Oodle aggregating personals

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Nov 19, 2008

Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008

SNAP Exceeds 15 Million Users on Facebook(R) Platform

Match serves one billion winks. Winks are the most useless online dating tool for serious singles, why even offer them?

Plentyoffish says Listening to users is bad.

Social dating startup Ignighter gets new offices.

3D Explorer launches avatar creation tools. No plug-in, no download. Supports Windows, Mac and Linux, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Match just billed me $101.94 to continue service for a year. Someday, somehow, dating sites will clean up their act regarding re-billing. Being alerted that a company is about to bill your credit or debit card should be a law. Many dating sites rely on a considerable number of people forgetting to cancel their subscriptions, which is legal, but that doesn’t make it right. Subscription-based dating sites will do whatever they can to keep the money flowing. I’ve given up on them actually gaining a conscience when it comes to filling the coffers, it’s not going to happen any time soon.

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Over the summer, Google launched Lively after three years of development. After four months, the project has been deemed a failure and is shutting down December 31st.

I wrote about The Effect of Google?s Lively On Virtual Dating Applications, which talks about the launch details as well as OmniDate, another browser-based virtual environment attempting to make it safer and easier to meet someone online before venturing out on a real date.

I asked:

What does this mean for OmniDate when you can create a similar environment in the browser based on Google API?s, platform and data-sharing?

Apparently, nothing. Irony alert: When Google attempted to buy IMVU at the beginning of Lively development, one of the co-founders left the company for Google. Oops.

I remain somewhat enthusiastic towards browser-based virtual environments. Computers are just about fast enough to run them without slowing your system to a crawl, and the tools to create realistic environments continue to improve. Now someone has to figure out how to make these environments compelling and fun. Give people the tools to collaborate, create and explore, without turning into anything-goes SecondLife.

Vivaty launched a similar virtual environment several weeks ago. Read Vivaty?s Great For Virtual Dating for more information.

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VentureBeat has launched it’s own Vivaty 3-D Virtual Scene. Vivaty embeds in web pages, making it a better choice for companies wary of building environments in SecondLife, which requires a large client download that needs to be frequently updated and it’s steep learning curve. By using Vivity’s tools to splice together a virtual scene, you can create a 3-D experience and embed it on any blog, site, brand or online destination. Vivaty is Windows only for now, so I haven’t used it yet. Google’s Lively and IMVU are competitors.

Earlier this year, Ravit Ableman took me on a virtual date at Omidate, which serves as a bridge between profile reading and meeting in person. I liked how questions are asked of both participants, breaking the ice in a way that’s just so much more natural than riffing off of a profile. I see tremendous potential for advertising revenue at Omnidate, but only if they can land a few larger dating sites as clients. They need to go after 3-5 top 20 sites, which can take up to a year to get a deal moving, while integrating with smaller sites along the way, even if Omnidate has to do all of the programming themselves at a loss.

Omnidate has lost almost a third of it’s visitors since July. It’s pretty clear that it’s is going to have to give up being a destination, instead relying on being as easily embeddable as Lively, Vivaty or IMVU.

In the dating space, I remain on the fence about singles warming up to avatar-based first dates. The current crop of environments is either too restrictive or anything goes, we’re still waiting for someone to come up with the killer combination of directed first contact, contextually-relevant experiences, expressive avatars and partnerships and advertisers.

Finally, I love the idea of being able to hop from one virtual environment to another. Several companies are building the underlying technology to make this happen. In the meantime, we’re stuck with all of these walled-garden approaches. We need Facebook Connect or something like that for virtual space.

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Google has finally gotten into the virtual reality market with Lively. As an early member of the Boston Computer Society’s Virtual Reality Group circa 1993, I have a longstanding interest in virtual worlds and keep up to date with SecondLife and to some extent MMORPG’s like WorldOfWarCraft as well as avatar-based chat.

Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn’t tethered to one Web site like Second Life, and it doesn’t cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software, a user can enter Lively from other Web sites, like social networking sites and blogs.

The Lively application already works on Facebook, one of the Web’s hottest hangouts, and Google is working on a version suitable for an even larger online social network, News Corp.’s (NWS, Fortune 500) MySpace.

I haven’t gotten to a PC to try Lively yet. I’m not expecting too much gee-wiz action, but it Google’s attempt at going after the customized avatar market could certainly have a ripple effect on avatars, chat and virtual dating companies. Notice how I didn’t say SecondLife? Lively is based on rooms. Don’t think of this as a complete immersive environment in a web browser. You can’t fly around, yet.

Here’s a shot of Lively. Not bad. The customization looks fair. Looks a lot like IMVU. No wonder, Lively’s head of 3D, Mel Guymon, was one of IMVU’s five co-founders. Google offered to buy IMVU in October 2005, right about when development on Lively started. All of the co-founders rejected the offer except for Guymon, who later left the company to work at Google.

Established four years ago, IMVU did not come out of stealth mode until just a few weeks ago, announcing that it had reached over 20 million registered users and that it now offers 1.7 million items in its virtual goods catalog. According to VC firm Menlo Ventures, IMVU generates $1 million in revenue per month through its micro-payments economy. The service offers virtual credits which users can purchase and spend on user-created goods.

Worlds In Motion, a new blog to me, has the details. IMVU landed $9 million in VC money in 2006 and only recently came out of beta.

Here’s a list of the most popular rooms in Lively, after being online for 24 hours or so.

WeeMe is simliar. I’ve always liked Yahoo Avatars. I’m not 12 and I use IM all day and haven’t really cared about being able to move about much, but by now I though Yahoo would at least let my avatar sit down. He’s been standing for 4 years and must be tired.

What does this mean for OmniDate when you can create a similar environment in the browser based on Google API’s, platform and data-sharing?

I worked with a startup that wanted to do browser-based immersive 3D environments for advertisers similar to Flash back in 2000. We had a solid toolkit, compelling experiences and a good team, although in the back of my mind I knew that Flash would continue to improve and as computers got more powerful, it would be harder and harder to fight Flash’s 90-something percent adoption rate worldwide. I have the same feeling about Lively and a number of virtual-dating applications.

Omnidate is obviously more focused on the dating market, with built-in interactivity in the form of quizzes, customizable audio and flirts. I would hope can integrate with dating sites to leverage the data in people’s profiles as well.

Lively is going to be more of a platform for many different types of virtual/avatar/chat applications. It will be cool to see it running on my iPhone at some point.

One big difference between Omnidate and Lively is that Google has no plans to sell advertising in Lively. But that doesn’t mean you can’t wrap the experience in ads. Figuring out how to read the metadata in Lively and tie into Google Adwords will be key.

I wonder how long it will take for someone to replicate key Omnidate features in Lively and make it widget for social networks, blogs and dating sites?

More on Lively.

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Match.com will start advertising to affluent singles.

The new Honesty Online blog.

I grow weary of signing up for new dating sites. Does anyone actually think to ask if their questions are any good? Why don’t dating sites link to popular photo-sharing sites? I have to open up iPhoto, find a photo crop/export it to desktop, then upload it. This is 2008 people and I don’t have a lot of time.

Any dating site that lets someone join without a photo is doing them a disservice. I don’t care if you’re a CEO or look like a troll, you need a photo. Life isn’t You’ve Got Mail, dating sites need to wake up and start building in privacy tools like eHarmony to gradually reveal yourself. Punish people without photos by limiting search results or something, anything to avoid the dreaded blank grey picture box. If I was buying a dating site, I wouldn’t accept profiles without photos.

Why aren’t you letting me mention my social network pages? If your site is too idea-poor to come up with interesting and useful profile fields, leverage what others have done. Walled garden dating sites s**k big time and I’m tired of them. I do the majority of my dating on Facebook now. Facebook let’s you find niche’s like no dating site can. Results may be spotty but it’s what’s happening right now and people actually write you back. Good looking funny people that are cool enough to be on Facebook. I like it, not for everyone, but it works for me.

