The virtual dating concept has “officially” been around for several years. I’ve been following the virtual dating scene because I think there is something there that some singles will find useful.

Today you will find that there are a handful of companies competing for singles’ virtual dating dollars, ranging from OmniDate’s Flash-based offering to several downloadable applications (Seriously, a downloadable dating client? Get in the browser, quick!)

I’ve wailed on the sector and its participants for years, because as someone who knows a hell of a lot about virtual worlds and what singles want, what I’m seeing delivered is not exactly what singles are clamoring for. Theres a few research reports flying around, but I talk to dating site owners every day, and the truth of the matter is that virtual dating needs to evolve before it starts to really take off, from the dating and and singles’ perspective.

OmniDate, the developer of a plug-and-play virtual dating application for dating sites, understands the concept of evolution. Recently they added a plug-in chat to their offering, which is good news. They also have some new customer wins, which is good for everyone involved. If OmniDate legitimizes the sector and proves that virtual dating works and makes dating sites money, they just might embrace it. Right now the equation is halfway-solved.

I keep reading that virtual dates tend to last substantially longer than chats, with the proportion of virtual dates lasting over 60 minutes being almost twice as high as that of chats. If there are ads in that chat, or product placements or people can click to buy their date a rose or a song or some other bling, we’ve got some revenue flowing, a more interactive exciting environment and something more akin to a win for the dating industry.

Chat is a good start, but let’s remember to keep the ball moving. Trial Omnidate and their competitors, kick the tires, and most of all, tell them what works and what doesn’t. Vendors absolutely need to hear their potential customer’s feedback. It’s not like they build Facebook or Quicken in a vacuum and just rolled it out to the public one day (Well maybe FB). Build, test, fail, iterate, test and eventually it all comes together and everyone is generally satisfied with the results and the service will be adopted. Thats how the Internet works.

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Matchmaker Great Expectations has been accused of overpromising its goods with high-pressure sales pitches by the Washington state Attorney General. Speaking of Matchmakers, if this guy is yours, you may want to rethink things. Male matchmaker Easton has criminal record. Not to put too fine a point on it but would you give this guy $100,000 to find you a wife?

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Today I was perusing the websites of David Siegel, who’s article I referenced in yesterday’s post. David says he started blogging August 30,1995. I think I have him beat by a month, and during a visit to the WayBack Machine, I found an archived version of my online business card from early 1995. Talk about a blast from the past. Fact: the guy who designed the logo for me used to be my sysadmin as well and is now one of the top Twitter Engineers. Memories.

PlentyofFish now offering chat, powered by Userplane.

Fabulis says:

We decided that charging for messaging is stupid. So, from now on it is free to send messages to anyone on www.fabulis.com.

(Note: If you want, you can still set a higher price for people to message you, but the default setting is now free).

Is charging for messaging stupid, or could they just not get anyone to pay for it? Big difference. Fabulis is not really a dating site, its Going.com for gay men.

I would like eHarmony to partner with IBM and use Watson to improve search and matching.

Meetic and Match have completed their infrastructure merger ahead of schedule thanks to Informatica.

PinPointsX Points You To Passion: PinpointsX is a patent pending cellular (mobile) application and a correlative adult-social-networking website, enabling you to ‘locate & interact’ with erotic partners and facilitators in your immediate, changing and real-time location.

New York Times Plans Public Beta Site for Its Experiments.

Our hope is that we will be able to bring new ideas from concept to prototype to launch much faster with a public beta site than we could using NYTimes.com alone — and that we may do so without the risk of disrupting NYTimes.com or conflicting with other development projects,” Marc Frons, chief technology officer for digital operations at The Times, said in a memo to staff today.

I wish more of my dating site clients would offer beta versions of new functionality on a parallel site like the Times is going to launch this summer. All too often, months and months of new feature development occurs behind the scenes and is then launched without enough testing and feedback. Successful sites develop, test, iterate, break, fail, learn, refine, over and over until they get it right, that’s how its supposed to work.

