Tonight was a beautiful night in Boston so I went to a restaurant overlooking the city on the waterfront here in Charlestown and hung out with new neighborhood friends. I came home and didn’t remember that Speeddate.com was having it’s inaugural event until 45 minutes into it.

Speeddate.com launched at Techcrunch40 a few weeks ago. Lot’s of buzz in the blogosphere. Bay area company attempting a feature that several dating sites, including Match, have tried and discarded a few years ago.

I went to Speeddate, configured the Flash setup for the site and was immediately greeted by a woman from the San Francisco Bay area. Talk about abrupt.

There is something to be said about a service where the first time you use it you are introduced to a good looking woman. I could get used to this. However, reality quickly set in as I learned that she, and all of the other women I talked to, worked for, or were related to Speeddate.com in some form or another.

As I struggled to settle into a round of banter, I soon realized that the audio and video lag was terrible, she was getting my audio a good 10 seconds after I spoke. Verbal ping-pong ensued, which was slightly disconcerting.

With 25 seconds left in our “date”, I finally saw the countdown timer. Oh, the pressure! I spent the rest of the conversation tweaking the Flash setting in my browser, and then she was gone.

I rated my first date as a match, but after looking at the results, she didn’t share my enthusiasm. Onward we go.

Bam! Another Bay area cutie is looking me straight in the eye. This instant-on stuff is too jarring, give me a moment to regain my composure. Perhaps a fade-in fade-out is in order. First dates just got a lot easier.

Many moons ago I dated a woman who ran a HurryDate event in Boston. On our third date she invited me to an event she was running. They ran out of men, so I had to step in to balance out the gender. Imagine a third date where your date is watching you chat up 10 other women, and she has a clipboard and a whistle. Talk about performance anxiety.

I talked to a few other women before my screen got stuck on “System searching for your next date.” Not the most graceful of endings. I’m sitting here wondering if another woman is going to pop up on my screen while I write this.

Then I realized that my hair looks terrible.

Features

The Find Matches features lets you select an age range and geographic boundary, 10, 50, 100 miles from my zip code in Boston. The broadest search showed seven matches total. Granted, I was 45 minutes late, but seven people 3,000 miles away? I would have stacked the deck and had a bunch of people at the ready.

Clicking on My Messages brings up a new window. What is this, 2001? Where is the AJAX-driven display? Why not just reload the side of the screen with my messages?

Invite friends and Crushes. This feature brings up a window asking me to enter in the usual Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL service login. No way, I have 400 email addresses in my Gmail account, can you imagine me accidentally inviting the executives from Match, eHarmony and Yahoo to a speed date? Main problem is that I didn’t know what the next step would be, and I wasn’t going to take any chances.

You can enter in email addresses of friends, which, had I known this, I would have asked a few to participate.

Just outta Beta

Speeddate.com is definitely just outta beta. The developers have a lot of work to do before mainstream daters warm up to the concept. Because it’s Friday and the Sox are in the playoffs, I’m going to outline some issues I came across and where improvements are necessary. Maybe karma will come back around and set me up on a great videodate.

The basic profile that I was asked to fill out was like an afterthought. They need to beef up profiles and ask for more information, which is going to be valuable to advertisers. Surprising that there were no ads wrapped around the experience. You know my gender, age and location, surely you can serve up some interesting ads.

Where was the option to display a link to my other dating site profiles, my Flickr photos?

Make the countdown timer more prominent on the page.

There is no alert that the webcam is going to turn on. Better be ready!

Where is the rating and the ranking?

What if I wanted to talk to men, or woman to woman? No option for that.

They need to ping my mobile and let me know about the event.

Need to add “why are you ending date” option for “bad connection”.

Sell webcams on the site. Between that at dating site affiliate programs, the site can be making money in no time.

Integrating Speeddate with a dating site seems like a straightforward process. My baseline for these types of services is Userplane, paste in a few lines of Javascript and you’re off to the races. We’ll see if they remain a standalone destination or partner up with dating sites.

Are the events going to be scheduled, or can I show up and hope that I’m matched with someone?

Just how will people be matched once there are more than eight people on the site at once? That’s why they need deeper profiles for people to search against.

It would be cool if I could have a business speed date with the readers of this blog. I’ll have to ask them if this is possible. I videochat in Yahoo messenger, iChat and Skype often. Skype audio and video is far superior to what I experienced tonight, but that’s only a matter of codecs and tweaking Flash.

Imagine a desktop taskbar widget that alerts me to the fact that I have speed date requests waiting for my approval. I would love that. I can’t wait to see their Facebook application.

I’ve been videochatting since 1995 and have joined every service out there. Overall, I have to say I was impressed with the experience, with the caveat that it feels like the people at Speeddate.com have not paid much attention to the services that have come and gone before them. I urge them to join a few services and see what else is out there and continue to add features and functionality, there is lots to be learned from the competition.

Check out Speeddate.com and let us know what you think.

