mean anything.

OPW has a post about Match launching an Andriod mobile application. There is another post about Skyecandy, which is videodating via Skype. This has been done 10 times over in the past and hasn’t gone anywhere. Maybe Skycandy has something new in store for us.

I wonder if/when mobile apps will support streaming video? As I’ve always said, an online speed-date with audio and video is the best way to figure out if you want to go on a first date with someone. Mobile apps should be able to implement video chats easily. At home, cams need to be built into a higher percentage of laptops for this to make a significant impact on the dating market. And then there is the issue with people’s behavior. Video tends to bring out the nasty in people.

OmniDate does an end run around this problem by using Flash-based avatars. It’s been around a few years now and I’m waiting to hear some positive results from companies using the service. There has been some research, but where’s the business-case ROI? Are people sticking around on dating sites longer, is there advertising baked into the experience (where the real money is for a startup), are better, more long-lasting relationships resulting from companies using the service?

My SpeedDate time just dinged, gotta go.

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Last week I talked with Art Harrison at Randodate. Randodate offers a speed dating application which can be embedded in a dating site or social network, similar to IM/Chat applications like Topicfox and Toksta.

Enter Ning, the social network for social networks, which recently hit the 1 million networks milestone. Ning Apps was launched last week in order to provide social network administrators a directory of third-party services which can be easily embedded into Ning networks, often with only a few clicks. Mashable said:

Today, Ning is about to deliver some of that functionality to their 700,000 social network creators with Ning Apps, giving them more than 90 new toys — think apps like Qik, Twitter (Twitter reviews), Ustream (ustream reviews), Box.net, Tokbox, WordPress (WordPress reviews), Mailchimp, and PollDaddy — that they can use to enhance their individual networks.

Ning Developer’s have access to a handful of applications in the Dating category. One of those apps is Art’s Randodate, which has been rebranded as Speed Dating 2.0.

What sort of adoption rate can we expect for speed dating on Ning? It certainly can be used for meeting people on your networks, not only for dating.

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SpeedDate has launched an Android application that offers portable, immediate and 24-hour access to the millions of singles engaged in online dating. By downloading the free application to your Android phone, users can leave their computer screens and be able to message dates throughout the day no matter their location. SpeedDate has an iPhone application as well.

Me no have Android phone, so no review. I’ll try to check out when I’m in NYC, someone I know must have an Android phone.

Cool to see that SpeedDate uses Facebook Connect.

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Speeddate.com had two women going on speed dates for 24 hours on Valentine’s Day.

Sarah, one of the participants, had this to say about the experience.

It all began when I entered a contest on SpeedDate.com that a friend of mine saw that I might be interested in doing. It said they were looking for people to compete in a 24 hour speeddate marathon. I am a single girl which makes Valentines Day a not so fun holiday and thought why not? It seems like a great way to meet a ton of people, and it was! Also, living in NYC its so hard to meet people that are worthy of your time. As I am always working so hard, I am a freelance graphic designer so most of my day I spend at the computer. I knew it was going to be fun. So, I did it. You talk to people for 3 minutes and if you like them then you can chat with them for longer and if not, they go away and that’s it! It’s the perfect amount of time to talk to someone and figure out if you want to continue communicating with them. In a 24 hour period I went on 390 dates. It was worth it! I met so many new people. Its a great experience I recommend to those with short attentions spans and the freedom to choose your match!

390 dates. Can you imaging date number 350? Reminds me of the first time I tried face-to-face speed dating. After a few people you quickly learn to compress your introduction into 30 seconds and hope they do the same. By the 15th conversation you have it down to the bare minimum, name, age, location, interests, your turn. I go so bored during a few of the conversations I wanted to start making stuff up about myself. Hmm, perhaps an architect (Seinfeld fans will get this).

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I received this email from Speeddate today. I am not exactly enthusiastic about meeting 52369, I prefer even numbers.

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