Cops can ID Perps via iPhone. Cops who need to ID a suspect simply snap a photo on their iPhones. A statewide database being developed in Massachusetts can match up faces with criminal records in a matter of seconds remotely, beaming a rap sheet back to cops on the beat. It would be cool to be able to take a snapshot of a personal ad photo and find out just how naughty or nice the person was. Not a replacement for a background check or ID verification by any means, but still pretty cool. Reminds me of Recognizr.

While we wait for iPad-specific dating sites, it’s good to know that iPad Advertisements Perform Six Times Better Than Desktop Ads. Will the iPad Make Us Better Daters?

Liar Liar List is trying to make online dating profiles more authentic. I’m all for it, but people change screen names all the time, which makes these types of services inaccurate and unreliable. Scores of these sites have launched over the years, someday someone is going to get this right.

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   Match is bringing the “who’s is bigger” argument right to their home page. Of course they can say that they have more of everything, Match has been around since 1995.

Super Whales: Top Social Game Spenders Pay More than $10,000 Apiece for Virtual Goods. Fascinating article from Inside Social Games that says a small percentage of “whales” spend tens of thousands of dollars on in-game virtual goods. In the dating world, the most you can usually spend is a few bucks on search result highlighting, VIP communication features and maybe ID verification. Most go directly to matchmakers, but who are the “whales” in the online dating space?

Dating Site For Cheaters Offers $25 Million For Naming Rights To New Giants/Jets Stadium

http://consumerist.com/2010/06/dating-site-for-cheaters-offers-25-million-for-naming-rights-to-new-giantsjets-stadium.html

Chatroulette Enlists Shawn Fanning In The Fight Against The Masturbators. Chatroulette is Myspace, and countless other services are fighting to be the real-time videochat king. MyChanceromance is the latest to enter the fray.

Match loves Chatroulette because it’s solitary “Dating” button at the top of the page leads to Singlesnet. I would be A/B testing a ton of different sites on that link to see what works best. Surprised Zoosk didn’t outbid Singlesnet for the exposure.

“There just isn’t anywhere on the Internet for you to meet new people anymore,” says one investor that wants in on Chatroulette. “The potential for online dating, which is largely what pushed early Facebook growth, is unlimited.”

I couldn’t agree more. I trot this number out several times a week, 110 million singles in the US, and only 30 million or so try online dating each month. The industry has a lot of headroom to grow, but its not going to happen based on the traditional online dating models, which is why it is exciting to to up and coming sites challenging the status quo.

Zoosk broke out and is doing lots of partnership deals and videos, but it’s really just another dating site with better marketing than most. Is the next big breakout site going to be generic casual dating or something different? My bet is on something different, and it’s not going to be video, yet. Several sites are threatening to launch this summer that could potentially be game-changers. I’ll have some interviews up soon.

Plzsayyes is a dating service based on SecondLife. Now that SL is moving to the browser and away from a standalone application, these types of services will continue to launch. The primary problem is that, hello, it’s SecondLife. Complicated to use, difficult to understand what’s going on or where you are, and just finding a pair of pants that fits is difficult enough in SL. Not exactly the smoothest way to meet people unless you have some geek in you.

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Paula Hines spent the last two years planning and developing WithLuv.com and to date has spent over $100k to build it out into what it is today. Paula has reduced the price. Hit me up via the contact form to discuss, the conversation starts at $50,000. Complete details here.

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It’s time for a quick hello to new readers and an introduction. My name is Dave Evans and I have been writing about the business of online dating at Online Dating Insider since 2002.

I have been a consultant my entire career. Back in the early 90′s I worked with the team that uploaded the first paid banner ads onto the Internet and was the technical-creative lead on a project where the king of Sweden raised the price of stamps and we took that money and built an open version of America Online for the country of Sweden. That was the largest website in Europe for a while.

At an ad agency in New York I cut my teeth building many corporate and consumer product websites along with a number of fun side projects. A friend of mine built the orignal sixdegrees, which is the progenitor to Facebook. I had a friend build a blogging tool back then, but we didn’t know what to call it at the time. I’ve worked with brilliant people at a boutique management consulting company doing things like helping AT&T figure out where to lay fiber optic cable, urban wifi strategy, mobile handset technology licensing, company acquisition due diligence and too much more to list here.

Nailing down a typical day for me is difficult. I could be handing out business cards at the Mandalay Bay pool in Vegas, appearing on ABC dating shows, brokering commercial deals, doing cable, radio and print interviews. Or I’m working with early and growth stage investors requiring an overview of opportunities in the dating space (this afternoon in fact.) Lately I’ve been working with Hollywood to bring television-based dating reality shows to the web.

One of my best work stories is when I was paid in chicken eggs and goat milk for fixing a computer when I was living on the beach in Bali for a few months.

Speaking of beaches, In 2004 I sat on the beach and read 3,000 personal ads and quickly figured out that people make the same handful of mistakes on their profiles. To remedy this, I started a company called Profile Doctor, which automated the process of improving the quality of personal ads. This led to several years of consulting and advising some of the largest, most innovative dating sites, both established and scrappy startups alike.

I spend a lot of time helping vendors parter with dating sites, product development, fundraising and keeping up with online dating industry news. When I’m not doing that, I’m blogging about the business of online dating, talking to the press and talking to dating sites about ways I can help them attract, convert and retain members.

I am also interested in identity, the social graph, mobile and hyper-personalization (advertising, dynamic websites and location-based services.)

In general, I’ve found that marketing people think I’m an IT guy and developers think I’m in marketing. I sell myself as a trusted advisor and strategist, with emphasis on startups, developing businesses and marketing.

This blog is an integral part of Digicraft, where I provide consulting and advisory services to the online dating industry (among other things). 100 million singles in the US. Only 30 million even try online dating each month. There is an enormous untapped market that dating sites are missing out on. If you work for a dating site looking to increase traffic, are thinking about deploying social dating features, need general advisory services or assistance with leading-edge marketing strategies, don’t be shy, contact me. I’m always available to spend some time on the phone to see if there is an opportunity to work together.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Online Dating Insider
2. Introducing Online Dating Insider
3. Introducing Online Dating Insider

OKCupid To Offer Photo Feedback? Check out this item I found in Google Reader. It linked back to a non-existant page at OKCupid.

SpeedDate Mobile, the company’s popular iPhone/iPod app, has surpassed one million unique downloads. In addition, SpeedDate Mobile now ranks amongst the top 50 iPhone apps.

Zoosk rolls out iPhone application and Zoosk Messenger for desktop chat. Zoosk has grown from 15 million Zooskers in January 2009 to more than 50 million and remains the #1 dating application on Facebook.

Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla and Urban Signals, StreetSpark is a free mobile dating app that tells you who has been in the café or bar just before you, ensuring there are no more missed connections. StreetSpark searches out compatible matches and ‘sparks’ users when they’re nearby. With Familiar Strangers, StreetSparkers ‘check in’ to their favourite haunts and can who is there that will make a perfect date. StreetSpark creators believe that where you hang out says a lot about you. StreetSpark is free and available on iPhone and the internet, and blackberry and other smart phones like Android shortly.

Yahoo! Personals is being removed from the Yahoo! Affiliate Program effective May 18th, 2010. I wonder what the rationale for this is?

A company called Stragent has sued Match, Cupid, eHarmony, Skype and a number of other companies. Thanks The Dating Revolution.

