No related posts.

How come dating sites aren’t targeting their ads better? Do you see ads for local restaurants or fun date ideas on dating sites? I don’t. How difficult is it to embed geo-targeted ads for restaurants in a web page? This was figured out almost a decade ago. Why aren’t these ads embedded in the email interface when you are composing an email to someone?

Why don’t dating sites partner with Groupon? I’m taking a two-hour helicopter flying lesson for $60 bucks that I found on the site. I would like to put that on my profile and see if someone wants that to be our first date? They click the link, everyone makes some money and we have a memorable first date. Tempting death in a whirly-bird may be an extreme example, my point is that there are many creative marketing ideas to drive additional revenue that dating sites should be taking advantage of.

I’ve been telling virtual dating companies for years to give it away and that product placement in virtual dating environments is where the money is. The online gaming world makes millions this way.

Farmville gets it.

BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Tel Aviv and Saatchi Interactive will launch the first “commercially inspired crop” on Farmville. “The initiative will see Zynga, creators of FarmVille, introduce a new crop – peanuts – as part of Saatchi Tel Aviv’s roll-out campaign for Elite Taami Nutz, a new peanut-filled variant of one of Israel’s favourite chocolate snacks. The ‘peanuts’ will be available on FarmVille from the 14th April 2010.”

First its a peanut, then it’s Monsanto Franken-seeds, then it’s all sorts of Home Depot-branded stuff and they are off to the races. Kidding about Monsanto, they are pure evil.

What about drinking a virtual Coors online? What about having VIP virtual dates, with a pre-date coaching session and the ability to customize your environment in a freemium model upgrade?

At the least, dating sites should make it easy for me to recommend date ideas. In a sense, that’s what HowAboutWe does.

No related posts.

Virtual avatar-based dating has always been a curiosity in the online dating industry. Meeting potential dates in a browser-based virtual chat environment is absolutely a great idea. Virtual dating is about as niche as you can get. The usual argument against virtual dating is that the phone is a lot easier to use, you don’t have to download anything, and it just works.

I have plenty of questions about monetizing virtual dating, usability issues, feature enhancements, in-environment advertising, and let’s not forget effectiveness. Are people going out on more dates after participating in virtual ones? There is research, but I’m talking about hearing from dating sites that say that virtual dating was a big hit and had a measurable positive impact on efficiency, site metrics, etc. I’d be all over that, believe me, because virtual dating is a fantastic idea, in certain circumstances.

Personally, I think the lack of interest is partially due to the fact that the environments are not engaging enough. I used to spend a lot of time in SecondLife and was involved with developing virtual worlds back in the 90′s, so I a little about what a compelling interactive environment looks like.

Longtime readers know that I’ve been talking about Omnidate for several years. I’ve hoped they would evolve the service into something more along the lines of what singles are willing to use on a broader scale. Perhaps I’m too extroverted to understand just how important virtual dating could be to that slice of society that feels uncomfortable picking up the phone.

As with any uncontested market, competition tends to make an entrance at some point. Weopia is the most comprehensive competitor to OmniDate I’ve seen. Built by Canadian IT shop Virtucom, the downloadable application (Mac/Windows compatible), mirrors the real world, providing engaging environments and experiential situations where you can further explore compatibility and the likelihood of a positive real-life date.

Throughout the environment are a number of heart-shaped tokens. in the application are clickable, leading to a list of dating advice links, which link to various YouTube videos by dating coaches and seemingly random people. Most of the advice is generic stuff pulled from YouTube, I’d like to see the videos embedded in the environment itself.

The bottom navigation bar performs various system duties, from chat to vehicle selection. I jumped in a hovercraft, which made is much easier to get around quickly.

There are portals that take you to other areas to explore. Basically this is SecondLife, and I wish it ran in Flash in the Browser, because the download and resulting 1/2 gig application runs the risk of turning people off.

Lot’s of people date who met in SecondLife. I know people who are married that met in SL. The question for Weopia is, if SecondLife has millions of people, why would they use a stripped-down clone instead of simply looking for a date in SL and figuring out how to monetize that?

The graphics are fantastic on their maximum setting, but made my laptop fan sound like a jet plane. Speaking of jet planes, nothing says I’m hot like rolling up on someone while driving a cherry-red hovercraft.

I need to invite someone into Weopia and run through the rest of the environment together. Hopefully there are some quizzes, games and other interactive features to explore. Right now the space feels very large, whereas with Omnidate you’re sitting at a bar right across from someone, which feels more intimate and focused and I didn’t have to learn how to drive a hovercraft to impress a woman.

Rebuild in Flash, stick it in the browser, make it more interactive, throw some advertising into the environment and maybe Weopia will have something down the road. Gotta go, my hovercraft is overheating.

No related posts.

From Online Personals Watch: Omnidate is conducting a study with Professor Dan Ariely into the effectiveness of virtual dating and is looking for dating sites to participate in this research. That’s a smart move to align with Professor Ariely. I’ve read his research and seen some of the demos of their virtual dating application, fascinating stuff and the professor is definitely becoming a known entity in the dating space.

The majority of my business is connecting companies with dating sites. I spend a lot of time getting companies ready to talk to business development executives at dating sites. Value proposition, pricing, features and functionality and many other areas must be addressed before a company is ready to put themselves out there.

Like many of my clients, Omnidate wants dating sites to become customers. The problem is, The ROI on virtual dating, both for singles and dating sites, is unclear. While getting mentioned in a research report is a good idea, it’s perhaps less effective as a business development tool when the company itself is paying(?) for the research. And then there is the issue of research as opposed to real life usage. Do you think any of the applications on Facebook with over 10 million installs would have shown up in a research report as a sure bet? No way.

