Sponsorship: Online Dating Insider is read by top entrepreneurs, executives, funders and followers in the online dating industry. We’re part of Digicraft, a group of thought leaders and industry insiders covering the dating, social networking and identity spaces.

Consulting: We work primarily with established dating sites and social networks (strategy, opportunity analysis and forecasting), startup companies looking to enter into the online dating market (marketing plans, viral initiatives and product development), as well as vendors looking to partner with dating companies (anonymous calling, gaming, coaching, and other value-added services). We always have several pet projects in development (blogs, social media initiatives and identity management).

Contact us to learn about sponsorship opportunities and to learn more about how we can help your company navigate the most active and exciting opportunities on the Internet.

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Userplane, the premier communication platform for online communities and a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, today announced that PlentyofFish, the world’s top free dating site, has joined Userplane’s new ad revenue-sharing program. Userplane made the announcement at iDate 2007, the business conference for the online dating industry.

Userplane recently created a new advertising program for sites that pay usage-based licensing fees – typically, large dating and social networking communities. For these sites, Userplane now enables text-based ads within its private-label chat and IM tools. It then splits any resulting revenue with participating sites.

PlentyofFish, an early adopter of the ad-supported business model, immediately signed up. The free dating site has more than 1 million daily visitors and is ranked by Hitwise as a top five dating service in the United States. Since 2004, its members have used Userplane Webmessenger(TM) to initiate, on average, more than 100,000 IM sessions and exchange millions of text and audio/video messages per day.

You are Reading Online Dating Insider, the premier and largest dating industry blog, which gets nowhere near the revenue or pageviews of Userplane, AOL or PlentyOfFish and is beholden to no large lumbering corporations.

Read the press release.

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Media Daily News weighs in on the Match.com product placement in the new TBS show “My Boys�.

Judging by the brand’s appearance in the Nov. 28 debut episode, the product placement feels forced, a potential consumer turn-off. This despite Match’s CEO telling the Times the appearance had to feel “seamless and natural.â€? (The integration was one of the top-ranked product placements of the week, according to measurement firm iTVX.)

Match and TBS clearly made an effort to achieve seamlessness. The show’s conceit dovetails within the orbit Match circulates: 20somethings trying to get the relationship thing right.

But the initial dialogue in which Match appears strains credulity on several levels. It’s a scene where two female friends grab lunch and discuss the highs and lows of the dating minefield. One woman (PJ Franklin, played by Jordana Spiro) laments a recent encounter. Another (Stephanie, played by Kellee Stewart) struggles with a break-up but turns to Match to find Mr. Right.

“I have been on Match.com a lot,� Stephanie says.

“Doing what?� PJ asks.

“Online dating! It’s fantastic!â€? Stephanie says.

Cringe. I haven’t seen the show yet and I’m out of their demographic but in general this is why I have Netflix and HBO.

Match shelled out between $1-2 million to be featured in My Boys, based on a woman sports reporter in Chicago.

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Userplane has announced that OkCupid has selected and implemented Userplane’s Webmessenger™ technology, a leading IM and chat tool featuring both live text and streaming audio/video.

I met Sam Yagan of OkCupid recently. We had a great conversation you may want to read.

Technorati Tags: okcupid, userplane

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Meetic and China.com are partnering to provide online dating service to the expected 100 million eligible singles.

Two things about this that I’m sure about.

#1 Sounds like the site will be available in Engish, French and German. Ni hao?

#2 Since its launch in 2002, more than 500,000 couples have become engaged. Is that how they measure success over there, by getting engaged? That’s 342 engagements a day, which makes eHarmony’s 45 look pretty small.

Technorati Tags: china.com, meetic

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Hot on the heels of the Adult Friend Finder story, we find out that Beliefnet.com and Yahoo! Personals have gotten in bed together to create the what’s being called the largest online community of spiritual daters. I met a Beliefnet staffer a few years ago at a party in Vermont. Nice woman, from what she said about Beliefnet, you never would have guessed it would turn out to be such an empire?

Beliefnet has selected Yahoo! Personals to power its popular Soulmatch dating site, providing existing Soulmatch customers with the ability to search the entire Yahoo! Personals database and sort matches by religious or spirituality preferences. Yahoo! Personals will also add Beliefnet spiritual relationship content to its site to form an online spiritual center, creating a meeting ground for daters who prioritize spirituality and faith-based compatibility.

Yahoo certainly is going after the lucrative partnerships. BeliefNet has more than 9 million members and Yahoo has 5 million unique visitors a month. A match made in… nevermind.

More at Yahoo News.

Technorati Tags: beliefnet, faith+based+compatibility, religious+dating, yahoo+personals

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1. Beliefnet Launches Soulmatch
2. Beliefnet to Launch Soulmatch
3. Beliefnet Being Bought By News Corp

This really should be subtitled “How To Build a Dating Site Part IV.”

I will treat dating sites with respect when they do the same for their members. I try hard to say nice things about the industry, but it’s difficult, and I am generally a positive person.

Dating sites think singles are sheep with credit cards tattooed on their foreheads. I look forward to the day when dating and social networking sites begin to respect their members and cater to their deeper, more evolved needs.

I have belonged to 50+ dating sites and have read over 3,000 profiles for research projects. Right now I don’t belong to any dating sites, a protest against the current state of the online dating experience which gets me thinking about other things for a while.

Why is it that the sites that make the most money selling banner ads and buying inventory on social networking sites are the sites most likely not to give a crap about their members?

I’m constantly blown away by all the money dating sites are leaving on the table. Millions of people waiting at your doorstep, yet the door remains closed.

Mainstream dating sites make all the money, while more and more people are meeting on local or niche sites. The problem is, I want to belong to both, without paying multiple times.

I will pay a hell of a lot more than $20 to meet my future wife. The problem is, there is not one single site or service in the US that I would, or could, give my money to that caters to my demographic and that I have a reasonably high level of confidence in. Totally depressing. Where is the $500 hands-on service?

Where is my 7-day pass to a network of dating sites? I want to check out Yahoo, several Spark Networks properties and a few others, free and paid. Let me create a single profile that works across all of them.

Event-based dating sites are taking off, this is good to see. I made three event dates this week, that’s huge compared to the usual hunt and pick on most dating sites.

Mspace is hurting the online dating industry, for now, but only a portion of it, young 20-somethings that will never make it to paying dating sites because the value proposition is so off for them. Nobody can be cool on a dating site. Who the heck wants to be a voyeur, paid or otherwise, on a dating site when we have Girls Gone Wild on Myspace?

Blogging gets boring from time to time, it’s difficult to stay charged up all the time about the next new dating site. Look at Onlinepersonalswatch, Mark works in the diet industry now, scans news feeds and writes about YouTube. It’s hard to stay focused when most industry news is a snooze. Social networking stole online dating’s thunder, from a media and revenue standpoint. Go ahead, start another blog about social networking. When do you have time to get any work done?

PlentyOfFish is a great media story, although I often wonder how long Markus will rule the free dating world. I’m dying to check his server logs, same goes for Mate1.

Dating sites need to grow a pair and put programs into place to get rid of stale profiles. Six months is stale. Match, Yahoo and everyone else on down the line have been misleading consumers for years. Clean up your act and your database. Less profiles will lead to more money. Embrace the dynamic nature of the real-time web. A dating site database is not a card catalog, it should be a guided, rich multimedia experience, with a profile stream that flows like water. If you don’t understand the concept, it’s time to get smart. Email me learn more.

Europe is learning the lessons the US dating market learned 3 years ago. This was to be expected. Why then, as I thumb through the Amsterdam iDate conference proceedings, is everything about mobile dating? Haven’t we been through this before? Sure, EU singles use their phone more, but why are 1/3 of all presentations about mobile dating? How big is the leading social network in Estonia and why was the CEO speaking? Why is it important to convert males to customers? Aren’t females the minority?

Profile helpers are coming out of the woodwork. They all work off the same script, zzzzz, and they certainly don’t scale well.

People don’t join a dating site because of an expert. I would like to see how much more money sites make when they hire said “experts.”

Where is the next generation of personality testing? How come I can’t collaborate and take a test *with* someone?

The technical minutia of personality testing is lost on 100% of online daters, who tend to judge effectiveness on results, not weighted averages. How does one testing service differentiate from another when the mechanics and algorithm are not taken into consideration?

User-created video posted to free sites like YouTube will be huge. Major sites need to add video back into the mix. What they didn’t do last time was provide privacy and progressive communication controls. Everyone emails the blonde with the big boobs, so give her the tools to protect and manage her suitors. Where are the scripts, the helper-apps to make creating a profile and video easier? Why do I have to pay someone to help me with that? There is a strong argument it should be part of the service offering from dating sites. Yup, there goes some of your margin, but the upside will be huge. Background checks I’m not so sure about adding into the monthly price, seems like an added-cost for the time being.

Speaking of background checks, how many women need to bilked out of their money or assaulted before dating sites start offering their services? I just heard from a women who was bilked out of six figures by a scammer on Match. And she wants to sue. I have a hard time sympathizing with people who get scammed. Being lonely certainly lowers the defenses.

Dating site executives often do not belong to multiple sites. That’s crazy! That’s as bad as singles not checking out the same-sex competition to see how they stack up.

What ever happened to live events? IRL went kaput pretty fast and Match Events fizzled for a reason. Time to try again.

Anonymous calling, Background checks, voice/chat providers, time to get in bed together, on your own you’re not going anywhere fast. Userplane not included, they are the gold standard for integration and advertising models, although I don’t feel comfortable with chat interface, but 125,000 websites do, what do I know.

If you work in the dating industry, go brainstorm something useful and cool for your site, create a new ad campaign, market to a new niche or tweak your search algorithm or find a new way to entice people to sign up for your site. Do something extraordinary that differentiates you from the competition.

