I'm working on some feature comparison's for clients and this morning I slurped down a few dozen personal ads from the top ten dating sites.

Initially I was looking for ways to increase the value of ads by giving members the ability to add metatdata to each other's profiles but the exercise reaffirmed my general impression that all dating sites share 99.5% of their DNA.

I hear about sites adding tons of features all the time. Sites with no money, no marketing plan and no clear path to profitability. Go ahead, add Skype and a blog, you're treading water already, these features aren't going to bring you to dry land unless you have an integration plan that makes sense.

The only difference that matters is the members. 90% of the dating sites out there have databases full crap and they do nothing to fix this, thinking more is better. Wrong.

Dating sites clearly have a long way to go when it comes to promoting the demographic differences of their sites and the dating site reviews aren't doing much to help the situation. What's the difference between Yahoo and Match members? Zero.

Are eHarmony members really more “serious” than on Match? Go ask 5 members from each service. I did. No difference.

Niche sites have it a lot easier, that's for sure.

I bet I could take eHarmony's marketing budget and make any other dating site in the top 20 just as much money. It's not the questions, it's the advertising. And I'm not talking about Mate1 and True on Myspace, that's short lived revenue.

This is why Yahoo is losing ground so quickly. Their marketing seems to be mostly internal to the Yahoo network, which is enormous, but their brand footprint around the net is tiny. They may spend a lot on banner ads but I don't see them.

Social networks don't have to advertise, the media does it for them. A nice place to be.

A quick gut check of the demographics of the major social networks shows they're all pretty much the same, the only major differentiator is age, some cater to teens, others twentysomethings and a few think they are going to make it based on the needs of us thirtysomethings.

The big money is in the mass market for dating and social networking. There are a few niche sites doing well, clearly the exception to the rule and I hope they keep growing. My problem is that I'm not really a niche guy unless you count ENFP,Mac,snowboarding,consultant as a niche. I haven't see that site yet.

The biggest underserved niche is clearly geography. Some sites get it right, others not so much. I live in New England, that's generally considered three states. Why can I only sign up for one state at a time on most sites or have a radius of 200 miles? I don't want to drive to CT and I probably wouldn't date someone from NH, but MA, VT and ME are fine. So let me define my home base and area according to my needs. Typing in a zip code is so crude.

Looking for some final post-coffee inspiration for comparing social nets and dating, I revisited the new Facebook privacy features and Bebo's new personalize home page. Look at the incredible amount of personalization and customization these sites offer. I went back to the dating site profiles and immediately felt sad. Look at these poor static pages. Nobody to link to, no private information to share with people after a few dates, same generic color schemes.

I don't need my profile to look like a Myspace acid trip, but surely you can give me a few color scheme options, additional layout options and maybe a video player. Anything to differentiate myself from the other dudes in my zip code. Please?

This article is the first in an ongoing comparison between social networking and dating sites.

Technorati Tags: datingvssocial

Match has landed a season-long product placement in a TBS sitcom through MediaHub, the media planning and buying division at Mullen.

Match will shell out between $1-2 million to be features in My Boys, based on a woman sports reporter in Chicago.

The PerfectMatch-themed Must Love Dogs was the last big product placement we've seen.

Over the weekend I watched Casino Royal this weekend and my friend and we had fun pointing out all the of product placements in the movie (Aston Martin, coke, Ford, Sony). It was fun because some of the placements were difficult to see unless you were paying attention.

I worked in advertising in New York City for a few years, and I'm the kind of person that enjoys commercials more than most sitcoms. I'm all for visual product placement, it's a necessary evil for network television. Tivo and other DVR technologies have made it increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach audiences and many of the shows are so bad they can't get advertisers the old fashion way.

Match CEO Jim Safka:

It’s a fully integrated campaign that feels less like a sponsorship or advertisement and more like a part of the program.

The waxing poetic over the bygone years of shows sponsored by General Electric is so over. Let's hope sitcoms don't evolve into “brands gone wild.”

Audiences will quickly let Match know if they want a dating service in their television program. It's a lot easier to place a product than a service. A Powerbook or Coke just sits there, make a statement about the person in the scene.

The My Boys website has a calendar with Thursday being “don't forget to sign up for email alerts” day. I thought it was for Match but it's for the show.

Early reviews of “My Boys” are mixed to positive. The show premiers tonight in TBS at 10/9c.

I wonder if Match gets their money back if the show bombs?

Technorati Tags: match.com, myboys, product+placement

Match.com reports the initial response to the new anonymous calling feature has been “extraordinary”.

Jane Thompson, a Match.com vice president (of what?):

275,000 people already have used the feature, which is being offered as a freebie to Match.com's 15 million user base through the end of the year.

One surprise: Match.com had expected the service to be used mostly by younger romance seekers, she says. But so far, 50% of users have been in the 35 to 49 age bracket. About 8% are over 55.

It turns out Match not so large that you can be a Seinfeld-ian VP of Nothing. Jane is listed as the Managing Director of Match Asia Pacific but the Jangle press release lists her as the Vice President and General Manager, Match.com North America.

