It’s time for the dating industry to head to LA for iDate LA 2010. Each year I do a little writeup of the agenda, so here it goes. Full agenda, which might have been updated since I wrote this.
Last year I remember meeting a lot of new people, going to the Michael Jackson memorial, driving in a Ferarri, dining next to movie stars and having a great time overall This year I will be relying on you, kind readers, to send in your thoughts on the show.
The first day is all about Google and selling domains and sites. Turns out Mark Brooks got a new passport and will be able to present a few sessions. The goog stuff is usually pretty good, and every year a few sites get closer to being acquired at the show. Can someone clarify if a site or domain has actually been sold during this event?
Keynote the second day of the event is Stacey Bernhard,(Director, Strategy & Corporate Development) Match.com North America. Hopefully Stacey will shed light into the last 365 days of Match and the next year in general. No other site has come close to the acquisition/partnership spree Match has been on. Match is now the Honda Accord of the dating market. Cheap, dependable and everyone has one.
Mark Brooks follows up to talk about mobile dating. Go talk to Trilibis and Messmo and this guy, ’nuff said.
The Additional Revenue Streams speaker is Club Med. Really trying not to go too hard on the agenda this year but huh? Singles vacations is a money maker for a few sites but that is probably #10 on the list of 10 things I’d talk about. The other revenue generation session is how to do deals with movie theaters like Lavalife did a few years ago. Didn’t really work then, maybe something has changed.
I met with Michael Norton on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Harvard Square a few months ago. Michael will be talking about “Less is More: The Trouble with Online Dating, and How Virtual Dates Can Help.”
Interesting to see how virtual dating, which I have historically seen as a 5% feature, is slowly gaining some traction. Omnidate has more partners than I expected. You’ll see some very cool stuff from OmniDate over the summer. As an emerging sector of the industry, virtual dating is in its infancy and there is a lot we all have to learn about how best to serve singles with pre-date opportunities.
Product demos include Spigit, “Tap into the collective intelligence within your organization’s social network: and Intermark Media (affiliate/performance-based marketing.) Spigit confused me. Dating Gold will talk about performance-based marketing as well while Steve Odom of Gelato speaks about “Real-Time Search for Internet Dating With Dynamic Profiles.” Without a doubt, Steve understands the value of leveraging dynamic profile data better than anyone in the dating industry. With $5 million he could make something happen.
Zoosk is going to talk about social dating business models. Zoosk came from nowhere, upended the dating industry with it’s viral/social marketing on Facebook, jumped to the top-10 dating site list by spending very little, and are busy burning through the $30 million they raised last fall. Zoosk is by far the biggest dating site success story of the past two years, hands down. Investors tell me they are on track to make $20-$40 million this year. Zoosk must really get Spark Networks in a tizzy. No word if Zoosk co-founder Alex Mehr will show us his Zoosk underwear on stage this year.
While Zoosk is speaking, Julie Spira, the Cyber-dating expert, will talk about Web 2.0 dating. Not sure what that means since that was the topic two years ago, but I’m loath to see it called Web 3.0 dating. Julie is everywhere these days, she certainly knows how to market herself.
Dating Factory will talk about their private label dating solution (more technically advanced than White Label Dating but not as many profiles or partners last time I checked).
Date Tracking: I have no idea what this is.
Next sessions to end the first official day of the conference: “Internet Dating in the Malaysian, Singapore and Hong Kong Markets.” Huh?
Basisnote will demo their chemical attraction service which took a few screenshots of when I tested the service a few months ago. Then iTelebill will say clever things about their service.
Friday, Day 2
Duane Dahl of Perfectmatch will talk about “Internet Dating Product Placements” or, How To Grow Your Business By Being More Media Saavy Than You Competitors.
OculusAI Technologies show off their Automated Image Rejection service. Check out the pricing for their service. I wonder if it’s easier to set up than Crowdflower? I met with Crowdflower a few weeks ago, amazing service used by a lot of dating sites.
Next up, people talking about the relationship between dating and television going up against TrustCash and and company that sells domain names. I’ve spent some time talking to Hollywood about bring certain dating tv shows to the web and now it seems like everyone in the dating industry is doing tv pilots.
Listen to The Hon. Catherine Pugh (D) Maryland, talk about her state’s desire to regulate dating, or a doctor talking about Personal Health Innovations and Twitter (huh?)
BabyTel is going to talk about redefining telephony. Sure, why not?
Next up, a session on American Council for Fathers & Children and then Anastasia International will tak about, I don’t know, why if you type their name into Google the entire first page is links to people complaining about international dating scams. Might want to hire a SEO person to fix that.
One more set of sessions before the final panel. Content: Increasing the Value and Engagement Of Your Dating Site Talk Objective(huh?) and EasyDate compete for thirsty conference-goers who just want to tip back a few beers and watch the iDate final session circus.
EasyDate are crushing it in the EU market right now, sharp team doing the right deals. To acquire or to be acquired, that is the question.
Ok, the final session. Last year it was, er, lets just say there is a lot of room for improvement. Between a few idiots and too much uninformed google talk, iDate has to do a better job on this all-important session.
Note to iDate, don’t serve beer in the middle of the day and then have your employees complain on blogs that people got their drink on.
Sorry to see that Liz Wasserman is not on the final panel. As a female owner of a top dating site, her insights, no-BS attitude and all-around awesomeness in terms of perspective, team, technology and brand, continue to impress.
Mark Brooks on panel, sure. Google Adwords guy, well ok. Stacey from Match, definitely. She is going to get a lot of questions. Steve Odom needs to hold the crowd and focus on Facebook social graph and other social/sharable data and how it related to dating. I’m rooting for you, Steve! Zoosk, well who can’t have Zoosk on a final panel, this is their year after all.
Noel Biderman is the world’s best facilitator of cheating spouses. Curious what he has to say. Balancing out Noel will be Sacred Love. Not enough people in the dating industry care about healthy relationships, prepare to get an earful. Same thing happend last year. Elitemate is a mid-sized dating site, not sure what they will talk about.
Have fun in LA and let us know your thoughts on the show.