This week I came across Fantomaster, which I know nothing about, but they introduced me to the term cloaking, which is my favorite word of the week. I bet Markus is doing this, and so is SinglesNet. This is way ahead of what most people think about when it comes to SEO and gets me all excited. The 5,000 landing pages thing is popular too, part of me hopes Google doesn’t like that. Search engine games are disingenuous for the most part, but thats part of the fun. You see what you can get away with until Google spanks you and you start losing $10,000 a day because your SEO/SEM guys pushed things just a bit too far.

TechCrunch on Modeling the Real Market Value Of Social Networks. Wonder how we could do this for dating sites? Traffic isn’t the only metric, what about time spent on site, customer satisfaction and successful matching? Some people say it should be number of emails sent, which I’ll add to the list.

Number of successful relationships will never be known. I’m waiting for someone to do a study of the number of eHarmony divorces. Probably pretty low but still how interesting would it be to know the performance of the site over time?

I heard that True.com uses Ivy Tower Media. Does anyone know anything about the company?

Does anyone have experience with Evercurrent? Leave a comment or contact me directly.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Week In Review June 27, 2008
2. Weeky Online Dating Wrapup June 20, 2008
3. Online Dating Insider Links for December 8, 2008

OkCupid launches Facebook application.

SeekingAlpha on the IAC empire. IAC owns Match.com.

Online Dating Coaches Karin Anderson and Beth Roberts, are appearing on OnDating.TV. ON NETWORK’s popular internet Dating Series, OnDating.TV, brings the Online
Dating Coaches’ secrets and tips to your PC, TV, iPod or iPhone.

New Boonex Dolphin Support site.

SkaDate has been updated.

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Avatar moved to sidebar.

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Over the past several years online dating has moved from static profiles in your web browser to mobile phones, cable television channels, YouTube and the nascent SecondLife virtual environment. Today I saw something similar to SecondLife that specifically mentioned matchmaking, and totally blew me away. Watch this video for the new Sony Playstation “Home” to see what I mean.

At first glance, Home makes Myspace and generic dating sites look like amateur hour. Home could be a real winner for Sony and it’s millions of PS3 owners.

The concept behind Playstation Home is to make it easier to share, link, discover and communicate with people from around the globe, a la SecondLife, with much better graphics, and the ability to invite people to play multiplayer games. Just try that in SecondLife, it remains an underwhelming experience.

Yes the PS3 is expensive, and Home will most likely be a closed system, as opposed to open source, where anyone can develop for it freely, and I’m sure it’s going to cost something on top of the pricey Playstation but the video sure did put a big grin on my face.

The rumor started last week. I’ll put this on my watchlist and report back when more information becomes available.

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SL Profiles enhanced profiles displayed within SecondLife’s client. The profiles are pulled from SLprofiles.com. The site accepts advertising, which is paid in Linden Dollars (in-world currency.) Profiles can have first life and Secondlife pics, places blogs, ratings and more. Very cool to be able to bring web content into the SL client. Word on the street is that various third party clients will be available soon. Snow Crash here we come.

Technorati Tags: secondlife

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Someone sent me this link to a Web 2.0 event where FriendFinder CEO Andrew Conru does a presentation titled “what can we learn from the adult industry.” I’m posting this because some people argued that I called Friend Finder network “adult”, when it contains a variety of religious and other non-adult sites. AFF is stickier than Disney, in the same league as Google in terms of minutes spent on site. More time is spent on AFF than any other adult site on the web.

Here is some tasty research about online daters.

Young people are becoming technically socialized on social network services (SNS), and SNS serve valuable social needs. However, just as a bar would fail if it tried to be all things to all people, SNS sites must realize their value is dictated by their context. As such, they must consistently be thinking about new ways to bring audience in to this context, rather than just adding new additions designed to trap clientele that wishes to move on. That we wish to move from place to place is entirely natural, and generally technologists fail rather miserably when they try to break human nature for economic reasons.

Via Fred Stutzman, aka Chimprawk, aka Unit Structures. Fred is the go-to guy if you want thorough yet readable academic look at social networking.

More avatars from Zwinky.

Technorati Tags: avatars, socialnetworking

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