The stars have aligned and I will be speaking at iDate in Miami in a few weeks. I’m on a panel about revenue generation. I’ve helped launch more than fifty dating sites and social networks and am looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned over the past few years as well as turning the crowd onto new revenue generation ideas and opportunities. I would have liked to participate in the “Introduction to the online dating business” on Wednesday, but I’m grateful to have a speaking slot regardless.

The workshop (agenda) is Friday January 23rd at 1:30pm in B Wing – Rooms B210 & 211. I hope you’ll stick around for it. The closing panel (beer served!) which follows is sure to be a highlight of the show.

This workshop will serve as a unique idea generating session for developing other revenue models for Online Dating and Social Networking. The three leading independent consultants to the industry will each provide “outside the box” ideas on how businesses can acheive higher revenue from their user base. Speakers are: Mark Brooks (Publisher of Online Personals Watch) David Evans (Publisher of Online Dating Insider) and Evan Marc Katz (CEO of Thought Rocket).

At iDate2007 Miami, the Revenue Model Workshop was met with resounding success from the delegates. Many operators gained valuable business information and some gained multi-million dollar business ideas from the session. At the iDate2009 event, each presenter will provide ideas in “rapid fire” each for 20 minutes, followed by a 30 minute question period from the general audience.

Consolidating things into twenty minutes is going to be difficult, but I’m up for the challenge.

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2. Speaking to BU MBA program
3. China’s Jiayuan Going after English-Speaking Markets

If you attended, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about the show? How many people in attendance? Any presentations stand out? How where the exhibitors?

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I wasn’t able to make the virtual conference yesterday. How did it go? Leave a comment.

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If you are in any way involved with the online dating industry be sure to check out this event.

This Wednesday September 17, from 8:00 AM EST (1:00PM GMT) to 8:00 PM EST, the 4th virtual conference for the Social Networking & Internet Dating Industry will take place online. Wednesday’s event is a free and open event for everyone. There is no charge to attend the virtual conference.

To attend the virtual event, click on the following link:
http://www.socialnetworkingexpo.com

I’m going to be checking in throughout the day. Say hello by leaving a comment on my profile and I’ll see you in the chat room.

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People tell me around 30 people showed up. Online Personals Watch has a video. but I’m not seeing much coverage otherwise. According to on attendee, the crowd was small, only about 20-30 people but there were some nice, new faces. Mostly social networking companies, a few Asian, and a few Eastern European / European. Not too many American faces. Leave a comment with your thoughts on the show if you attended.

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I had a fantastic time in Miami Beach at the Social Networking and Internet Dating Conference. I haven’t been in a few years and it was great to reconnect with old friends and have a chance to finally meet people I’ve only talked with on the phone. I met a number of people for the first time that I’m looking forward to getting to know professionally as well as personally.

I didn’t get to as many sessions as I would have liked which was unfortunate. However, most of the dating sessions catered to new dating site owners, which is great for that segment of attendees, but as with most conferences, the action was in the hallways.

Special shout outs:

Mark Ezra at Honesty Online for the tremendous hospitality throughout the weekend.

Bill Broadbent at Instinct Marketing for the great conversation at the Delano. It was great to see Mike Jones and Janet from Userplane there as well, easily two of the nicest people in the dating industry and they know how to throw a party.

Ditto for Sam Moorcroft at ChristianCafe.com. Sam and his wife are tremendous people and a joy to be around. It doesn’t hurt that Sam has been kicking butt in the Christian Dating market ever since day one either, the man knows what he’s talking about.

Patrick Perrine at MyPartner for being so much fun to hang out with, whether it be shopping, dancing or people watching. We worked together last year and it was nice to finally met face to face.

Items of Interest:

Good to see Patrick and Dora at Personality Pro. Ralph Castillo of Cupids X Factors was all over the place as well, he created a personality assessment tool which sounds pretty slick. Tai Lopez at Elite Introductions was around. Tai is doing great work taking the concept of the online introduction to the next level.

I enjoyed getting to know more about what Lisa Clampitt of the Matchmaking Institute is up to. Keep an eye out for her, she’s got some amazing plans for the future.

I got to meet people from Chemistry.com, eHarmony, and a few others working at big social networking and dating sites that I won’t mention here, as some people prefer to remain in stealth mode at industry events and I need to respect their wishes.

Getting to spend time with Sam Yagan at OKCupid and Markus Frind of PlentyofFish was a real treat. Markus was never happier than when he said “I do everything opposite what you recommend on your blog and it’s working out great.” Well at least I could be of some help.

Several dating industry insiders have dated people they met on OKCupid. I wonder who the others are?

Brandy Shapiro-Babin of Webmaster Radio and I became instant friends as we hung around with the Thought Rocket team. They have a ton of interviews from the show up on the website.

I convinced E! Entertainment to come to the conference as part of a an online dating story they contacted me about. Lot’s of people were interviewed. Expect to see the finished product in a few months.

Having clients at a trade show meant spending a lot of time in the booth and repeatedly explaining things to curious onlookers. I think the LoveDetect booth came out great and showing off the ability to inject the service into any live dating profile blew people away.

Check out Vidoop for a new fun and secure way to allow people to log into your site, while earning you revenue at the same time.

