Over the years I have found several blogs that cover the online dating industry. There are hundreds that cover online dating. I'm not interested in those. I decided to start a list of useful blogs, talk about what makes them worth visiting, and how they can improve.

Feel free to leave a comment with you blog url if you want to be added to the list. I know I'm missing several. I did that on purpose, I want to hear about what you're reading. I'll add it to my blogroll in the sidebar.

Mark Brooks Online Personals Watch
Mike Jones Userplane blog
Judith Meskill Social Software Weblog
David Jackson Internet Stock Blog
Me Online Dating Insider

Not many dating sites have their own blogs, which I find bizarre. Talk about a lost opportunity to communicate with members!

I'm going to talk about Online Personals Watch, the Userplane blog and Online Dating Insider. I'm also going to share a bit about how this blog got to where it is today. I'll get to the others blogs in another post.

Brook's tag line is:

Online Personals News and Commentary

That's pretty close to what he offers, although a little light on the commentary.

Userplane's blog tag line is:

Userplane's ongoing discussion on the business of online community development.

The problem with Mike's tag line is that his has nothing to do with discussion. It's outbound only, press releases and you can't even leave a comments. That's not a blog.

I don't have a tag line, perhaps I need one.

Both Mike and Mark have something to offer online dating industry. That is clear. I read them almost every day and pull from them often. They both are leaving a lot of social capital on the table by not taking full advantage of the power of blogs. Not by a long shot.

Online Personals Watch exists to get exposure which drives consulting gigs. He self-identifies as an online dating marketing expert. Yet he doesn't practice what should be, in theory, preaching to his clients.

Why else would he talk about sexy grandmothers and some of the other embarrassing PR that comes across his desk?

I unabashedly do the same thing. However, there is a lot of crap out there on the newswires that I won't touch because a) it's not worth your time to read and b) I like to think you come here for what's important, not the latest me-too dating or rate-a-date site.

If I could do one thing it would be to have each and every dating site's press release come across my desk for editing before going out to the wires. The quality, even of the top 5 sites, is shaky, if not embarrassing most of the time. Doesn't anyone have any pride in their writing skills?

Jones dips his foot in the editorial waters from time to time. He doesn't want to upset anyone or tarnish his brand.

I know a lot about what's going on, right or wrong, in the online dating industry and I use this blog to tell the world about it. Experience shows that many dating industry insiders read this blog. Some of them actually get something out of what what I write about. Or don't write about. The positive feedback is part of what keeps me going. So does the negative stuff. Thank God there is a feedback loop tight enough that I know what my readers think 5 minutes after writing a post.

I started blogging 4 years ago because I'm an early adopter who likes writing, market research and the technologies which drive Web 2.0. Over time, this blog evolved into a tool to educate my 70+ ProfileDoctor affiliates. I spent far too long trying to get biz dev executives at dating sites to understand how we could work together so I started writing about the industry to broaden our horizons and get a better grasp on how the industry must change to survive, much less thrive. Easier to write it all once than over and over again.

This blog evolved again, when I started hearing from CEO's and biz dev executives at the top-ten dating sites. It became more of a market research tool. My last gig was at a management consulting firm. It was all about the external business environment. I love market dynamics, cause and effect and the ability to leverage technology to get the the picture, from 50,000 feet down to 6 inches.

This blog will evolve again this summer into something new and different. I'm excited and I think you will like the direction it's headed. More on that later.

The problem I have with Brooks blog is that it's mostly press-release regurgitation with a few lines of puffery at the end. Mike Jones in-lines Brooks' content, and they both miss the mark when it comes to leveraging the power of blogs and starting a conversation with potential customers. It's easy to create an RSS feed from Yahoo News, PubSub, Bloglines or any other aggregator out there. But that's not blogging. I am guilty of this from time to time, but it should be the exception, not the rule. Your time is too valuable for that. I can teach you how to set up a newsreader and get all your dating news in about 5 minutes. But then all you're doing is reading the news. Where's the original thought, the argument, the discussion?

There are a few simple things that both Brooks and Jones can do to dramatically increase the value of their respective blogs, which leads to higher rankings, which leads to perception of authority, which leads to sales and consulting gigs.

Neither of them accept trackbacks, the real promotional value of blogs. That's like not letting people bookmark you website. No one can easily link to their sites, so their Google, Yahoo, MSN and Technorati ranking suffers.

Mums the word. I don't see them commenting on other blogs. Readers of their comments on other blogs would follow them back to the source. More traffic, more potential customers, more sales.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. I think Brooks kow-tows to the industry with interviews full of softball questions which do nobody any good who has more than a passing interest in the dating industry. This is what Mark has chosen to do, and that's fine. I would rather shake up the bee's nest and get people engaged on conversation on the blog. Some accuse me of being overly negative against some dating sites. Well, they deserve it in my opinion.

Brooks continues to add resources to OPW which is a good thing. Keep that up, there is no such thing as too much information if you have the right filters and it's presented in the right context.

I don't like the categories Mark uses, a company is a not a category. Perhaps I'm nitpicking but a solid category structure means a lot to readers, as well as search engines.

The top 10 lists Mark posts are worth checking out monthly when they are updated. But I don't get the Notable Psychologist list.

Brooks is trying to be all things to several different markets, and it shows through loud and clear.

Add OPW to your newsreader or list of daily blogs for keeping up with day-to-day dating industry news. Why? The frequency of OPW posts is increasing, while Online Dating Insider decreases. There are a number of reasons for this. One is I don't have the time to read every press release about new dating sites. It takes something pretty big for me to take a look, although I do write about dating site marketing more that anything else. I'll always be more comfortable as an insider as opposed to a straight news source.

Mark and Mike should continue to develop their blogs. As for me, I continue to find my voice as a blogger. It's an ongoing process that never ends.