Boston is getting a lot of snow today, tonight the snow shoes come out!
I’m sorry to say that Consumating is joining the TechCrunch Deadpool on March 15. I talked with founder Ben Brown many times when they were starting up and during the transition after CNET bought them in 2006. I loved the concept, turns out the market for the site was just wasn’t big enough, or that CNET didn’t market it well enough.
According to TechCrunch:
The code for Consumating went open source in March 2007 and is available as “clonesumating� on Google Code here for those who think they might be able to make a better go of the concept.
Google Code says:
Clonesumating is the open source version of the code that runs CONSUMATING.COM. It features many state of the art social networking functions including user profiles, user tagging, matching and discovery based on quirky tag combinations, group activities such as weekly photo contests and blog questions, an event calendar, RSS feeds for everything, etc. It is written primarily in mod_perl.
A complete free dating site, just sitting there at Google. Who’s going to take a run at a new site based on Clonsumating? If anyone with the chops takss a look at the code base, I’d appreciate your thoughts on what it looks like under the hood.
Spark Networks Spark Networks(R) Reschedules Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2007 Results Conference Call. That $150 million asking price is looking good to a few suitors, looks like Spark is polishing up their financials prior to sale of the company.
Notes on the earnings call coming up in next post.
Boston.com article about the ongoing battle over online dating background checks.
Choice quotes:
“It’s so superficial that it’s worthless,” said Braden Cox, policy counsel with NetChoice, a coalition of e-commerce companies that includes Yahoo, AOL and other major players in online dating.
Match.com, one of largest dating services, said it had been assessing online background checks for six years and concluded they offered no extra protection.
“Match.com is disappointed New Jersey has enacted a flawed and unconstitutional law and we will explore opportunities to challenge it,” a company statement said.
Even sponsors of the New Jersey bill conceded it was imperfect, but suggested it would at least make online daters more aware of security concerns. The New Jersey legislators involved with passing the bill refuse to return my calls. Figures, I’m just a blogger.
Talking about gaming console innovation, The Wall Street Journal says:
“…Sony Online Entertainment will announce an agreement with technology provider Vivox Inc. to offer a new set of voice communications services for gamers. While online gamers often collaborate verbally on missions using Internet-based voice chatting services, the new free offerings from Sony and Vivox will let users chat with other gamers from cellphones if they’re away from their computers. Users will also be able to employ “voice fonts” to transform their voices into that of monsters and other game characters.
Vivox CEO Rob Seaver was a neighbor when I lived across town in Boston. Congrats to Rob and the gang. I think the Sony deal probably has a bigger upside than the SecondLife stuff they have been doing.
Several people emailed me this video from the Onion, Online Dating Helping Pathetic Women Get Their Hopes Crushed More Efficiently. Someone needs to do a version for men.
Dating Site Aggregators: Mashable on Copenda Lovest. This is going to be a hot market in 2008, there is another player who I can’t talk about that will launch soon. This has been tried many times in the past, but from what I hear, the larger dating sites are more open to sharing their databases and letting external partners drive traffic through an API.
Social Implications of Background Checks: I am interested to see how singles respond to the increasing number of dating sites which offer background checks.
I wonder: How much more willing a person will be to initiate or respond to contact based on if the other person is verified.
Will good looking people need to be verified more or less than plain or sketchy looking folks?
Will men or women be verified more? Will woman or men drive the adoption rate of the other gender’s background checks and identify verification services.
Right now women say “NO REPLY TO WINKS.” Will this change to “MUST BE VERIFIED?” Just how easy is it to get around a background check?
If I can go online and buy an identity for $25 and the identity has a clean record, will I be able to circumvent the system?
I learned about $300 background checks this week. There is a lot of information that can be mined about a person. Right now we’re scratching the surface of what’s being reported. What will dating sites agree is a legal and reasonable identity verification and background check in the future?
Is knowing they haven’t killed anyone enough to put your mind at ease?
What if dating sites put as much money into their matching systems as they did safety and security?
After the iDate virtual pre-conference, I started looking into virtual conference systems. Unisfair looks like a great solution. Hopefully these pre and post-conference services will improve their offerings.
Leveraging social networking sites to drive traffic to your dating site? Check out this list of Facebook dating developers.
Live Speed Dating: The details of the “dates” are not revealed till they pay up or sign up with a paid subscription. At this beta stage, this part is absolutely free. Ahem, people won’t pay for speed dating these days, that revenue is a *long* way off.
I have a review of SpeedDate and Woome ready, except my webcam won’t work with Woome. I’ll post that when their developers figures out what’s wrong.
White Labeler OneSite Acquires Social Platform.
AbleDating is having people spam this blog with positive comments about their software. buyer beware.
Accessibility of dating sites.
Match giving away memberships to bloggers. Where’s mine?You’ve read about SODA, now check out Net Choice.
This week I met with Jeff Strank of Net Party, good times.
On Valentine’s Day I saw a late night commercial for eHarmony. Theme of the ad was, “Its funny how a first date can change your life.” Man, that resonated strongly with me. I was also vulnerable and a bit drunk, so they hit me at the perfect time.
Chemistry fights directly against eHarmony, which instead speaks to the possibilities and not the battle. Eharnony made me feel hopeful. Chemistry is fighting the good fight, but I’m straight, and not a “reject”, so the ads don’t necessarily speak to me directly.
I’m still waiting for Match to fix their Little Black Book Facebook application. It’s seriously broken for Mac/Firefox users and the changes they need to make are very basic, what’s taking so long?
