Now that was a nice break from the blog. I’be been trying to take advantage of this incredibly rainy summer, exploring swimming holes, doing brewery tours, hiking and riding my new motorcycle every chance I get.
On the work front, working on a big project and with helping a few dating sites launch in lucrative niches like health and wellness.
A couple of people are looking to buy dating sites in the sub- $1M range. Contact me for more information.
Here’s the first part of a few posts covering some of the things happening in the dating industry that caught my eye in recent months.
SocialRadar gets $12.5M to jump into the people discovery market. Copy and evolve Highlight/Banjo, add some social context and you’re off to the races.
The Tindr hype is deafening. Nice UI but a less-than-useful app and now everyone is copying it, from Twine to OkCupid. This HotorNot stuff needs to stop unless someone can show me that it leads to more meaningful matching. Everyone is doing it now, saying it’s a unique way to “surface” new people. A dumb idea that needs to die.
I had to unsubscribe from CoffeeMeetsBagel and all the other sites that send me 1-3 matches every day because their matching algorithm are terrible.
How Many More Online Dating Sites Do We Need?
The marriage of online dating and online fraud.
Eharmony moves from dating to job matches.
Jiayuan.com (DATE), just completed marketing and priced its IPO at $11. Great to see another pure-play dating site for investors to get into. Watching Spark Networks stock was getting boring.
Cupid LLC launches Safe Mode, users can filter based on if the other person has been verified. Adult Friend Finder did this a decade ago, glad to see it catching on. They also dumped their casual sites Benaughty.com and Flirt.com back to Cupid co-founder Max Polyakov.
Looking at the usual abundance of dating site ads on Facebook, I quickly became confused this morning as I kept seeing ads for Match which lead to Findsinglesonly with the Match logo at the bottom of the home page. Initially I thought it was the usual affiliate malfeasance, but then I saw an affiliate network of some sort claiming that Match is running a white label platform. Match top brass say this isn’t the case.
Can dating site advertising on Facebook get any worse? I saw a Christian site with a photo of a women with her legs in the air! Anything for a click.
Match launches Stir Game Nights in 25 markets, partnering with seven board game manufacturers to provide singles with a combination of icebreakers and party games that are less about strategy and competition and more about laughing and having fun together. If you want to date me you gotta let me win at Banannagrams.
Chris Harrison and creator of “The Bachelor” launch video-based dating app “At First Sight”. Video introductions are incredibly powerful. Video dating not so much. I talked to The Bachelor about doing an app or a site four years ago. Glad to see them join the fray. Can their media power get people to use video?
Flock is similar to the Grouper model, but girls go out free and it’s not blind: the leaders from both groups get to see the other group before deciding to go out.
Mary Meeker’s annual 2013 Internet Trends is a must-read.
Top Dating Experts on Twitter.
Women’s Voice Pitch Changes Depending on Their Attraction To a Man.