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Scoop! In a few hours, Date.com will release an interactive toolbar that lets singles find dates in real time wherever they are on the web. The toolbar, which is available for both paying and non-paying members, enables
singles to appear online and available to other Date.com members even when they are browsing
other Internet sites.

- Receive More Emails, More Interests & More Instant Messages
- Instant Alerts – Know the moment you get Interests, E-mails or IMs.
- Always be Online – Appear on top of the Who’s Online Search
- Easy navigation – Date.com built into your browser.
- Date.Info – Get the latest news and love advice!
- Search the Web – Yahoo search built in.

The toolbar is available for free download.

The toolbar is PC only so I haven’t tried it out. (Yes I know I need to get a new Intel Mac one of these days.)

Shortening the amount of time it takes to go from initial contact to first date is a priority for a growing number of dating sites. Most people want to avoid endless games of “email tennis”, constantly returning emails, and a toolbar is one way to provide a quick and easy way for people to connect.

I know from experience that the Facebook toolbar has me checking into FB many times a day, as it alerts me whenever I am friended or poked. I hope you can manage alert settings in the Date.com toolbar to
“turn down the volume” when you’re busy, you know, working.

Interesting that Date built their own presence toolbar, when partner Userplane already offer a similar service and already drives chat at Date.com.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Toolbar
2. Where are the Online Dating Toolbars?
3. OkCupid Toolbar and Integrated Instant Messaging

Lately the online dating industry has seen a lot of activity in anonymous calling and what I call progressive communication, where dating sites offer services which facilitate bridging the gap between the first wink, email and phone call to set up a date.

To that end, and to cover the whole disclaimer issue (unlike some other dating blogs), I am happy to be providing advisory services to Zingdom. Zingdom’s patented click-to-talk technology makes it possible for online communities to connect people instantly through live, personal conversation. Zingdom is the offshoot of Convoq, which made a name for itself offering online meeting and web conferencing services.

Zingdom is currently looking to partner with dating and social networking sites interested in offering the next generation of online communication to their members. Their speed dating application (see short demo at: http://demo.zing.dm/speeddating/autodemo/) is operational and they have several Facebook applications that dating sites will find interesting.

Their main service is different than many that I’ve seen in it that it lets anyone control how, when, and in what context they are reachable, either by phone or by chat, and boils all that control down into an embeddable “ZingMe� widget on your profile that others can click to initiate contact.

If you run a dating site, social network or have been thinking about how to leverage the power of Facebook and audio conferencing, contact Marty Fahey at 781-676-6711 or marty@zing.dm for more information.

Related posts:

1. The Importance of a Compelling Personal Ad
2. Photo-Driven Personal Ad Builder
3. Personalized Communication, Dating Site API’s

Longtime sponsor Userplane is Money.

We’re excited to announce the launch of Userplane Money, an unprecedented new rev-share platform. When your visitors use Webmessenger and Webchat, you can now earn revenue from the ad views they generate. The more ads displayed, the more money you make. It’s that simple. There are no fees to participate, and monthly payments are issued via PayPal. No catches. No maintenance. No costs. Join the rev-share revolution!

Sounds like a solid way to earn additional revenue for your dating site. If you are using the Money program, let us know in the comments.

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Speaking of dating and video, a Saul M. Detofsky wrote me, saying, ” Call me soon. It’s later than you think when I get on TV.” Of course I had to check him out, as I had no idea what he was talking about.

Behold, the Let’s Meet TV Show:

Let’s Meet is the first to showcase men and women together on TV in a public domain on a split picture screen, with a genuine identity and thoroughly checked backgrounds without the high risk of being raped or murdered like on the Internet. TV viewers surf channels with a remote control instead of a PC mouse.

Let’s Meet TV Show is the first and only interactive television show in the world designed to deter date rapes by showcasing singles in a public domain like the reverse of America’s Most Wanted TV Show.

Every woman will be given a special digital cell phone to call her date log which will record the time she leaves her home. Women are required to give the full itinerary of the date along with the contact # and name of the man she is meeting and a scheduled time for her to be home. The special locater cell phones use a digital code transmitter with priority Cat Tracking Software that only the FBI, local and state police have. The phone sends a digital signal and uses GPS tracking to cell towers to locate the exact location of a woman when she hasn’t reported back from a date on time.

Wow, where to begin? Detering date rape via interactive television, that’s a new one. Actually, this would be Comcast Dating On Demand, version two, with background checks.

Comcast couldn’t get it right, let’s see how Saul M. Detofsky does. His one million dollar reward for help funding the show might pique the interest of some intrepid people with links to those with the Deep Pockets.

Saul, you may want to hire a copywriter, because your spelling and grammar is terrible and by the time I got to the end of your blog page I had no idea what I was reading.

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ON Dating is a new Internet dating advice program produced by NBC Universal Digital Studios for ON Networks. The show functions as a virtual dating coach, dedicated to helping viewers navigate the sometimes treacherous terrain of online romance.

