Craigslist charging for erotic services. We’ll see how using a fake credit card to authenticate pimps works out.
“Single?†Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape.
Adaptive Websites: MIT Technology Review has a great article about Adapting Websites to Users, a good read if you are interested in creating a closer connection to/between your viewers/readers/members/customers. Typical dating sites don’t do anything special with what they know about you. Maybe you see photos of the gender you’re interested in, or some basic geo-targeted ads (Hot girls want to meet you in [insert your town name]!) which is a total fallacy. Adult Friend Finder and Fling do this all the time. I do have to say that the amount of customized affiliate ads AFF offers is staggering.
Lesbians on Bonefish, via Online Personals Watch. Speaking of lesbians, IMVU has launched some pretty racy banner ads.
Zoosk redesigned their site. I’ve been comparing the people on Zoosk and Are You Interested, and the AYI people are much better looking and responsive to emails, at least in my experience.
Skadate has 5 Tips how to get relevant ads and make money on your web site.
Perfectmatch is up 47% over the last quarter.
Recently released statistics from Perfectmatch.com show a spike in new members of 47% over the last quarter, accelerating a trend that started at the beginning of 2008. In addition, matches are up 125%, as members are renewing their subscriptions and finding more perfect matches than ever before. Among the members, a staggering 92% are using the Duet Compatibility System (Duet), the site’s research-based matching and capability program, to access personality types different from their own.
Online Dating News has launched a site for Online Dating Commercials and spoof videos. Not sure why they didn’t just add it as a feature to their site. They also launched a site called Onlinedatingbookmarks, which has exactly 5, all affiliate links to top 10 sites. Someone tell me why this is useful.
Janis Spindel, famed Matchmaker, is now getting paid in Rolls Royces. Matchmakers are great for the few people that can afford them, but what is their success rate?
The latest Jupiter Report has given Mark Brooks a nice bit of promotion. Mark is quite good at getting his name out there, laying out a few soundbites and dropping client names. It’s a great skill to have. Do dating sites actually purchase these generic reports? Is there anything in them you can’t read here?
Facebook Marketing Bible, November 2008 edition.
Lots of stories about location-based dating lately. I’ve been talking to several companies getting involved in the space. If you don’t have a ton of money, an absolutely top-notch design and programming team and a killer conduit to millions of users, you’re going to fail. The problem with all of these services is that nobody is using them yet. They have to be part of a larger site like PoF, Match or Facebook to be truly useful, although Loopt got a great spike when they were features on an Apple tv ad. Check me out on Brightkite, thats the only place I periodically update my location with notes and photos.
