In November 2005, Court Rye wrote a Match.com case study. I stumbled across it doing a random Google search for industry information. His portfolio states he worked with Match.com employees to identify alternative business strategies, marketing techniques, and technology related opportunities and proposed RSS integration and chat room facilitation with sponsored events as a means of increasing customer interaction and retention.

Weighing in at 21 pages, there is a lot of information about business models, early corporate history, affiliate networks, and details about their IT infrastructure that is sure to make Markus crow about ineffective use of IT resources.

There are some good ideas here, and some not so much. Nothing we haven’t discussed here ad nauseam. For example I’ve mentioned dating sites utilizing RSS feeds a few times and the notion of a smaller, fresher database has been around forever.

Good food for thought if you run a dating site.

match.com, Research

Today the braindead marketers at Turner Broadcasting decided it was a good idea to PLACE FAKE BOMBS around Boston and nine other US cities.

I’ve been fielding calls all afternoon from around the country and I have been terribly worried about my friends in and around town.

To say I am sick to my stomach with anger would be an understatement.

Fucking idiot marketers deserve to be fired and fined for this criminal activity. Even better, Jack Bauer should get rid of each and every one of them just like he escaped captivity in this season’s opening episode (hint, check 6:58 A.M)
I will never pay a dime to see anything Turner Broadcasting is involved with. I can’t wait for the protests and reactions to begin once this hits the nightly news.

Uncategorized

Compete says only 20 domains capture a whopping 39% of all our time spent online. Adultfriendfinder was a surprise on the list.

In recent weeks, several people have turned me on to Quantcast, which contains lots of interesting data along side general traffic stats. I need to find out where they get this data from before saying anything more.

compete, quantcast, Traffic

My friend GPC, who used to do PR for eHarmony, went to the Web Innovators Group last night in Cambridge. I am deep into a project and couldn’t tear myself from the monitor and Greg was nice enough to post his review of the companies that presented.

One company which stuck out was TrustPlus, which is creating portable identities. This ties nicely into my earlier post about Identity Verification Services. It’s like Rapleaf, Trufina and Opinity all rolled into one.

TrustPlus is a service that allows you to receive and create reputation anywhere you go online. TrustPlus allows you to collect your existing reputation, collect new reputation as you interact and transact anywhere you surf, and provides you with meaningful analysis of the reputation of people with whom you are interacting and transacting online. TrustPlus is currently operational for craigslist® posts. Additional sources of trust will be added soon and frequently.

I’m not a fan of having another email address, but this is looks like they are off to a good start.

How much money is a background-checked and ID’d member with a solid reputation worth to a dating site? How much more likely is that person to have a better experience on said dating site? Does anyone have any research they can share into this? Most background check companies immediately go to the financial value proposition, although there are several inherently intangible positives to offering identity verification services to dating and social networking users.

Identity, Safety, trustplus

So what are you looking for in a relationship... someone just like you or someone who is the complete opposite. There's no right answer of course, but who you choose will have a major impact on your dating life...

Continue.

There's a big difference between the type of gift you should give for Valentine's Day when you're in a serious versus casual relationship. How about married versus engaged couples? If you're confused as to what to buy based on your...

Continue.

Adrants says:

After Bob Garfield demolished them for disseminating unrealistic online puffery, we’re impressed by Match.com’s latest initiative, which takes a more intelligent approach than vapid sex-obsessed competitor True. The aim is to draw warmth to Match.com from people who still pan online dating as creepy, oversexed or are simply just too shy.

Amen to that, even if the people featured on both sites are people you and I are most likely never going to get near on a first date.

Garfield has a harsh take on eHarmony, mentioning the Christian principals behind their questionnaire and calling them “the Certified Used Vehicle of the industry.” Ouch!

eharmony, Marketing, match.com

Read/WriteWeb has an overview of identity verification services. Having worked with Trufina and Opinity, I am intimately familiar with how they operate and current issues that need to be addressed if these companies hope to succeed.

At first, background checks were a solution looking for a problem. The thinking was along the lines of “We do checks for major corporate HR departments, why not branch out into other (seemingly) logical markets?”

Bzzzt. Wrong answer. None of these companies knew the first think about dating or social networking, and it showed, sometimes painfully, during their pitches to dating site business development teams.

That was two years ago.

Now Sentinel is providing searching capabilities to MySpace’s sex offender alert system. MySpace may use image-analysis software and other means whereby sex offenders using MySpace can be recognized, even if they don’t use their real names in registering. I talked to Riya about using their facial recognition on dating sites for matching purposes, as I understand it talks are underway with most large dating sites although I’m not clear on the status.

Sometimes you need to stare at a problem for a while before the solution becomes apparent. The problem is that others are reacting quicker to changes in the marketplace and launching competitive services for most less cost and overall resources.

I recently heard from Harrison Tang at Spokeo. Spokeo is a content and profile aggregator built by Stanford roommates. No VC, no big development team. Just a few smart people in close proximity learning from the mistakes of others who previously trod down a similar path.

This madness with 20+ profiles is ridiculous and borders on insulting. I can only hope that dating sites will allow for a Master Profile which can be shared among several sites and manageable via a centralized site.

Lots of entrants into the marketplace, everyone is having a hard time monetizing traffic. Either you make money on identity or background checks or advertising. So far, we’re not seeing a lot of either, but it’s early days for identity companies. There are plenty of them in the deadpool. As usual, it’s going to take timing and a unique value proposition to succeed.

Identity, myspace, opinity, riya, Safety, sentinel, spokeo, trufina

I had a chuckle this morning when I saw that Markus says that HotorNot competed with OkCupid. He thinks HotOrNot will move to a hybrid YouTube/dating model. Bizarre that they are shutting down HotOrNot, $5 million revenue for 5 people, but then again, they have to do something, their traffic appears to be tanking.

Dating Site, Finance, hotornot

NEW YORK: Men with rugged jaws and chiselled, masculine facial features might have no problem getting dates but women don’t always see them as marriage material, according to a US study.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, found women may judge potential mates by how masculine their facial features are before getting to know them.

Researchers tested about 850 male and female undergraduates usually digitally altered pictures of male faces and found women viewed men with “masculine features” like prominent brow ridges and large jaws, as good short-term partners – but saw them as more likely to cheat on a spouse and get into fights.

Men with more “feminine features,” such as rounder faces and fuller lips, were viewed as better long-term partners by female participants who would likely make better parents and husbands.

“Women’s preferences depend on what type of partner she is looking for,” said the study’s author Daniel Kruger in a statement.

“She will prefer a highly masculine face for a short-term relationship where the potential genetic investment would be most important, and a more feminine face for a long-term relationship, where a stable, supportive relationship and ability and willingness to care for children would be more important.”

Kruger said male participants in the study, which was published recently in the journal “Personal Relationships,” drew similar conclusions based on men’s facial features.

When they were asked to choose a person to accompany their girlfriend on a weekend trip or as a potential son-in-law, they opted for men with more feminine features.

Kruger said according to this and other studies, the hormone testosterone may play a role in explaining facial preferences although further study was needed.

Testosterone promotes the development of male facial and sexual features, including prominent brow lines and larger jaws, which may be characteristics women want to pass on to their children.

But at the same time, increased testosterone has been linked to violent behaviour and spousal cheating so as a result, women may want longer-term relationships with less-masculine looking men.

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