A big welcome to SkaDate, the latest sponsor of Online Dating Insider.

I’m in North Carolina working on a new dating site. Last night was a big night out with the client, who knows how to have a good time. Asprin and strong coffee, stat!
The news this week was all about the new Chemistry.com attack ads against eHarmony. I saw the ads during The Office last night, they definitely play differently on a 50″ plasma in the middle of my favorite shows than in a tiny YouTube video. The Chemistry interview has more. My Mate1 interview is on deck, should show up here early next week. Oh, and Lavalife turned 20, happy birthday Double L!

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2007 marks the 20th anniversary of  Lavalife. Originally called Teleclassifieds, Lavalife was founded in 1987 by five young Toronto-based entrepreneurs who had been experimenting with then-breakthrough IVR technology (Interactive Voice Response). Since 1987, the company has grown to become one of the largest providers of phone-based personals services, the #1 online dating site in Canada, a leader in mobile-based personals services, and an industry leader throughout the globe.

20 years is a long time in this business, congrats to Lavalife for making it this far, which is quite an accomplishment given the tumultuous nature of the dating market.

Via PR Leap.

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What is Chemistry.com?
Chemistry.com welcomes those who are seeking a serious relationship based on their own personal goals – perhaps it’s marriage, perhaps not. And it connects those people in an environment that combines privacy with a superior matching system that transcends “compatibility” and seeks out chemistry.

What’s happened to get it where it is today over the past year or so?
Chemistry.com launched in February 2006 and over the past year, we built the business organically allowing us to learn so much from our customers along the way. Currently, more than 2 million people have registered on the site and we have had more than 350,000 first dates in the past 6 months.

We’ve had great success matching people based on individual chemistry, and that’s because our system was developed by Dr. Helen Fisher, the acclaimed biological anthropologist. Dr. Fisher used her research into brain science to create the Chemistry.com profile, which captures deep personality characteristics that yield chemistry-inspired matches.

Who is on Chemistry.com?
While people of all ages are flocking to Chemistry.com, if you pressed me, I’d say that most people here are older than thirty and younger than 55.

What does “Come as you are” mean?
We believe that consumers care deeply about what a brand stands for, and what its values are. That’s especially true when it’s a place that brings people together. This campaign introduces a philosophical difference between Chemistry.com and eHarmony — its largest competitor — into the dialogue. Chemistry.com doesn’t have a check list of criteria, we invite everyone to come as they are.

What goes into creating an ad campaign?
Looking inward and outward. Inward, to understand what needs consumers have that aren’t being satisfied. Outward, to look at trends and social forces that shape the way consumers perceive brands.

Why did you choose Hanft Raboy?
We chose Hanft Raboy & Partners because they are a fiercely independent advertising agency that is agnostic to media. They represent Match.com; you’ve recently seen their work with the “It’s Okay to Look” campaign.

What media are addressed?
This is an integrated campaign that includes national TV, print and a strong online presence including the “Great Mate Debate.”

Where will it run, for how long?
TV will run on NBC for 5 weeks, you can see ads run during shows like The Office, SNL, Heroes, Access Hollywood, etc. Print ads will run for 4 weeks in People.

Here are the links the TV spots on YouTube:
Dear John, Small Things, Still Gay, Five for Free, How Happy.

Chemistry Print Ads (392k PDF).

What about the feedback loop and paying attention to customers
We receive hundreds of customer calls a week. I am in close communication with the teams who are talking to customers everyday. Not only do I sit in on the calls to really listen and understand both the complaints and success stories, but I also read through every customer comment each week.

Thanks Mandy!

More conversation with new Match CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony and Mate1 coming soon.

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Ccube is a new over-the-phone social network launching today. The service lets you connect with friends and business prospects on sites like MySpace and eBay with the click of a button. Members can search for and talk to anyone for free. The service lets users link a Ccube username to their favorite connectivity device, including mobile and landline phones or VoIP services, keeping personal phone numbers private.

This is good for dating and social networking, especially on a site like Classmates and Reunion.com. A great way to reconnect with the guy who beat you up for lunch money or the girl you always wanted to ask out in high school.

I like the idea of voice profiles the most. The world is full of people with enough free time to yap away with strangers about all sorts of things. I worked with some people on a business plan the did just this, based on Skype, last year. It’s a compelling idea and the technology is all there to make it happen. It needs a solid scheduling feature to make it turely useful, who wants to get random calls all hours of the day?

