A few months ago I was introduced to Maria Seredina, a bright young woman from New York who works in equity research covering the Internet space, including dating companies. Maria had just put on a dating industry Meetup in NYC called eAmoreNYC and we talked about the needs of the dating industry and having a follow-up summer event.
In case you haven’t noticed, NYC is cranking out lots of hot dating startups. To address this surge, Maria put together a nice event (150 attendees during an ice storm) that brought the NYC dating scene together, just like the hundreds of other Internet-related events in New York that occur every week.
What a great idea I thought, so I wrote about this month’s eAmore NYC Dating Industry Summit several weeks ago, and thats when things started getting weird.
Since my post, a number of people have alerted us to the fact that iDate organizers Mark Lesnic started registering online identities similar to eAmore and posting content that misrepresents the eAmore brand. Not just a few, either.
Twitter accounts: eamoreevent, eamore2012, eamoreevents (and probably more).
Facebook group. They even copied the design of eAmore’s logo and are redirecting trafic to the iDate site.
I assume that these 30 other similar domains are theirs as well, although the registration information is hidden. Maria just told me that she didn’t register any of these and showed me her GoDaddy account to prove it.
You know you’re on to something when people start squatting on related domains, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. If thats the case, eAmore terrifies the iDate organizers and I’m not really sure why.
Here are the facts, as just about everyone in the dating industry knows but worth recounting here.
iDate Miami is the big dating industry event in Miami. It costs over a $1,000 for the 250 or so attendees and sponsorships are expensive.
Much of the industry goes to Miami in the dead of winter to get some sun and network with other executives. iDate Miami is great for this purpose, but when it comes to quality conference programming, it hasn’t evolved with the times and quite frankly, if I am to believe the scores of post-event emails I receive each and every year, the industry is hungry for other opportunities to network, get turned on to hot new startups and talk about relevant and timely topics.
I personally have put more than $100,000 in attendee and sponsorship fees into iDate coffers over the years. I have no problem with this at all. Its a decent event serving the dating industry types and my clients value the exposure in the hallways and exhibition hall. I have benefitted in that I pick up a number of clients every year at iDate Miami.
Along comes Maria with her idea for a Brooklyn meetup. Great, I thought, and I was more than happy to spend a few hours helping her line up some demos and a few sponsors. I’m speaking on the panel and will judge the dating startups with a number of other dating industry executives.
At $20 eAmore is not meant to be a significant revenue generator. Its going to be a thought-provoking and fun event in a funky space attended mostly by people in the NYC area.
As a response to eAmore, iDate decided to go negative, and I sincerely wish they hadn’t. Mark Lesnic’s actions speak volumes about their professionalism and how they do business. Its a shame, really. Aggressively going after a new event in Brooklyn on a Tuesday night (hoping for 200 people) by blatantly attempting to benefit from its publicity and domain squatting. I am truly shocked at their behavior and Maria feels like she has been kicked in the stomach.
I feel terrible for Maria, who has no control over iDate’s actions. All I can do is point out iDate’s behavior in the hopes that they and the industry understands that squatting on a Meetup’s online presence is not acceptable. Legal, yes, but good business practices? No way.
Here’s what I’d like you to do. If you feel that what iDate is doing is underhanded, I urge you to register for the eAmore NYC Dating Industry Summit, even if you don’t plan on attending. Consider it a vote in confidence that the dating industry is open to new events and ways of thinking while sending a message to Mark Lesnic that he needs to know that their shameful tactics are not appreciated and will not to be tolerated.
At the very least, leave a comment to let iDate know you don’t support their actions.
Its difficult enough that the dating industry’s reputation is not exactly stellar. iDate is setting a terrible example and they should immediately stop undermining the efforts of others looking to cater to the online dating industry.
eAmore is practically free, has a great lineup and there will only be one e-commerce sponsor (that alone should be enough to get many industry folks excited.)
Obviously iDate is concerned that their money-printing, only game in town run is coming to an end. But is it? While the writing is on the wall regarding iDate, I think most reasonable people would agree that there is absolutely room for more dating industry events with a more professional focus. Please don’t hesitate to tell me that I am crazy and iDate satisfies your every need, I’m all ears.
They way I see it, iDate can be the Vegas party every year and other events like eAmore can put together smaller more intimate and high-quality events across the country addressing the immediate needs and challenges of dating executives (regardless of the fact that iDate has registered all sorts of geographic variants of eAmore, thanks guys). Will that hurt iDate? Probably nowhere near as much as they have hurt themselves through years of lackluster conferences.
If you like iDate, great, enjoy the sun in Miami. If you want to get to profitability quickly, grow your dating site like a weed with quality people, get funded, embrace mobile solutions and dive deep into topics such as the benefits of improved matching algorithms and dating safety, well now you have another option. Maybe you will even look somewhere else. I hope that someone else gets inspired by this and launches even more dating events in places like Toronto, Texas and San Francisco.
Need I remind you that there are 110 millon singes in the US and only 30-40 million try online dating each month. Thats a huge untapped market that needs support from bloggers and consultants, vendors, events and other resources to define, create and deliver services that those 70-80 million singles may someday find useful in their search for a meaningful relationship (or a hookup).
Frankly I’m more than a bit concerned about what else iDate says about consultants, vendors and others like myself participating in the online dating business ecosystem. Do they throw us under the bus like this when talking to the media and others in the dating industry? With friends like iDate, who needs enemies?
Update: Originally it looked like Mark Brooks was posting to the fake eAmore Twitter fee. Upon further inspection, it appears that Marc Lesnic has been re-tweeting Brooks’ tweets. Call it a case of mistaken guilt by association.