I didn't pull out the crystal ball on this one but I would have agreed with the prediction that us “older” members would be more likely to use the anonymous calling service. Young kids don't give much thought to giving out their mobil number.

I remain skeptical of Jangl becoming a noun, but initial adoption rates do look promising.

I called someone on Match last night, and promptly forgot to use the calling feature. Match definitely needs to do some consumer education to get people up to speed.

USA Today.

Technorati Tags: anonymous+calling, jangl

I have a drawer full of tech company t-shirts going back to 1993. This is the first dating-related t-shirt I'd wear, not including the SafeDate shirt, which looked great on employes but I'm pretty much a liability when it comes to donning a South Beach muscle shirt so well. Bonus on the CL shirts, they're from American Apparel.

Via RateOrDate blog.

Technorati Tags: casual+enounters, craigslist

Crush or Flush, a mobile version of Hot or Not, is launching soon, with an added twist. Users can tag hotties or flush them. Flushing is really just the ability to ignore people. I'd rather see a 1-10 style rating system, but then again I'm not 25 and can think of a lot of things I'd rather look at on my phone than postage-sized photos.

The current me-too HotorNot clones are coming out in force. There are so many cool things to be done on mobile phones, but at the moment, this is not one of them. James Hong, HotorNot, founder, feels its too early for mobile matching services. I agree. They had a service developed, and decided against releasing it.

HotorNot now has a Slide.com-powered screen saver that displays hotties on your desktop. As if YouTube wasn't bad enough, talk about a productivity waster!

Slide is owned by Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal.

Last year Peter Larsen, CEO of Enpocket, said MatchMobile was growing 15% monthy.

I met up with several Enpocket people at a recent PaidContent mixer in Boston. When I mentioned Match, they looked at me with blank stares. A good unscientific indicator of the health-o-meter for sites is the copyright. The MatchMobile copyright hasn't been changed since 2003.

More at GigaOM.

Update: people need a special link in order to sign up for the beta www.CrushorFlush.com/go.

Technorati Tags: crushorflush, enpocket, hotornot

Ben Brown is the creator of Consumating.com. After our first conversation I will always imagine him coding on a Powerbook next to the grill in his backyard in Austin, TX, drinking PBR's out of the can, surrounded by 20-something hipsters.

Ben sold Consumating to CNET quickly, he did a great job identifying a niche market, developing a new site with a good feature set, and flipped it quickly. I clicked on over to Consumating to see what's going on, and was greeted by this bizarre video greeting announcing the introduction of videos to the site on the home page. Let's just say Consumating is definitely a niche along the lines of geeks, Suicide Girls and Nerve.com but damn I laughed at the video. When is the last time a dating site made you laugh?

Interesting comparison between Matchwords and consumating tags. Matchwords are usually along the lines of swimming, reading, walking, tai food, whereas Consumating tags are band names, sexual positions, authors, tv shows, piercing locations and flavors of geekdom.

If you have an account, you get your own dashboard.

Alas, the pickings are pretty slim around Boston, but SF, Austin and other hipster epicenters are represented well.

Technorati Tags: consumating

I received the following YouTube email from moodswings82y:

What's up!
I noticed you've got a specific taste in videos.. so now you should check out my profile! www.video-portal.tv/?id=2413&mypics

I tried putting up a video blog onto my youtube page but it looks like it didn't work, lol..

anyway, talk to you later :)

The video is actually a still photo and her friends are all photos as well. Welcome to YouTube spam.

Technorati Tags: spam, youtube

Dude, it's like totally amazing. HippiePersonals.com is for sale on eBay. Also being auctioned are 55 niche dating domain names, including: progressivesingles.com, democratpersonals.com, greendating.com, wiccandating.com, veggiedating.com and punksingles.com. Minimum bid is $10,000. Auction ends December 4th at 4:05 PM. I don't know about selling a $300/month business for $10,000, that multiple is a bit out of wack.

Funny that the guy started it while in law school, now he's probably stuck in a cube farm working for The Man. Peace out.

Technorati Tags: hippiepersonals

Google Adwords management can be time consuming and difficult for dating sites with a few dozen keywords. With a thousand or more it's downright daunting except for the statistic-obesesed individuals that manage large keyword farms internally or as a hired gun.

Often, ad agencies take the burden from mid to large sized companied, keeping a hefty percentage of the keyword budget for themselves.

In a new twist, today I learned about Adisem from their VP Marketing, Ron Drabkin.

Ron walked me through a WebEx demo of the Adisem AdWords management system, explaining the features and benefits to small and medium sizes businesses that utilize AdSense. Basically, Adisem is a 100% automated keyword management and optimization service. Adisem offers a free two week trial to anyone who signs up. If you like the results, they charge a lower-than-industry-average 10% of your keywords budget.

Snipped from the website:

What does Adisem do?: Adisem's patent pending technologies operate directly from your Google account via what is called an API. Once you authorize Adisem to connect to your AdWords Account, Adisem will download your campaign history. Our servers will analyze the campaign data, as well as its competitive environment. Within 24 Hours, our system will adjust the campaign parameters and initiate the optimization process.