The logo has a woman talking on the phone in her car while it looks like the door is open! And she’s not wearing a seatbelt, a la Jon Corzine. Thumbs down from the safety police.

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Jangl on TypePad, and Tagged.com. Jangle is blowing up, is Myspace intergration next?

Microsoft and Match partner. MS to offer Instant Messaging capabilities to Match members. Hopefully this works better than the old Match chat app which was rendered mute by everyone’s pop-up ad blockers.

Chemistry.com: Come as you are.

eharmony chooses Strongmail. Why is most of the recent eHarmony news about it’s technical infrastructure?

Let’s Grab a Drink: What kind of beverage are you?

Classmates.com launches dating service. True is an advertiser, and Yahoo used to be onthe site as well, will they remain on the site?

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Avatar moved to sidebar.

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Hot on the heels of the Eharmony Labs launching the Hot Science Blog, today Chemisty.com launched The Great Mate Debate. Each week, Chemistry will ask experts their opinions about relationships in America. Why does Chemistry use the phrase “relationships in America?” I guess Canadians and 190 other countries do not apply.

Whereas eHarmony doesn’t seem to link to the blog from anywhere that I could find, Chemistry redid their entire home page to promote The Great Mate Debate. Tying in blogs with primary entry points and marketing initiatives is incredibly important, otherwise the blog appears like the cousin that nobody ever pays attention to.

Is it me or does the eHarmony home page look like someone bought a template on TemplateMonster for $99?

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The Economist reports that according to Hitwise, people are increasingly getting their daily allowance of porn via social networking.

The online pornography industry is estimated to be worth about $1 billion, and counts for about 13% of website visits in America (compared to search engines, which account for 7%).

I have been saying this for a long time. Seeing photos of the girl/guy next door on Myspace is just as, if not more appealing than the staged photos and videos for a growing percentage of the online population.

Myspace has at least a dozen people removing inappropriate photos all day long. Looks like they aren’t doing a very good job, which is bad news for the porn industry.

Via Pronet Advertising.

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Singles.com has relaunched as an objective dating site review resource. The site competes with longtime dating site review sites link edatereview (good), datingsitereviews (good) and many other not-so-good sites.

We have an internal team of experienced inhouse dating site reviewers with over 25 years of combined online dating experience. Each one of those team members does an independent review of the site in question. Once completed, the team sits down and comes up with a consensus review. In most cases, they tend to come up with the same basic review. Because each person has their own likes and dislikes, our reviewers are told to ignore the content of the site and simply look at the facts: number of members, quality of profiles, value for money, customer service quality, and an overall review of the site.

Behold the statement: “Because each person has their own likes and dislikes, our reviewers are told to ignore the content of the site.” Huh?

They say they are able to get special deals from most dating sites, is this true? Some of the prices I saw were from months ago.

As more and more dating sites launch affiliate programs, the lines between useful reviews and  poorly written affiliate marketing come-ons continues to blur.

Most sites copy content from other review sites, often with the same spelling and grammar mistakes. Worse are the sites full of stale reviews from 2004.

Singles.com is at it’s core an affiliate site. They are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, its’ all about making $20 when you sign up for a dating site after reading about it on theirs. Singles.com will get some traffic simply due to it’s name. There is absolutely nothing wrong with paid affiliate listings, I just find them on average poorly executed, stale and more of an SEO game than about helping singles make informed decisions about which dating sites to join.  As with all review sites, Caveat emptor.

The review business is woefully underserved and I’m thinking about doing something about it. I have removed the affiliate links from my sidebars and will be moving them to another page or url entirely in the near future.

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I just found out that Jim Safka, CEO of Match.com, has a blog. I can’t believe no one tipped me off about it until yesterday. Jim hardly ever posted to it, but there was enough openness that it seemed like he was writing it, not the PR department. Although you never know, the PR people are getting savvier about corporate blogs, except when they get caught starting them and posing as consumers, which happens all the time now with embarrassing frequency, amateurs.

Now that Jim has left,  new Match CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony would be smart to ask Jim for his passoword and send out a “Hello World” post. Maybe he could shed some light on Match Platinum while he’s at it.

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