Each “ON Dating” episode serves as a 3-8 minute primer on how to
date in the 21st century, offering viewers advice on topics ranging from how to write the perfect profile to proper online etiquette to
selecting the site that’s best for you.

This is a fantastic idea. I talked with some television executives several years ago about the exact same thing, running on cable and the web.

This week’s episode features an exclusive interview with Dr. Ian Kerner, a relationship expert with Match.com.

ON Dating is one of several new programs being introduced by ON Networks, Inc. (ON). Other shows available at www.onnetworks.com are: Austin Connoisseur, Budget Health Nut, Cocktails on the Fly, Dinner with the Band, Golf Tips, Stump the Chef and Zen Living.

Dating sites may want to offer these videos to members. Most of the segments are Dating 101, but there is always a need for this basic information for the millions of singles that try online dating each year.

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Ccube is a new over-the-phone social network launching today. The service lets you connect with friends and business prospects on sites like MySpace and eBay with the click of a button. Members can search for and talk to anyone for free. The service lets users link a Ccube username to their favorite connectivity device, including mobile and landline phones or VoIP services, keeping personal phone numbers private.

This is good for dating and social networking, especially on a site like Classmates and Reunion.com. A great way to reconnect with the guy who beat you up for lunch money or the girl you always wanted to ask out in high school.

I like the idea of voice profiles the most. The world is full of people with enough free time to yap away with strangers about all sorts of things. I worked with some people on a business plan the did just this, based on Skype, last year. It’s a compelling idea and the technology is all there to make it happen. It needs a solid scheduling feature to make it turely useful, who wants to get random calls all hours of the day?

The logo has a woman talking on the phone in her car while it looks like the door is open! And she’s not wearing a seatbelt, a la Jon Corzine. Thumbs down from the safety police.

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Over the years, dating sites like Match.com have toyed with audio and video on profiles. Impediments included the need for special infrastructure, i.e special phone numbers to call into, or developing applications to record low quality video from sub megapixel webcams. And who do you know that had a webcam in 2003?

With ever-falling bandwidth prices, I see dating sites swinging the pendulum back to multimedia profile and messaging to increase member-to-member communication, fight scammers and increase the stickiness of their sites.

Several factors support this supposition. Fortunately, adding multimedia to profiles gets easier every year. Flash-based recording and display applets are easily embedded into profiles, which negates the need for special phone numbers, recording and playback systems. Recent Apple laptops come with built-in cameras and webcams from Logitech (slowly but) steadily increasing in megapixels.

Companies like Userplane (ed: advertiser on this blog) and Jangl are leading the pack of member communications tools, and it wouldn’t take much effort for them to offer audio/video modules easily embeddable in dating site profiles.

An anonymous calling company recently contacted me to see what I thought about their new service. Evidently there are a lot of people who have figured out how easy it is to start these services, and while there are various flavors of back-end technology powering them, the user experience is about the same for all of them.

At first I blew the company off. I get these emails all the time, and reviewing anonymous calling services is about as exciting as waiting for your profile photos to be approved on Match. Unless it’s Jangl, which is major coolio in terms of the system and how it works.

After receiving another email from what I take must be their PR department, I finally got around to checking out Jaxtr, a free anonymous calling service that takes a grammar hint from Jangl, and as an added twist, allows messages to be played back in web browsers. It’s G*Number a la 2003 all over again.

I’ve written about anonymous calling overload, ’nuff said.The reason I’m mentioning Jaxtr is that it could turn out to be an unauthorized parasitic service that ends up the Photobucket of the dating world.

If you haven’t heard about Photobucket, videos from the site were recently  blocked by Myspace, who suddenly felt the need to flex it’s muscle when it found out Photobucket was up for sale, according to TechCrunch.

Most dating sites try to strip out anything remotely resembling a url. Perhaps Jaxtr can figure out a way to circumvent this limitation, without partnering with dating sites I don’t know how this would work.

It seems like Jangl or Userplane are much better suited to offering these services. They are technologically proven, have partnerships with large dating sites and understand the needs of the industry and it’s members. Maybe Jaxtr can partner with niche or adult sites.

Online dating is an inherently voyeuristic endeavor which benefits greatly  from the additional dimensions of  audio and video, whether it be in member-to-member communication or profiles.

We’re all tired of staring at bad photos and reading boring profiles. Time for dating sites to take a page from the social networking playbook and allowing members to embed videos and audio from Youtube or other (un)sanctioned sources.

Related posts:

1. The Rise Of An Underground Facebook Market
2. The Rise of Freeconomics: PlentyOfFish and OkCupid
3. Twitter Brings Richness, Depth and Immediacy to Dating Profiles

AVChat is a flash video/audio chat software for use on user based websites. Custom development services are also provided for extending the functionality of the software to better fit the needs of the customers and integrating the software into any existing website.

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Vivox provides online games, virtual worlds and other online communities with robust, integrated communication services that deliver superior quality voice, video, Instant Messaging (IM) and presence – all of which greatly improve gameplay and social interaction. Today, Vivox is bringing voice to over one million subscribers in more than 180 countries.

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