I just got back from a weekend meditation retreat. At one point there were 24 of us sitting on cushions in a room overlooking the mountains of New York State, with an amazing sunset and all of a sudden I felt 100% connected with everyone in the room on a level I’ve never, ever encountered before. Call it being open, call it love, lets just agree to call it a feeling that dating sites should strive to facilitate between members.
Prepare for some major link-droppage, enjoy.
I mentioned that Pinterest could be an interesting idea for a dating site. Of course someone is doing that.
Here’s another one. Foreign Affairs on Pintrest. Pintrest is doomed because its all women and they hate this stuff and its getting so spammy its ridiculous.
Wait, one more, PinPal.
Netflix never used its $1 million algorithm due to engineering costs. The increase in accuracy on the winning improvements “did not seem to justify the engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment. Ouch!
Friendfinder Networks pays off some debt, remains deep in the red. I’ve been doing some research on AdultFriendFinder (for a client, really!) and its clear that after dropping $75 and receiving a severely bruised ego, I totally understand why men pay to be abused by women on AFF. Just like with dating, its a numbers game. You have to deal with the seriously deluded people and every once in a while there is a real person with a real photo that you can actually talk to that will actually respond to you and doesn’t have a list of demands 4 screens long.
The FFN cam business is probably raking in a lot of cash. Girls asking for tips on webcams is a *huge* business segment. At least thats what they tell me.
Big buzz around theComplete.me (private Facebook dating, oxymoron?), which for some reason is apologizing for something I didn’t really pay attention to (doing geographic roll-out instead of nationwide), making it a bigger issue than it needed to be. If everyone on the team is a dating industry pro and worked for Match, Yahoo etc, why are mistakes like this being made? #newbiemistake.
In other news theComplete.me raises $1.2 million seed round. Investors include PlentyOfFish, what??? Dating sites investing in other dating sites, its cats and dogs and raining frogs. I would love to see that term sheet.
The main reason theComplete.me is able to raise any money is because of the team. Investors probably have a vague idea what the final product will be or if it will be successful, but they like the team, a lot, so it doesn’t really matter what they pitched them with.
This is a very different approach from most dating startups, which throw down their business plan and say “fund us so we can build this” and have to discernable experience or team members. TheComplete.me folks have a general idea of what direction they are going, something like”It’s private/real identity/facebook/some other stuff and we’ll see what happens.”
The first U.S. Edition of the Online Dating Summit in Las Vegas is January 22-25 2013. Their inaugural event in Barcelona featured 450 professionals from over 30 countries. In Las Vegas they expect close to 1.000 delegates. Registration opens June 1.
Interesting how iDate moved from Miami to be in Vegas at the same time as the Online Dating Summit. I guess domain squatting wasn’t enough for them. If you go to Vegas, which event will you be attending?
Plentyoffish, I mean POF, POF passes 100M weekly messages, 2 Billion Pageviews/Week. That is just insane. Whats more, they have no idea what’s driving this traffic bump. Read More…
Match has a new campaign in the UK called Real Stories.
Billing and marketing vendor and friends of the dating industry vindicia have expanded their CashBox solution. I’ll let them explain it better than I ever could.
Traditionally, dating sites have been subscription oriented, with monthly, quarterly, six-month and annual plans being the most common offerings. Usage billing gives them the opportunity to potentially attract audiences that might not be yet ready to cough up $30 a month, but still get value from the service. You could have an “entry” pricing model that’s based on the number of profiles you’re able to see (say 100 per month) for $19.95, and every profile over that is $1.99. The latter pricing model is exactly what the latest release of CashBox would support because we would bill the appropriate amount based on the profiles “viewed” for that particular customer. That way people who want to test the waters could. Dating sites using CashBox would have the flexibility to incorporate multiple pricing models into their arsenal.
Vindicia is doing a Sneak Peek webinar on Thursday April 26.
Badoo says they have 8 million and counting in the States. Thats huge since they have zero marketing footprint here. Former Google and Facebook exec Ben Ling is joining Badoo as COO, effective May 1. He’ll be based in their London HQ.
Ben was Senior Director, Product Management of Search Products and Local Business Products and Director of Platform at Facebook back in the day. He’s got skills, but can they translate to the further internalization of Badoo?
I was on Badoo every day for over a month. The way its going to grow in the US is by adding a few select features. They have the HotOrNot thing going (literally, they power the site now) and the “Who’s close to you right now” thing, but they need some new features that Americans and Canadians like to keep people engaged, otherwise the site gets boring too quickly.
Wait, I’m looking at this all wrong (again!). With a member acquisition cost of pennies per person, Badoo can make a ton of money with the site just doing what they keep doing. Serious daters won’t use it, but there are plenty of people like those on MyYearbook that will hit the site just to see who’s around and engage in some casual flirting. Will Badoo stay the same and just coast and cash in or evolve to be something bigger and more important? Let’s see what Ben and the team can come up with.
New site alert. Ladies interested in partaking in some questionable idolatrous behavior can check out Miss Travel, the site where they can find rich men to fly them around the world. Is sex with an old rich fat man really worth a trip to Paris? A lot of people seem to think so.
My Internet dating spreadsheet is better than yours.
Your online dating profile photos make you look like a blurry Sasquatch. Here’s how to fix them, A Free Photo Lighting Lesson.
Much has been written about certain mobile apps that were a bit too close for comfort when it comes to knowing exactly where a person is on a map. To counter-balance this, why not learn how Carnegie Mellon researchers are Using Foursquare Data to Redefine a Neighborhood.
Video-based dating is heating up (again). Runfaces this time. And Skyecandy.
After hanging out on a cushion all weekend, I came across Spiritual Singles. Nice niche and less dogmatic than Christian dating sites. Maybe Buddha is their spokesperson?
A social network for two people? If Facebook would only get groups sorted out and not so complex, these sites would be mostly unnecessary. but hey, why not make social nets specifically for certain numbers of people? Social Networks, Small and Smaller (NY Times).
MeetMoi launched Wingman, allows friends to get introduced to other groups nearby. I love how the press release says “MeetMoi is the leader in social discovery technology.” Sorry, there are no leaders at this point, everyone is simply trying to figure out how to make meeting people more social, because that is the buzz and the hype of 2012. Kudos for MeetMoi for trying out a wingman feature, haven’t seen a digital version of that yet.
No Scrolling Required at New Dating Sites. “People were just sort of battle-weary from online dating.”
Best new dating site name of 2012, Coffee Meets Bagel. Daily Deal dating, *great* idea.
Millionaire Matchmaker Con Man Pleads Guilty to Bank Fraud. But will he be be back on next season?