You couldn’t walk 50 feet without running into a payment processor. I learned about several new payment options and finally got to meet Ryan at GlobalCollect.

One thing I’ve learned about this industry, and which was reinforced by several clients during the show, is how insulated and cliquy the dating industry appears to newcomers. We need to work on this.

Enlaso was exhibiting and they got me up to speed quickly on their latest translation services.

I got to learn more about White Label Dating and World Dating Partners, whose booths were next to each other. I’m still not clear on the differences between the two companies, as the selling proposition seems pretty similar. Ross Williams at White Label Dating says I have to get up to speed on what’s going on in the white label dating space. I agree.

Camlink speed dating launched today. Video-based speed dating is heating up.

One thing that bothered me was there there weren’t many major social networking sites in attendance. I hoped to make some inroads with certain people at Myspace and Facebook. Maybe next year.

Thursday night’s party was ok. I made it home relatively unscathed.

Friday night at Opium was great. I haven’t seen 4am in a while and had a blast dancing the night away. Special thanks to my dance partner, you made my night.

Dinner beforehand with several international matchmakers was fun, what a great group of people, including Julie Ferman and coach/dating guru Evan Katz and Alison Roth of Thought Rocket.

Perry Morgan at National Background Data told me all about how they sell criminal background check data wholesale.

I’m trying to find out how many domains were sold at the Friday domain name auction. I noticed a few decent url’s but most were not very interesting, at least to me.

As with tradition, the final dating industry panel featured free beer, and lots of it. Every time someone said “customer service” I took a drink. Every time Markus said that paid dating is dying, I took a drink.

The panelists didn’t drink enough for the conversation to get really interesting. Some good points were made and there was some visible tension on the stage, but nobody really blew things wide open. Guess we were all too drained from two days of networking and partying.

A big shout out to OnlineBootyCall, who had me choking on my beer every time they made a point or asked a question. Who knew a site that that would do so well?

I just this minute realized the goody bag for the event included a small version of the schedule. A good idea, but a little to late for me.

At some point during the show I lost my phone, thankfully the event staff found it quickly.

When I am doing radio or phone interviews, I’m animated and show some character. Stick a camera in my face and I turn wooden. I need more practice.

In South Beach, seeing two Lamborghini’s flying by at 80 mph with their throaty exhaust growl is almost as exciting as a walk along the beach mid-day.

It was difficult to come home to such a crushing loss for the Patriots. People are walking around in shock, myself included. Now it’s time to pick through the pile of business cards I amassed in Miami and get to work on the usual post-conference tasks. Almost forgot, have to go vote today!

Related posts:

1. iDate conference review
2. iDate LA 2010 Conference Agenda Review
3. iDate Conference Photos

What a difference 24 hours make. Yesterday at this time I was on the beach in Miami, chatting with friends and looking forward to a Patriot’s victory. I am glad I extended my stay through Sunday night, the weekend turned out to be fantastic and watching part of the Superbowl at 30,000 feet was novel. Back in grey and cold Boston a day later, it’s time to get back to work.

In my next few posts I will share some of the highpoints of the conference. In the meantime, here are a few photos from the show. Send me your pictures or a link to them and I’ll add them. Those familiar with the people running the largest online dating sites will enjoy several photos in particular.

Related posts:

1. Virtual idate and Social Networking Conference
2. iDate Miami photos
3. iDate Miami 2009 Postscript

I’ve been popping in and out of the chat room at the Virtual Social Networking Conference. Smaller turnout than the December event, maybe 10 people at any one time. Hopefully it will get busier later in the day. If you’re attending the conference, log in and say hello in the chat room and leave me a message.

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Mark your calendars. A second virtual conference for idate and Social Networking Conference is happening from 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST on Thursday January 24. The virtual conference willl allow delegates to see the exhibitiors, learn what they do, talk with them in advance (text, audio or video), and schedule appointments. While the event runs a long time, the most action occurs from 12-3pm EST. The last one gave me a serious bout of carpal tunnel syndrome, a good thing in this case, because the show was extremely useful.

Good news, I am able to log back into the virtual conference. I recommend setting up your profile in advance and get used to the system before the event.

I’ll have my usual page up, feel free to drop by my profile, ping me or leave a comment and I’ll see you in the chat room. Be sure to check out Teltech, a client who will be exhibiting their LoveDetect services at the show.

In other virtual networking news, Unisfair just raised $10Mraised $10M for Virtual Trade Shows from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. While much slicker than the Pringo offering that powers iDate, I’m not sold on the 3D interface yet.

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Several people have emailed to let me know they are unable to log into their Social Networking Virtual Conference account today. They, like myself, have countless emails, guestbook entries and contacts that we spent hours building up yesterday, and are now for some reason denied access to what is rightfully our information.

Pringo, the company who hosted the virtual conference, told me the event organizer has asked them to shut off all new registrations and logins to the site until further notice.

This is not good and mars an otherwise decent virtual event. I’ve emailed a few people in the hopes they know what happened to our information and when we can get access to it. I’ll post as soon as I hear anything.

Update: it looks like you can pull your contacts and guestbook entries from the first page of your profile, which remains public. Problem is that if you have lots of contacts they don’t all show up on main page.

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