Campaign Modifications: Adisem will always: re-price any keyword, generate additional keywords, generate additional negative keywords. Adisem will never: modify the text of your ads, change the campaign's daily budget, remove a positive/negative keyword. You can always: add your own keywords, re-price a keyword, modify your ads, adjust your daily budget.

Here's an unformatted screenshot of the Adisem dashboard output.

You want the orange lines to be higher and the blue line to trend downward. The grey lines show the campaign before Adisem gets involved. Someone like Markus or the Match.com marketing guru's probably don't need something like this, but I can think of many small to mid-sized dating and social networking sites which could benefit from AdWords analysis and optimization.

There are other free and paid services similar to Adisem but I don't know of any which offer anything similar them at that price point and with the technology that runs the system. In the end it's up to you to decide which service is best for your needs and budget. For free, you might as well check out their system and see how it performs on your AdSense campaign.

If you take them up on the trial, leave a comment and let us know how the experience went.

Technorati Tags: adisem, adwords, keyword+optimazation

After practically begging to be bought by Match or Yahoo, Spark Networks board of directors has approved the company’s Share Repurchase plan authorizing the potential repurchase of up to an aggregate of approximately 2,000,000 shares.

Those following the Spark story will remember that Great Hills Partners bought a minority stake in Spark in December of 2005. They purchased 6,000,000 shares, representing a 19.8 percent stake in the company.

Technorati Tags: sparknetworks

Anonymous calling companies continue to court dating sites. It's deja vu all over again. The Jangl deal with Match is the first big play in the space, but it remains to be seen what the adoption rates are for the service.

Mark Brooks recently interviewed Vumber, an anonymous call company set to launch soon. Basic anonymous calling offerings are a commodity, making it increasingly difficult to figure out the core differentiators which guide the decision making process when it comes to picking out which services are appropriate for your site.

Jangl has come up with a unique way to offer advanced calling services to consumers, but what about the other competitors? Vumber CEO Cliff Wener says theirs is the only system that works bi-directionally on any phone. I don't buy it. Landmark patents? Maybe, but there is so much prior art out there, patent defensibility remains murky at best. The Vumber value proposition is exactly what Mark has written about in the past when he interviewed Phone Matrix CEO Andy Siks.

PrivateCall does a much better job at describing the financial upside and user experience of their service compared to Vumber but at the same time the two services appear indistinguishable.

Anonymous calling will not be a direct revenue generator for dating sites until adoption rates go up. When they do go up, carriers will think hard about building the feature directly into their phones.

At present, they are a fun new service to try. Most people adhere to the wink->-IM->email-> mobile phone call process, getting them to pick up the phone immediately is going to take a major shift in thinking and trust.

Someone just sent me link to GigaOM story about TalkPlus, a VOIP startup which recently raised $5.5 million and is reported to be talking to dating sites. The service will be free while in beta, but will cost about $10 a month and will come other features. More on Jangl, Grand Central, iotum and other Voice 2.0 companies at GigaOM.

Most anonymous calling companies are started by ex-telcom guys with very little understanding of how singles use dating sites. Or, they are established players looking to get into new markets, which is why it pays to find out just how serious they are about getting into the dating market before doing any sort of deep integration.

Technorati Tags: anonymous calling, jangl, voip, vumber

Anonymous calling companies continue to court dating sites. It's deja vu all over again. The Jangl deal with Match is the first big play in the space, but it remains to be seen what the adoption rates are for the service.

Mark Brooks recently interviewed Vumber, an anonymous call company set to launch soon. Basic anonymous calling offerings are a commodity, making it increasingly difficult to figure out the core differentiators which guide the decision making process when it comes to picking out which services are appropriate for your site.

Jangl has come up with a unique way to offer advanced calling services to consumers, but what about the other competitors? Vumber CEO Cliff Wener says theirs is the only system that works bi-directionally on any phone. I don't buy it. Landmark patents? Maybe, but there is so much prior art out there, patent defensibility remains murky at best. The Vumber value proposition is exactly what Mark has written about in the past when he interviewed Phone Matrix CEO Andy Siks.

PrivateCall does a much better job at describing the financial upside and user experience of their service compared to Vumber but at the same time the two services appear indistinguishable.

Anonymous calling will not be a direct revenue generator for dating sites until adoption rates go up. When they do go up, carriers will think hard about building the feature directly into their phones.

At present, they are a fun new service to try. Most people adhere to the wink->-IM->email-> mobile phone call process, getting them to pick up the phone immediately is going to take a major shift in thinking and trust.

Someone just sent me link to GigaOM story about TalkPlus, a VOIP startup which recently raised $5.5 million and is reported to be talking to dating sites. The service will be free while in beta, but will cost about $10 a month and will come other features. More on Jangl, Grand Central, iotum and other Voice 2.0 companies at GigaOM.

Most anonymous calling companies are started by ex-telcom guys with very little understanding of how singles use dating sites. Or, they are established players looking to get into new markets, which is why it pays to find out just how serious they are about getting into the dating market before doing any sort of deep integration.

Technorati Tags: anonymous+calling, jangl, voip, vumber