BlackPlanet.com Gives Up On Subscription Model For Dating

I am not sure when the switch from paying to free was made, but BlackPlanet.com’s dating section is now free. They launched their dating section a few years ago, but frankly, I never felt that they really understood online dating well enough to get it right with a subscription model; they should of hired online dating consultants Mark Brooks or Dave Evans to help them out. Anyway, they have thrown in the towel and the site is now 100% free; probably a good move that will help their bleeding traffic. If you can’t do paid dating right, don’t do it all. Free and paying are very different animals.

Dating To Be Offered On Facebook?

I just noticed that Facebook added a “Why Join Facebook” area and my eye was immediately drawn to the fourth image. The image for “Reconnect with Old Friends” is that of a heart circled around an old love from your yearbook – sup with that? The image miscommunicates the label/description, or is Facebook headed down the path of offering a dating service?

BlackPeopleMeet.com Meets MySpace

Black dating site BlackPeopleMeet now has a MySpace application available. Interesting that they are offering this first on MySpace and not Facebook; perhaps they concluded that there are more African Americans using MySpace than Facebook. Their app currently has 1,480 members. Something to keep an eye on…

“Let your friends on MySpace help you Rate a Date with profiles from BlackPeopleMeet.com! Your results will display within your account on BlackPeopleMeet.

Get your friends opinions and let them help you increase your chances to find that special someone!”

CommunityConnect RadioOne Deal Details

Here is what I am hearing on this acquisition from someone privy to the details:

BlackPlanet.com
- Revenue: $20 million top line – flat growth
- EBITDA: $1 to 2 million
- Price: Sold for $38 million but there were some other adjustments taking the proceeds north of $40 million

With the recent hefty (understatement) price tag AOL paid for Bebo ($850 million) and given Hi5’s latest valuation, I expected CommunityConnect to be worth much much more than $40-50 million. Then again, their huge overhead (a staff of 100?!), low EBITDA and flat growth probably resulted in a lower valuation. Plus, the only site really worth anything in their portfolio of sites RadioOne is BlackPlanet.com.

Cool Site Using Ning

Ning, which allows anyone to create/customize their own social network, is the backbone of my buddies new site, Sabet.tv.

Sabet.tv is an artist community started by Ali Sabet. He previously founded, Mojizu.com, a contemporary character design community, which cost a few hundred thousand dollars and months of development time; Sabet.tv however, barely cost him anything and took what, a few short weeks (if that) to launch.

Really loving what Ali has done with Sabet.tv and I’m even more impressed with Ning’s platform.

Good stuff yo.

Nuzizo Invites & Mashable Review

Hello Everyone,

If interested in moving in to Nuzizo City, please send me an email at Said (aht) Nuzizo with the subject headline “Citizen Invite” and i’ll shoot you a ticket to the city =)

Nuzizo was covered tonight by Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com: click here to read his review.

His review was solid. Aside from not being privy to the version 2.0 enhancements in the works, that we feel will increase traffic and help further distinguish our community, I felt he was off when saying, “I’m skeptical, however, about whether any generic (ie. non-niche) social network can get traction these days – the competition is just too great, and MySpace too dominant.” — the authentic feel of Nuzizo neighborhoods that develops as they get populated with citizens and content, essentially offers citizens a niche social networking experience. Nuzizo City is essentially a number of niche sites in one.

Overall though, Pete’s review, as usual, is good. Mashable is by far my favorite social networking blog. If you have not checked it out yet, take a look and draw your own conclusions.

Life is good.

-S

Barry Diller on Social Networking

Barry Diller, the Chairman and CEO of IAC, was the keynote speaker at the Media Summit yesterday and left me scratching my head a little. But hey, the man has had an amazing career, so maybe he’s right about much of what he said and knows best. Here’s my two cents worth anyway.

On social networking: “Match.com is our play in social networking…a pure social network site–not that they are of value–no one has yet proved it is the easiest advertising medium. Pure social network is an upgrade from the princess telephone teenagers used to talk on for hours and hours. I do think, however, it is a great promotional vehicle. Match.com got into trouble because it added social networking, that flirting element and that friend thing. We put all these bells and whistles on the service, and confused our audience…now we have had a turn around.”

– Yes, all sites are social networks. After all, the Internet is a social network of computers connecting the people who sit behind them. So yea, Match.com in essence is a subcategory of a “pure” social network and it is indeed social networking in the sense that here are people connecting/interacting.

“not that they are of value?” Mmmm, he wouldn’t have acquired MySpace for the price tag it was sold for? I find that VERY hard to believe. Btw, what happened to the business directed social networking site ZeroDegrees.com that they purchased in 2004? It seems that as a result low traction they have pulled the plug on the site. RIP.

“Pure social network is an upgrade from the princess telephone teenagers used to talk on for hours and hours.” I think he’s missing the bigger picture. Many pure social networks with their massive user base will become “social portals” and people will have much more to do on them than just “talk on for hours and hours”.

Article found here at PaidContent.org.

Peace.

Dating Ads On MySpace (Part Deux)

Add AmericanSingles.com to the carousel of dating sites advertising on MySpace. For a company with so many years of experience in the online dating sector and annual revenues at $80 million (give or take a little), you would think that Spark Networks could do a better job of giving the site a more memorable identity. In the crowded field of generalist dating sites with the likes of Yahoo Personals, Match and others, what makes AmericanSingles.com stand apart from the rest?

Our MySpace Ad Campaign

Whoa, we’re a few days into our MySpace campaign advertising two World Singles sites and so far so good. While I suspect the click through % will come down a bit when we are a few weeks into the campaign our current overall click through rate is a stellar 0.89% with one particular ad generating a whopping 2.08%. According to MySpace our click rate is “significantly higher” than other dating sites that are running campaigns. I’ll take their comment with a grain of salt but given the niche target of our campaigns I am not surprised. Plus, the IranianPersonals.com ad in particular is money (see below). A little bird told me that of all the dating sites ManHunt.net generates a high click rate at a hair above 1%. While the click rate is decent (or “excellent” by MySpace standards), the more important conversions are profile registrations. I’m pleasantly surprised at the high conversions and quality of the profiles.

Next time I will definitely deal with MySpace though an ad agency. Let them interface with MySpace. The support has been terrible. If you think that surfing MySpace feels like a meat market just wait until you deal with their sales reps and account managers. They’ve screwed up the parameters/specs for the campaign twice and getting your sales rep on the phone after he’s made his commission is Mission Impossible 4.

Dating Ads On MySpace

If you spend any time on MySpace you will quickly see that dating ads are aplenty. Match and Spark Networks have recently joined TRUE, Mate1 and SinglesNet in the rotation of dating ads polluting MySpace.

Match.com
To the best of my knowledge this is the first Match campaign on MySpace. They are running ads of young girls acting as though they are chatting it up on their webcam. Cute ads but the funny thing is that Match doesn’t even have a Video Chat feature. I like that their ads run the gamut in featuring Asian, Latina(ish) to White girls but what what about African Americans? If my ethnicity/race on MySpace is “Black”, their campaign would generate better click throughs if they occasionally served me an ad with Black women. Despite selecting Black as my race for a few weeks I have yet to see their recent campaign display any African Americans. Curious to see for how long and how aggressively they will continue advertise on MySpace.

BlackSingles.com
Owned by Spark Networks they were up to this past weekend running ads with print at the bottom that read “Meet Atlanta Singles”. Hmm, I live in Southern California so what gives? Wasted impressions…anyway, looks like they fixed the boo boo. I wonder how much this cost them in potential clicks, impressions and dollars?

TRUE
Ah man *sigh* the king of “t and a” ads. I would guess that over the last few months TRUE has run more ads on MySpace than any other company. To their credit they frequently update their ads and these sexually provocative ads are seemingly performing well for them in generating traffic (not so sure about registrations though).

Mate1
Similar to TRUE their ads are typically risqué with suggestive adult content. The two ads I have posted for them and TRUE are tame in comparison to some of their other ads. Seems like they have scaled back their MySpace ad budget of late. Given that their ads and front page ooze sex I reckon that their campaigns probably perform better than Match.com’s.

SinglesNet.com
Based out of Mass. this company is shelling out big bucks advertising not just on MySpace but all over the Internet. They’ve been around since 1998 but honestly, I had never heard of them until recently. Of all the dating creatives on MySpace I find theirs to be the least appealing; the ads are down right bland and *ho hum* easy to ignore. Check out their traffic spike in the last year on Alexa – dating sites have never been known to be so explosively viral so safe to say that they have come out of nowhere by spending big bucks to buy traffic. The site is currently free for a “limited time”. We’ll see how their traffic is affected once they start charging…

Dating sites missing from MySpace: Zencon peoperties (a company out of Arizona that runs some 40+ niche properties like BlackPeopleMeet.com), Date.com which seems to be losing chunks of traffic monthly, FriendFinder.com and eHarmony.com. BlackPeopleMeet had a campaign on MySpace a year ago; not sure how it performed but considering that they are no longer advertising on MySpace one can conclude that the results were not so great. MySpace is obviously not a good fit for the older, more conservative and religiously inclined eHarmony but FriendFinder may have some success advertising on MySpace.

We are currently running banner ads for a few World Singles site on MySpace. Curious to see the results.