Usually these types of research reports begin like this:

Company: Here’s a bag of money, go talk to a bunch of people and make sure they say good things about our brand and make sure high ROI is a key finding.

Academic: Ok.

Not necessarily the case here but you get the picture.

Ed. note: Omnidate is not paying for the study.

Omnidate has chosen to put the future of their business in the hands of the online dating sites, much like how the lamprey eel feeds off of host fish. Instead of dating site partnerships, Omnidate should consider marketing direct to consumers, build out a Facebook app, etc. They *could* become a valuable traffic source for dating sites.

SpeedDate relied partially on acquisitions of Facebook applications to drive growth, and Woome relies on direct traffic. The numbers tell the story. Both companies have raised something like $15 million in total, which makes a big difference in terms of marketing and development.
Besides figuring out the channel situation, Omnidate needs to address issues with usability and user experience. All the talk about user engagement, age and gender data means little if people aren’t head over heels about the service.

Here’s what else needs to be addressed at Omnidate in order for it to get traction:

• More fun things to do on dates: games, quizzes and music. License from entertainment companies.
• Additional reputation and ratings features. Keep the scammers away.
• Product placement for additional revenue streams. This date sponsored by Heineken.

Just look at the drop-off in the number of dating sites that use chat. If the experience isn’t fun, safe and effective people won’t use it.

There are lots of great ideas out there that don’t necessarily translate into successful businesses. Perhaps it’s an issue with timing, consumers simply aren’t primed for virtual dating. For example, I’ve been videoconferencing since 1994 and it’s only recently that the concept has become widespread.

I’m curious about your thoughts on the outcome of the study. What do you think they’re going to find?

No related posts.

Signed up for Omnidate today. Haven’t been on the service for a while and I wanted to see what’s changed since I went on a “date” there with co-founder Ravit Abelman last year.

Compete says Omnidate has about 2,000 monthly visitors. any number under 10k I usual triple, so around 10k visitors. I’m not sure what Omnidate is trying to be at this point. Is it a destination or a service that dating sites can embed or both? As with all startups, there is the official company line and then there is your gut reaction to a service. What does you gut say about virtual dating? Leave a comment.

Facebook applications like SpeedDate and Zoosk can drive people back to their websites from within their applications. I’m not sure Omnidate can do this. If I’m on JDate, could I go on a virtual date with someone from ChristianCafe?

Omnidate has clearly morphed into a dating site and is now competing directly with its partners. Why else would they recreate a complete dating site along site their virtual dating environment? My gut tells me that they are going to link dating profile data with Omnidate profile fields. i’ve never actually seen Omnidate integrated with another site, so I can’t comment on what it looks like. If I fill out a profile on a dating site, that data should show up in my Omnidate profile. Otherwise you end up with a situation like the original Match mobile, which was two separate databases and never really worked.

Interesting that Speeddate and Woome are getting hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors and “dates”. The 18-30 crowd isn’t afraid of webcams and the free voyeurism can’t be beat. Is Omnidate going to benefit from the recession? Is it limited to people who have trouble with first dates? What other factors suggest that the overall market for virtual dating is in fact smaller than expected?

I see complete profiles, reputation tools, hotlists, search and most other common dating site features. Do I go to OkCupid, Match or Omnidate?

Upcoming features include the ability to tack your dating site headshot on your avatar. I can’t wait to see what that looks like.

I wish Omnidate was a Skype plugin, that would be cool. Once you chat via avatars, you can go right to voice and video.

Dating sites can integrate Omnidate, starting at $500/month. That right there excludes 90% of the dating market, so they’re going for mid-tier sites. Larger sites are wary of virtual dating, much like how they react to background checks and anonymous calling. Only Omnidate knows how dating sites are reacting to their pitch. The Omnidate partner page certainly hits all the right notes, now it’s up to the marketplace.

I’m a fan of SecondLife and have followed the virtual reality market since 1992. I grok the concept of virtual dating and think that the technology basically needs to catch up with the intent, which is to bring people together in new and novel ways.

Some people immediately meet for coffee, some want to chat with avatars online first. Thats both the blessing and curse of choice in the online dating industry, there is something for everyone. Omnidate is certainly getting the press they deserve, but is that and a good value proposition for partners enough to drive success? The question in my mind is whether or not the timing for virtual dating is right or if it’s going to take a while for consumers to warm up to the concept.

No related posts.

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.

No related posts.

OmniDate has landed it’s first dating site as a customer. Ireland’s AnotherFriend now offers virtual dating to it’s 200,000 members.

OmniDate is a mashup up Userplane, IMVU and OKCupid.

OmniDate says that sites that don’t use their system are second rate. Perhaps not the best way to introduce yourself to the industry. That’s desperation marketing, whereas OmniDate needs to be as nice as possible to the dating industry, especially given the fringe nature of virtual dating.

Flash-based avatar chat is interesting and certainly some dating sites will adopt it as an additional feature. As Markus says, virtual chat is a 5% feature, meaning 5% of a site’s membership will use it.

Compete and Quantcast say Anotherfriend has around 6,500 unique visitors a month. That means 325 might use the virtual dating application at AnotherFriend.

I’m talking to a company that has a very exciting demo thats somewhat similar to OmniDate. I can’t talk about it yet but it’s great to see companies offering more advanced communications features.

How does Omnidate make money? They are not embedding ads into their environment yet. Is the dating site expected to absorb the cost?

I haven’t talked to OmniDate in a while so I’ll throw out a few questions that might make it easier for dating sites to understand what they offer.

What is the value proposition to dating sites?

Does virtual dating convert more visitors to members, extend the subscription duration or increase pageviews?

How much does it cost and how complicated is the integration?

Dating sites won’t touch a new feature without having answers to these questions.

Press release.

No related posts.