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Bailing on Scoop.it, Whats Up With Me?

David Evans — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:51:22 +0000

After testing out Scoop.it for a few months, its proven to be a great platform for quick posts, but there’s so little traffic being generated that I’m bailing on it. Great platform without a doubt, but just not a good fit for me. I wish WordPress would integrate some of the Scoop.it features, that would be helpful when sourcing photos and content for posts.

Life has been incredibly busy and different the last few months. Deciding to move into a quirky log home in the VT woods for a year was just the first step. Now that I’m here I have to deal with dive bombing cardinals, coyotes, bears, setting up new house and home office, the list goes on. And then there is the dating pool out here…

The next year is all about getting back to basics and keeping things simple. Things that usually elude me.

My ToDo list for the next year:

Blog more, and about different topics
Read more books (fiction and non-fiction)
Offer more/better advisory services to dating industry clients and social networks
Land more advertisers
Land more advertisers
Land more advertisers
Take periodic large projects, but for the most part keep things small and simple.
Figure out what’s next

So, no more Scoop.it, and another page of my life story.

Couple of Dating Domain Names

David Evans — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:48:03 +0000

Someone for the love of God go buy www.SingleHumans.com for $495. Details at Sedo.

Deeper pockets? How about datingonline.com for $40,000? Details at Snapnames.

Why are the landing pages for these domain so crappy? One would think you would at least stuff a few good links on it, even the Godaddy parked pages look better.

Online Dating Industry News 4-23-12

David Evans — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:20:13 +0000

I just got back from a weekend meditation retreat. At one point there were 24 of us sitting on cushions in a room overlooking the mountains of New York State, with an amazing sunset and all of a sudden I felt 100% connected with everyone in the room on a level I’ve never, ever encountered before. Call it being open, call it love, lets just agree to call it a feeling that dating sites should strive to facilitate between members.

Prepare for some major link-droppage, enjoy.

I mentioned that Pinterest could be an interesting idea for a dating site. Of course someone is doing that.

Here’s another one. Foreign Affairs on Pintrest. Pintrest is doomed because its all women and they hate this stuff and its getting so spammy its ridiculous.

Wait, one more, PinPal.

Netflix never used its $1 million algorithm due to engineering costs. The increase in accuracy on the winning improvements “did not seem to justify the engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment. Ouch!

Friendfinder Networks pays off some debt, remains deep in the red. I’ve been doing some research on AdultFriendFinder (for a client, really!) and its clear that after dropping $75 and receiving a severely bruised ego, I totally understand why men pay to be abused by women on AFF. Just like with dating, its a numbers game. You have to deal with the seriously deluded people and every once in a while there is a real person with a real photo that you can actually talk to that will actually respond to you and doesn’t have a list of demands 4 screens long.

The FFN cam business is probably raking in a lot of cash. Girls asking for tips on webcams is a *huge* business segment. At least thats what they tell me.

Big buzz around theComplete.me (private Facebook dating, oxymoron?), which for some reason is apologizing for something I didn’t really pay attention to (doing geographic roll-out instead of nationwide), making it a bigger issue than it needed to be. If everyone on the team is a dating industry pro and worked for Match, Yahoo etc, why are mistakes like this being made? #newbiemistake.

In other news theComplete.me raises $1.2 million seed round. Investors include PlentyOfFish, what??? Dating sites investing in other dating sites, its cats and dogs and raining frogs. I would love to see that term sheet.

The main reason theComplete.me is able to raise any money is because of the team. Investors probably have a vague idea what the final product will be or if it will be successful, but they like the team, a lot, so it doesn’t really matter what they pitched them with.

This is a very different approach from most dating startups, which throw down their business plan and say “fund us so we can build this” and have to discernable experience or team members. TheComplete.me folks have a general idea of what direction they are going, something like”It’s private/real identity/facebook/some other stuff and we’ll see what happens.”

The first U.S. Edition of the Online Dating Summit in Las Vegas is January 22-25 2013. Their inaugural event in Barcelona featured 450 professionals from over 30 countries. In Las Vegas they expect close to 1.000 delegates. Registration opens June 1.

Interesting how iDate moved from Miami to be in Vegas at the same time as the Online Dating Summit. I guess domain squatting wasn’t enough for them. If you go to Vegas, which event will you be attending?

Plentyoffish, I mean POF, POF passes 100M weekly messages, 2 Billion Pageviews/Week. That is just insane. Whats more, they have no idea what’s driving this traffic bump. Read More…

Match has a new campaign in the UK called Real Stories.

Billing and marketing vendor and friends of the dating industry vindicia have expanded their CashBox solution. I’ll let them explain it better than I ever could.

Traditionally, dating sites have been subscription oriented, with monthly, quarterly, six-month and annual plans being the most common offerings. Usage billing gives them the opportunity to potentially attract audiences that might not be yet ready to cough up $30 a month, but still get value from the service. You could have an “entry” pricing model that’s based on the number of profiles you’re able to see (say 100 per month) for $19.95, and every profile over that is $1.99. The latter pricing model is exactly what the latest release of CashBox would support because we would bill the appropriate amount based on the profiles “viewed” for that particular customer. That way people who want to test the waters could. Dating sites using CashBox would have the flexibility to incorporate multiple pricing models into their arsenal.

Vindicia is doing a Sneak Peek webinar on Thursday April 26.

Badoo says they have 8 million and counting in the States. Thats huge since they have zero marketing footprint here. Former Google and Facebook exec Ben Ling is joining Badoo as COO, effective May 1. He’ll be based in their London HQ.

Ben was Senior Director, Product Management of Search Products and Local Business Products and Director of Platform at Facebook back in the day. He’s got skills, but can they translate to the further internalization of Badoo?

I was on Badoo every day for over a month. The way its going to grow in the US is by adding a few select features. They have the HotOrNot thing going (literally, they power the site now) and the “Who’s close to you right now” thing, but they need some new features that Americans and Canadians like to keep people engaged, otherwise the site gets boring too quickly.

Wait, I’m looking at this all wrong (again!). With a member acquisition cost of pennies per person, Badoo can make a ton of money with the site just doing what they keep doing. Serious daters won’t use it, but there are plenty of people like those on MyYearbook that will hit the site just to see who’s around and engage in some casual flirting. Will Badoo stay the same and just coast and cash in or evolve to be something bigger and more important? Let’s see what Ben and the team can come up with.

New site alert. Ladies interested in partaking in some questionable idolatrous behavior can check out Miss Travel, the site where they can find rich men to fly them around the world. Is sex with an old rich fat man really worth a trip to Paris? A lot of people seem to think so.

My Internet dating spreadsheet is better than yours.

Your online dating profile photos make you look like a blurry Sasquatch. Here’s how to fix them, A Free Photo Lighting Lesson.

Much has been written about certain mobile apps that were a bit too close for comfort when it comes to knowing exactly where a person is on a map. To counter-balance this, why not learn how Carnegie Mellon researchers are Using Foursquare Data to Redefine a Neighborhood.

Video-based dating is heating up (again). Runfaces this time. And Skyecandy.

After hanging out on a cushion all weekend, I came across Spiritual Singles. Nice niche and less dogmatic than Christian dating sites. Maybe Buddha is their spokesperson?

A social network for two people? If Facebook would only get groups sorted out and not so complex, these sites would be mostly unnecessary. but hey, why not make social nets specifically for certain numbers of people? Social Networks, Small and Smaller (NY Times).

MeetMoi launched Wingman, allows friends to get introduced to other groups nearby. I love how the press release says “MeetMoi is the leader in social discovery technology.” Sorry, there are no leaders at this point, everyone is simply trying to figure out how to make meeting people more social, because that is the buzz and the hype of 2012. Kudos for MeetMoi for trying out a wingman feature, haven’t seen a digital version of that yet.

No Scrolling Required at New Dating Sites. “People were just sort of battle-weary from online dating.”

Best new dating site name of 2012, Coffee Meets Bagel. Daily Deal dating, *great* idea.

Millionaire Matchmaker Con Man Pleads Guilty to Bank Fraud. But will he be be back on next season?

Dating Sites on Pinterest

David Evans — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:46:50 +0000

Like the other 10 million of you, I’ve spent some time pinning away on Pinterest. I now understand why the service is 90% women, because most dudes are not going to pin anything unless its girls, guns, stuff with engines or showing off their man caves. Women, on the other hand, have found the new new thing.

My take on Pinterest is that its smacks of a fad. While they have absolutely stunning recent growth, at its core its a digital corkboard. Great traffic driver for brands, sure, but really, the media is doing its job pimping Pinterest, so lets all relax and see how the stats are in six months. I thought StumbleUpon was a fad as well, and look at how well they have done as a site discovery service.

Of course I and a few friends started trying to pin photos of singles on Pinterest. Here’s the Match search, its not a board though. My Match profile shows up, so do some profiles from Spark Networks.

Could Pinterest drive traffic to dating sites? Even without any dating-specific features, the ability to browse singles as a gallery is compelling to a lot of people. Adult sites could crush it on Pinterest as well. Fling.com is probably freaking out about how easy it will be to drive traffic with their amazing geo-targeted lead-generators.

Pinterest is social discovery done right. The problem is that singles don’t belong on Pinterest. Its going to dilute what makes Pinterest so useful and fun. And it will invariably devolve into a lot of dating sites spamming people with photos of young women with side cleavage galore.

Pinterest has a spam problem heading their way, from about 100 different vectors. I wish them the best of luck staying out ahead of the spammer arms race. As for profiles on Pinterest, what do you think?

Online Dating Industry Weekly Wrapup

David Evans — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:33:48 +0000

Happy Friday, #followfriday, TGIF and all of that. I threw a bunch of fun and interesting links up on the Online Dating Industry Insider Scoop.it page. Finishing my move to Vermont this weekend, back next week. Here’s to hoping that the cable modem in the woods is fast, feeling a bit cut off from the world lately.

The Romancierge

David Evans — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:49:53 +0000

And we’re back. Well that was a nice blog break, I’ve been hanging out in Vermont and am fully recharged and ready to go. Next week I’m moving into to a cool little wooden home in the woods and I can’t wait. After living in New York City and Boston for my entire adult life, it was time for a change. In the meantime, I’ve been busy on Badoo, tracking the latest social dating apps and bookmarking a ton of (hopefully) interesting things. Let us pray that the cable modem in the new place is generous with bandwidth, the satellite internet access I’ve been relying on has been deplorable.

I’ve grown to love Scoop.it, which has proven almost perfect for those quick-hit posts. Definitely subscribe to the Scoop.it dating news feed and share those links.

For some reason Scoop.it didn’t like this Flash-heavy site, but I like this date-idea planner from Urban Daddy, The Romancierge.

Happy Valentine’s Day

David Evans — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:55:04 +0000

All images from Someecards.

Online Dating Eye-Tracking Study

David Evans — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:45 +0000

Eye-tracking studies and neuromarketing has always fascinated me. Just last week I was looking at the Emotiv EEG headset (me want!), which is getting into reading brainwaves and eye-tracking at the same time, which excited me to no end.

Why should the dating industry care? Today we see that Tobii Technology and AnswerLab announcing the results of an eye-tracking study showing that men spend 65 percent more time reviewing photos in online dating profiles than women do. Alternatively, women spend 50 percent more time than men reading profile information about their prospective partner’s background and interests.

The study included 39 participants, 18 female and 21 male, who each were interviewed before and after viewing dating profiles on both Match and eHarmony. From the gaze patterns collected, it was discovered that male subjects spend 65 percent more time viewing their potential partner’s photo and 50 percent less time analyzing the profile overall, when compared with the gaze data of female subjects.

40 participants in a random cafe in San Francisco is hardly a scientific study, but I believe the results jive with another eye-tracking study from a few years ago. Most of the results are common sense/knowledge, but its always good to add additional information to the pile.

Lets get to the findings:

Women spent an average of 84 seconds evaluating a profile to assess if it was a match, while men spent an average of 58 seconds.

Men tend to focus on the profile photo.

In some instances, men spent as much as 65 percent more of their time than women looking at the profile photos.

There is also some good information for dating sites to consider.

A profile that showcased personality at the top of the page was perceived as more personal.

A profile that prominently displayed a list of traits was perceived as more businesslike.

I like that Tobii gave out some free advice for dating sites. This is mostly 101-level User Interface/User Experience stuff but good to remember. Far too many dating sites have awfully-designed templates that often do nothing to improve conversions (People Media comes to mind, but at least a few of their sites seem to be improving and looking better).

Implement a streamlined navigation: Avoid too many calls-to-action in the top navigation that can confuse users and distract them from the main profile and its key interactive elements.

Highlight key profile information: Reduce clutter and streamline key profile information (name, location, etc.) to make it easily discoverable.

Carefully weigh your monetization strategies with the user experience: Minimize the disruptions your advertising and subscription models have upon profile viewing. Assess the placement, frequency and style of ads or up-sells to reduce distractions and enhance effectiveness.

If you want to try eye-tracking on your site, contact Tobii. Another thing to check out is Clicktale, which monitores where the mouse is on a web page. There are plenty of smaller open-source options like Text2.0 thing that does eye tracking right in the browser.

One can hope that these new technologies will supplant the old “stick people in a room and videotape them looking at your dating site” way that everyone from Match to eHarmony has been doing for years.

After all, A/B testing is smart, multivariate testing is complicated and amazingly powerful (you can also shoot yourself in the foot), but plugging people’s brains and eyes into your laptop and finding out what works best for your dating site, thats just awesome.

Most sites just want to increase conversions, but knowing why one design tests better than another is the next frontier for online marketing, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for keeping that sales funnel as slippery as possible.

If this is the least bit interesting, check out neuromarketing as well, a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into for a few hours.

Online Dating Industry Insider 1-31-12

David Evans — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:40:02 +0000

Today’s Online Dating Industry News is out. Use the Suggest button at the top of the page to send us links to press releases, research, trends, LOLz, etc.