I just received an email from someone complaining about a dating software platform vendor. Right after that I read that the open-source Facebook platform Diaspora launched. Immediately after Diaspora was announce earlier this year they put up link to crowdsource some funding and got $200,000 right quick.

More at TechCrunch.

Zero members vs. 500 million at Facebook is not the story, its that Diaspora could be like a distributed private NING. I’m all for a private social networks, tired of hiding stuff of Facebook that I don’t want mom to see. Too complicated and when you screw up your settings and get emails like “why are you naked at this thing called Burning Man?”

White label market is mature, not much room for new players, well maybe a fresh start in the US with better profile sharing features. SkaDate and Boonex have been advertising on this blog for years. I always wondered why other dating “software in a box” players would stop the backbiting and yelling at each other in the comments, and simply buy an ad here (hint hint).

Putting your name, reputation and a phone number out there to burnish your brand, and not being secretive and sketchy, is the way to go.

Dating software is not quite as mature as I’d like to see it, and the white label providers are slow to move compared to blog platform software and other more establish services. Moving forward, but still, there is no sense of urgency, which leads to people feeling ho-hum about white label platforms for the most part.

Hosted, ASP-style super-configurable dating platforms with no members is the perfect middle ground. Then do a deal with the competition and cross-promote, which is a lot cheaper and you’re not giving up a big chunk of your revenue. Am I crazy to think this?

I receive a lot of I’m noticing a uptick in emails from people inquiring about WhiteLabelDating.com and other private label dating services. WLD recently announced a new newsletter system, which provides the company with the ability to assess open rates, click throughs, bounces, upgrades and revenue from every email. The tool also allows very specific targeting by location and demographic information, as well as cross site targeting. WLD currently sends out up to 4.8 million emails per week to the database, with deliverability monitored so that more emails arrive in customers’ inboxes with every campaign.

Global Personals, the parent company of White Label Dating, also has a new website. There is also a new site that explains some of what goes on behind the scenes at globaldev.

I’m still waiting for a private label providers that doesn’t come with a pre-populated database. I can fill one up pretty easily and don’t want to deal with the profile ownership hassles and other legal fine print, which is 99% of the questions I get about private label providers. If they are doing such a great job explaining their services, why am I getting so many emails from confused people?

WLD competes with Dating Factory, EasyDate, The Dating Lab and a few other vendors. All of these companies should be running an ad in my sidebar to drive traffic to their landing pages.

WhiteLabelDating.com, announced that 7-day conversion on its general network increased by 36% in the UK over the last quarter and by 33% across international platforms.

The company attributes this strong performance to the introduction of innovative tools such as Recommended Member, which highlights relevant matches to users; Icebreakers, which allows new members to send out an introductory message to hundreds of potential matches and Inbox Filters, which enables members to manage communication settings according to preferences to avoid being inundated with incoming messages.

The UK-based business provides software and services to enable brands and individuals to create their own online dating sites. In 2009 it introduced Recommended Member functionality to the platform following a partnership with IntroAnalytics, which uses behavioural preferences rather than those expressed in profiles, resulting in member introductions to other members where there is likely to be mutual interest. This function has directly improved member retention by 10% (9.9%) over the last month alone.

Member satisfaction has also increased by 47% over the quarter, largely due to members being able to filter their communication settings by age or location, allowing them to only receive replies that meet certain criteria and improving the chances of a suitable match. The introduction of these new tools has also led to a 139% increase in re-initial memberships as users choose to extend their subscriptions.WhiteLabelDating.com now runs over 4,000 dating sites around the world.

While I am not in any way a fan of “spray and pray” messaging on dating sites, these are impressive stats. It will be interesting to see how the recently-added IntroAnalytics feature affects usage and conversions.