If you’re single, go outside and do something outside your comfort zone. Talk to a stranger that catches your eye, strike up a conversation with new people, they are often more likely to connect you with someone than your friends.

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1. Dating Industry circa 2006
2. eAmore NYC Dating Industry Summit Review
3. Introducing Online Dating Industry Advisory Services

Thomas Technologies International (sponsor of this blog), announced today that Ave Maria Singles, a premium online Catholic singles network, has kicked off the fall with the integration of the Thomas suite of personality assessment tools. Ave Maria Singles will provide its members with Thomas’ personality assessment as well as Personal Feedback and Compatibility Reporting.

Technorati Tags: thomas technologies

Related posts:

1. Thomas Technologies Gives JLove.com Some Personality
2. AnotherFriend.com Launches Thomas Personality Assessment
3. Thomas Re-launches ThomasKnowsPeople

Where did the week go? I’m busy with all sorts of client work, hence the slow posts. I’m building the next generation of online dating and social networking sites and helping solution providers build out their value proposition for top dating sites. I can’t talk about much, you’ll just have to see the fruits of my labors when various clients go live over the next few months.

True and Friendster: Of all the partnerships to consider… Co-branded “Love” page. Too little to late IMHO.

Spark Networks 2Q06 Financial Results: Traffic to Spark Networks properties increased 35% from May to June, to 3.7 million visitors. Record Quarterly Revenue of $17.3 Million, Q2 EBITDAS(1) Increases Over 900% to $2.6 Million, Six Month EBITDAS of $6.0 Million – Matches Full Year 2005 Total, Six Month Net Income of $1.0 Million; Quarterly Net Income of $327,000. SAC for the Company as a whole in the second quarter of 2006 was $34.45, an increase of 8% compared to $31.93 from the same period last year.

Pinger has unveiled the first carrier-independent instant voice messaging service for mobile phones. Pinger is a new communications tool that lets you send voice messages directly to individuals or groups as instantly and efficiently as email or text messaging. The service works on mobile phones from all major U.S. carriers. Following a one-month beta test, Pinger today introduced a new feature that allows MySpace users to post voice comments to their MySpace friends’ pages from their mobile phone. You can also be notified of new Pinger messages with a MySpace message.

This is going to be useful in several contexts. Progressive communication is a hot topic in online dating and social networking. Pinger may work it’s way into the wink->email->IM->phone->F2F communication style followed by so many sites. I love the idea of being able to leave a message without actually having to talk to people.

Meez and Paltalk Team Up: Mashable is surprised Meeze partnered up with PalTalk.

Eight Social Networking sites for men who love men.

Marketwatch: Today, there are 3.2 million visiting the country’s biggest online dating service from home each month, and 4.9 million, if you include those checking out their prospects at work. Match.com generated $248 million in sales last year and is on a run-rate to generate $312 million this year. Siminoff says that his network will do about $70 million in sales. And, he’s estimating that privately-held eHarmony and Yahoo Personals generated about $165 million and $100 million, respectively. Just adding those big four alone gets you closer to $600 million. Still, that’s chump change compared to the roughly $12 billion in advertising online.

The blog continues to be a problem. Updownupdownup. I either need to get it fixed or go back to my own blog.

You have got to be kidding: Text message people by looking up their license place at SearchPlates.com.

Sam Wick joins Userplane as head of business development.

Technorati Tags: meez, research, voice+messaging, paltalk, pinger, searchplates

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Thomas Technologies International, a leader in private-label behavioral assessment software and related personality reporting, has partnered with JLove LLC to offer JType™– a customized suite of Thomas’ web-dating applications.

Yoav Cohen, JLove’s founder and CEO:

JLove caters to professional, educated, serious minded Jewish singles looking for solid relationships. We’re committed to providing our members with quality features that actually make dating easier. We believe members become subscribers when they see value. Personality tests and compatibility reporting are a key part of JLove’s strategy for providing this.

The first of its kind in the Jewish dating market, JTypeâ„¢ Personality Typing consists of four components, which will be launched in phases:

- Thomas’ Personality Assessment (PPA) with audio and photo questions

- A Romance Profile

- Compatibility Reporting

- Personality Search

Thomas’ Personality Assessment (PPA), the first component of JType™, was launched on August 11, 2006, allowing JLove™ members to take the Thomas Personality Assessment. Members can also view other members’ personality reports in their profiles or display their own.

Astute readers will notice Yoav Cohen at the helm of JLove. I met Yoav at iDate a few years ago, when he was sporting a Matchnet (now Spark Networks) business card.

Found on the JLove home page:

Note:JLove.com is not associated with JDate.com in any way. We strongly believe that Jewish singles should register with any appropriate personals service in order to improve their chance to find their one true love.

Hmm, interesting to see that Spark and JLove share an address in Los Angeles. Makes me wonder how tightly the two companies are working together, given Cohen’s past relationship with Spark.

Technorati Tags: jlove.com, personality+assessment, thomas+technologies

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