Found this old news as well: Yahoo Inc. and GraphOn Corp. have negotiated an agreement to drop all claims and counterclaims against each other in GraphOn’s patent infringement suit against eHarmony.com Inc., Match.com LLC and other online ad listing companies over several patents covering listings for Web sites.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Industry News For April 9, 2010
2. Online Dating Insider Quick Hits For April 17, 2010
3. Online Dating Industry Notes For May 13, 2010

My post WooMe Launches a Competitor to Chatroulette has been by far the most popular post on this blog. As a follow-up, I’ve been looking at the best Chatroulette screenshot complations and came across this one. Epic win for whomever did this.

Chat Roulette screenshots

How To Win At Chat Roulette

30 More Great Chat Roulette Screenshots

Funny Chatroulette Screenshots

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People Media is similar to Spark Networks in terms of servicing a number of niches. Where they differ is that People Media has proven to be quite lucrative across multiple sites, as opposed to JDate, the Spark one-hit-wonder. Spark could have monetized several other niches, but for some reason, chose not to. Spark clearly left a lot of money on the table by not putting People Media squarely in their sights and declaring them the company to beat. To the winner go the spoils.

A recent People Media poll reveals that around half of the single participants feel that the recession has not affected their attitude towards dating. This is good news for dating sites, but what struck me was that 17% are less motivated to date. Not sure if they mean date in general, or online dating?

…a slim majority of single Americans report the recession has had no impact on their attitudes toward dating.

People will date irregardless of the financial situation. What I am hearing is that 1/2 of all singles have been impacted on their attitudes toward dating. But what about these attitudes? Does that mean they are dating one less time each week, or sticking with the same person longer, or spending less?

24% of Americans would not date someone who is unemployed. Almost 40% of all single women in the US won’t date someone unemployed. That is just sad. My close friend is in a wonderful relationship with a woman who is unemployed. A lot of my friends are what I would call under-employed.

Back to the statistic that 17% of all singles stated that unemployment and the impact of the recession put their motivation to date in a decline. Almost 1/5th of all US singles are dating less. That’s 20 million people. So where is this supposed growth in the online dating industry coming from? People Media is saying they have seen a 15% increase in visitors and several sites had a fantastic 2009.

I wonder what the People Media poll results would look like in other countries? Maybe someone at Lavalife will share some of the dating habits of the Canadians or Meetic or Parship in Europe.

Someone should go back and compare this poll to the online dating polls taken after 9/11. Back when many people were supposedly hooking up and getting married because of the uncertainty of life forced upon Americans.

Enough about the recession already. Regardless of what small samples of singles say about their dating habits, it’s springtime and hundreds of millions of single people around the globe are looking for a love regardless of the size of their bank account.

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The Dewy Color System came up when I was looking into IntroAnalytics and VisualDNA. Speaking of compatibility, Fernando Ardenghi has finally started a blog where he will be discussing his views about online dating compatibility and matching systems. If you’ve read his hundreds of comments here over the years, you already know what the blog is about. If not, go check out  Breaking the Online Dating Sound Barrier.

Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? Here come’s DatingPixels.

Another firm is investigating potential claims against Spark Networks.

The 11 Most Expensive Domain Names Ever.

Marketing ingenuity: People pay thousands of dollars for trade show booths. Foursquare, the red-hot location-based service, spent $5.99 on their “booth” at SXSW.

WriteMatch Personality & Compatibility Profile on Facebook. I took a handwriting analysis course a few years ago. Turns out Charles Manson and I both cross our t’s the same way.

The Bachelorette star Jillian Harris sat down with 24Savvy.com in her Chicago home to talk about sex and money, the in-laws, the challenges of planning a wedding and her famous hot dog theory.

Dating factory has New cross-selling strategies for your web-sites.

Online Dating as Honest as Real Life.

5 ways anonymous video chat social networks sites can improve user experience via Shufflepeople.

Related posts:

1. Online Dating Industry News March 10, 2010
2. Online Dating Industry News For March 31, 2010
3. Online Dating Industry News for March 4, 2010