Millionaire Matchmaker

So flying on JetBlue from Cali to DC a few days ago, I did what most JetBlue flyer’s do, watch 5 hours of non stop TV (I am so freakin’ ready for Internet access on JetBlue flights*sigh* Bring it on!). Anyway, as I flipped through the stations, I came across a reality show on Bravo called, “The Millionaire Matchmaker”. The show basically follows matchmaker Patti Stanger as she helps connect wealthy men with the women of their dreams. Man, if you think that you suck at dating, check out the show to see how difficult dating is for some of these millionaires!

While totally entertaining (especially while flying at 36,000 feet) what really caught my attention was to see budding online entrepreneur Tai Lopez and his best friend/biz partner German on the show. Some of you may have met Tai at the last iDate conferences in Spain/Miami. He operates EliteMeeting.com, formerly known as MeetingMillionaires.com. Interestingly enough, they never plug their site on the show (conflict of interest perhaps?).

You can check out a clip of the episode here.

Online Ethnic Communities – A Few Observations

When looking at the statistics for some of our ethnic dating sites, it’s really neat to see the cultural nuances and patterns that emerge. A few observations below:

-On our Black dating site SoulSingles.com, we see an unusually large % of members type their answers in capital letters. I wonder why that is? Caps read and look loud. Is this perhaps a reflection of a community that feels like their voice is not heard or accounted for? I don’t know the answer, but I am interested to better understand the psyche of the community for why that is.

-Of all our sites, IranianPersonals.com yields the highest percentage of members that attempt to cheat the system by sneaking in personal contact information in their profile answers; not music to my ears considering that I am Iranian. If they are clever enough to figure out how to drive a wedge between United Nations Security Council and IAEA over sanctions, you don’t think that they are smart enough to figure out how to try getting their email addies past our screeners. I swear, they don’t give up easily – it’s a freakin’ daily cat and mouse game.

-Iranian and Arab callers to our toll free line are also the most likely to barter for a membership discount. This is not surprising given how people in the Middle East barter you to death at the bazaars. That said, there is an art to this sort of bartering and I have to give credit where it’s due, many of the callers are damn good at it.

-The most egregious abuse between members comes on ArabLounge.com, often between Muslim and Christian Arabs that can’t seem to get along. Here’s a novel idea, let’s do a mashup message board between jDate and ArabLounge members! Whoa, you couldn’t pay me enough to be a site moderator – j/k – actually, any forum where Arab/Jews can share ideas, perspectives and even vent, is a good idea. Not sure Spark Networks feels the same way – they carry a fine line of ethnic niche communities, but if you notice, there are no Muslim niches in their portfolio.

Below are the two most searched keywords for EG and IP:

Keyword: “Sex”
Site:EligibleGreeks.com

The members of this site are our most sexually liberal. We see more bikinis, cleavage and speedo pics on this site than any other World Singles site. The keyword “sex” is overwhelmingly the most searched keyword on the site. Having traveled to Greece and researched the culture extensively, this is no surprise. A recent survey of which country has the most sex had Greece come out on top with 87% responding that they had sex on a weekly basis (compared to a paltry 53% for the US). OPA – LONG LIVE GREECE!! Brazil and Russia came in second and third respectively.

Keyword: “Doctorate”
Site: IranianPersonals.com

Iranian-Americans are among the most highly educated people in the country, according to research by the Iranian Studies Group, an independent academic organization, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). According to the latest census data available, more than one in four Iranian-Americans holds a master’s or doctoral degree, the highest rate among 67 ethnic groups studied. Yup, my mother too wanter her son to be a Doctor and suffice it to say, finding a partner with a advanced degree is the equivalent of striking oil

Life is good!

Spark Off The Market?

I just heard a rumor that the Spark auction has been pulled. Bids were supposedly at a nice premium to the stock price: over 10x LTM EBITDA. This is good news for dating site operators who are considering shopping themselves in the near future.

Assuming that this is true, I wonder why the sudden change of heart?

Cupid Media Affiliate Program

Not sure how I got on their mailing list or how new their program is, but CupidMedia, a strong niche dating company, now has an affiliate program. I covered CupidMedia in an earlier post, and like their business. Also, take a look at our affiliate network – we convert really well and are industry leaders for a few of our niches.

Peace!

Busy Turkey Week

Man, feels good to be back home in the OC!

I went back to DC for a few days last week to meet a new hire and hang out with the family. Gotta say, I am feeling good about our ability to attract good people. Our growing staff is intelligent, works hard and more importantly, they are a group of really friendly, good hearted people *group hug*

Anyway, I went to NYC last weekend for the 2007 National NAAP Conference (Network of Arab-American Professionals). The panel that I participated in was titled, “Love Actually: Personal Relationships in the Arab-American Cultural Context”. The room was packed and the energy was bubbling with enthusiasm. By show of hands, 100% of the attendees had heard of ArabLounge.com. However, when I asked how many of them would tell family or friends that they use ArabLounge.com, only a handful of folks raised their hand. Suffice it to say, we still have lots of work to do to get some of our ethnic brands accepted with open arms by the communities they serve . Overall the conference was absolutely amazing and I left there impressed at what the organizers/volunteers accomplished and by the number of inspired Arab-Americans that attended the conference. It was totally inspiring to meet so many young people who are proactive in empowering their community.

While in Maryland I swung by Freewebs.com headquarters to catch up with childhood friend Shervin Pishevar who is now the President of the company. The irony is that we are renting their old Silver Spring office that they ditched once they raised a cool $11 million. Shervin has been working with the 3 owners since Freewebs’ early days and played a key role in helping them raise money. I tell ya’, they sure have a kick ass new office — very Google-ish.

By the way, if you ever want to have the ultimate melting pot experience, trying flying on Turkey day as I did. Whoa, I can’t think of the last time that I was surrounded with so many immigrants from all over the world – very cool!

Life,
-S

Marketing To Muslims

Good article in The Economist about companies beginning to market to Muslim consumers in the West. This is great to hear, especially since we are well positioned to help such companies reach their desired demographics online.

“Marketing to Muslims: Food, fashion and faith”

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.

The Shrinking US Dollar

Man, is the Dollar taking a beating or what?!

The current exchange rate between the Dollar/Euro:

$1 = 0.70 Euros

If you are a US business with traffic from Europe that converts, right about now is a good time to contact your merchant (or get a new one), to start accepting subscriptions in Euros.

Peace!

CupidMedia

Aside from the massive jet lag, iDate Barcelona was cool. After the panel session on the last day, I was approached by a nice lady from CupidMedia (I suck at names and to my chagrin, can not remember hers). We chatted a bit about our niche businesses and expressed interest for exploring how we can help each other.

Based out of Australia, CupidMedia is one of those under the radar niche companies that I think is kicking some ass. Like Spark Networks, they operate a slew of niche sites that range from ethnic, interest and religious niches. Are they a competitor to World Singles? Mmm, every dating site ]kind of competes with other personals sites, albeit not necessarily directly. CupidMedia is different than World Singles from the stand point that they are a “tweener” between a matrimonial community and dating site. Their sites are free for women, and on the ethnic sites anyway, men appear to paying mostly meet women overseas. From what I was told, roughly 50% of their sales come from subscribers in the US.

CupidMedia has strengths and weaknesses. For starters, their optimizations efforts are solid, real solid. Many of their ethnic sites appear on the top half of Google searches for relevant ethnic singles related keywords. They also found a good niche for themselves as a “tweener” — there is certainly an audience for a niche site that is a cross between a dating community and matrimonial site targeting people in the US and abroad. I also love how they have localized many of their sites. On the flip side, I think that they are experimenting with several niches that I believe will bear them little return on the investment. By far and away, their Asian sites like AsianEuro.com, ChineseLoveLinks.com, FilipinaHeart.com, JapanCupid.com, KoreanCupid.com, etc., are their strongest sites.

Given our interest in tackling the Asian market, I welcome future conversations with CupidMedia for how we can work together. I have been a fan of their business for some time and hope that they attend the Miami conference. Hopefully this time, we will both have business cards.

Life is good!

-Saïd

Web 2.0 Covered In Revenue Magazine

For those of you who missed it, the May/June copy of Revenue magazine was dedicated to “Web 2.0″. A couple of highlights from the issue:

- Page 113 was a one page ad for SexSearch.com. I wonder how they’re doing in their head to head with AdultFriendFinder:

“Online dating sites are the biggest paid content generators on the Net.” ClickZ.com

“The Dating Service Industry is a $917 million dollar business just in the US.” Marketresearch.com

“On average, those paying for online dating services spend a total of $239 per year.” Jupiter Research

“About 11% of all online users have a profile on an online dating site.” Jupiter Research

- Page 94 had a short blurb titled “Dating Slackens”

“Dating sites may be losing their luster. JupiterResearch says that only 10 percent of Web users said they had recently gone to online personals sites, compared with 16 percent last year and 20 percent in 2003. The overall dating industry is still making money – about $650 million in 2006, up a little from 2005. Jupiter says that the added revenue is likely from rate hikes and not volume.”

- Michael Jones, budding Entrepreneur and CEO of Userplane had a quote in the cover story, “The Web. Take Two”.

“Web 2.0 companies I come across all started as Web services companies. We saw an interesting need have an online communication tool, and we started to say maybe there is an interesting way to turn on the lights in these rooms.”

Mike is really dialed in with web communities. AOL, which recently acquired Userplane is still trying to better understand the web; they would be well served to have Mike help them shape their web strategy.

SexSearch Ad: