Facebook Developers Demand to Spam What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Valleywag published a letter from an anonymous Facebook platform developer complaining about the abusive limits Facebook is imposing on viral growth.
“Facebook just recently unceremoniously undercut the very thing that was driving the virality of most the initial applications, which is the ability of people to invite all their friends to an application,” the developer complains.

Read full letter here

Starting an Online Dating Service

According to Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine, Out of every 100 online dating services that are started, 99 of them will fail and never make a profit. Everyone starting a new service thinks they'll automatically be a part of that 1%, but then again, many Americans also think they'll one day win the lottery. The harsh reality is that from the time you launch your service you are part of that 99% and only those who know how to prevail will change that fate.

Joe has some advices for new sites that want to be part of the 1%:
1) Put the consumer first. I'm sure you've been upset at the way a company has treated you in the past. Strive to make it so that no one is ever that upset with you. Remember the golden rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
2) Find ways to heavily differentiate yourself (in a good way) from mainstream online dating services (i.e. offer refunds).
3) Network with other businesses to create joint ventures that benefit everyone involved.
4) Offer incentives for people who become members (paying or not). Note: My free ebook "Maximizing Your Online Dating Success" can be used as an incentive.
5) Don't start too big.
6) Remember that you need to market from several different angles and markets. Just doing online advertising won't cut it.
7) Find ways to create press releases that will attract attention. All it takes is for one news organization to write a story on you and that one story could result in many more.
If you have the money, hire a good public relations firm to help.
8) Be serious. Running a successful online dating service isn't something you do "just on the side". There's a lot of issues to work out, especially if you become successful - servers, technicians, customer support reps, etc.

Read more at : Online Dating Magazine

Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

A very intersting none academic research "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace " published by danah boyd.
The research is about who goes where and how is it relateted to the socio-economic class.
Acording to the publisher ,the goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college.They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.
MySpace on the other hand is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Read full research

CircleUp Launches Its Most Sensible Widget

I have found a cool new widget from CircleUp , embeddable MyQuestions widget to accompany its existing service, combining the functions of an instant messenger with a Q&A forums.

This widget enables you to ask a question, get an answer, see others’ questions, leave your own answers, and track everything with RSS along the way. You’ll need to be registered in order to use this widget, as it functions around your existing CircleUp account and groups.

You can place your widget on your website, blog or social networking profile, including MySpace, hi5 and Piczo.


Full Article: Mashable

Online Dating Cartoons

The emergence of online dating presents a great opportunity to explore the more humorous side of the dating ritual.




More cartoons at: Online Dating Magazine

Jupiter Research Undervalues German Dating Market

Dirk Pflitsch at Online-Dating-News has published an analysis “Online Dating Companies in Germany” which is based on a paper based survey filled out by 46 of 60 mayor players. Dirk contends that Jupiter
We estimated a €116 million market in 2006 while Jupiter Research said €66 million.We try to explain the difference:- We included adult dating and niche dating sites as for Christians, Single Parents… (about €20 million).- Jupiter data is based on asking a few 100 Germans about their online behaviourwhile we have a direct access to the companies. Their way causes some problems, i.e.:The turnover increased because most of the German dating companies switched from a non-reccuring to a auto-recurring membership.But most of the mebers don’t even know that - thats why turnover increased!

Source: Online Dating Insider

Half of Brits regularly use online dating sites claims survey

Use an online dating site? You're not alone if a new survey is to be believed - over half of us in the UK have registered at two dating websites, while 83 per cent of people have been on a dating site at some point.
And while it's hard to take the results of a 3,000-people survey undertaken by an actual dating site as cast iron fact, the research does suggest it works - with a third of those registering finding a long-term relationship and a quarter still going strong. And just to throw in a happy ending, six per cent got married.

Full article: TechDigest

Online Dating Can Be Dangerous

An estimated 40 million Americans use online dating services hoping to meet "the one." There are more than 1,400 Web sites in the $700 million a year business, but some question their safety.
Prosecutors say a Philadelphia nursing student was conning women on match.com. He was convicted this week of assault, but the accusations don't end there. His victims, described as attractive, ambitious professionals say their lives will never be the same.
Prosecutors said Jeffrey Marsalis, 34, told some tall tales, pretending to be a doctor, an astronaut and even a spy to lure women on Internet dating sites.
"He faces up to 20 years in prison and he will have to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life," said prosecutor Joe Khan.
Marsalis was convicted of sexual assault. However, he was acquitted of more serious charges that he drugged and then raped seven women in his apartment.
"You read about it, you see it on TV but you just don't think it can happen to you," one anonymous victim said.
She said she knows about tricksters like Jeffrey Marsalis and how easy it is to be duped online. According to her, a man she met on a Christian dating Web site was seeing 60 other women from 25 different Web sites. He pretended to be everything from a country music manager to a Pentagon consultant. He even lied about having cancer, she said.
She claims he stole thousands of dollars from his victims.

Full Article: abc news

Engage.com Survey Reveals Correlation between Attraction and Social Consciousness

Sixty-four percent of singles say they'd like to know about a prospective date's social values as they consider compatibility. Nearly seven in 10 say a potential romantic prospect should be in sync on a social issue, such as the environment or racial and religious tolerance, or at least be socially conscious and active.
The Engage "Social Engagement" survey of more than 500 single adults shows that 58 percent say they are active with social causes including: environmentalism (24 percent); education (18 percent); and homelessness and poverty (10 percent), among others.

Full article: PRNewswire

IBM Takes Social Networking to Businesses

IBM jumped on the Web 2.0 social networking bandwagon with the release of a suite of products it describes as social software for business. The new Lotus Connections suite features - activities, communities, bookmarking, profiles and blogs. Business has been slow to adopt social networking as a tool applicable to the workplace. A changing trend, according to IBM and its partners.

Source: Social networking watch

How Physical Appearance Figures in the Dating Arena

In the past, contemporary culture has been criticized by the spiritual community, for an omnipresent narcissistic existence – or, an abundant over-concern with the projection of attractive, ‘superior’ images and masks -- which characterize people in some form of ‘perfect’ state.
The supposition that a standard of perfection is actually attainable by the masses (which it isn’t, not only because it is generally unrealistic, but also largely genetically implausible) is also damaging, since it assumes a level of invulnerability that does not exist, as well.
To the contrary, numerous icons of pop culture, past and present, have proven that most of those portrayed as ‘perfect,’ or ‘best,’ for the most part, are all too human, and often much further away from any form of super-human aspect, on any level.
In earlier eras, a realistic conception of beauty, such as under Plato, determines that beauty is inherent in the object itself, containing an essence prior to and apart from human interpretation and reflection. As evidenced by Socrates’ musing in Plato's Symposium, "What if man had eyes to see the true beauty -- the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed," physical beauty was treated as an access to higher qualities. Physical beauty, as it appeared to Plato, seemed more of an inspirational tool, rather than some ideal to strive for.

Full Article

U.S.A. Internet Dating Rankings - Hitwise

The U.S.A. internet dating rankings are now in. Singlesnet moves up to #1 position. PlentyofFish ousts Match from its 4th spot, a cause for concern for YahooPersonals, Match and TRUE. Racy gay dating site Adam4Adam moves up to 7th position. HotorNot recentl switched to free and moves up two spots to #9. OnlineBootyCall continues its climb, moving up one spot to #12. FriendFinder, LoveAccess and OutPersonals poke up into the top 15 at #13, #14, #15, bumping MSN Match, Gay and Ameican Singles off the top 15.

Source: Onlinepersonalswatch

Nielsen//NetRatings Engagament Rankings

Nielsen//NetRatings engagement rankings for May show member commuities, which includes online dating and social networking, coming in third next to email and IM. Interestingly enough, gaming comes in fourth. That should tell you something. Ever thought about adding games to your site? I'm surprised none of the majors have added games yet. You can use games to help people engage with each other, and your site, and make money by upselling them to full gaming packages.

Top 5 Subcategories Ranked by Total Time, May 2007**
Subcategory In Millions of Hours
E-mail 342.9
Instant Messaging 253.6
Member Communities 205.6
Online Games 170.0
Current Events/Global News 119.6

Source: Onlinepersonalswatch

TripAdvisor Adding More Social Features

I really like TripAdvisor,the travel blogging service,I use it whenever I plan a new trip.
TripAdvisor , is scheduled to roll out more social networking aspects to its service, making it easier to find and share information from others. The new features should launch sometime tomorrow.
The new social components of TripAdvisor will let you register your network of travelers, importing contacts from all the major email services such as GMail, Hotmail, AOL and MSN. Some new search technology is being included in the site revamp, which will make content from your friends network show at the top of your search results.
Moving towards a more social existence is something TripAdvisor is surely interested in. The company released its Facebook application last week, enabling users to display their account map on their Facebook profiles and marking where they’ve traveled. Other travel social networks include TripTie and Matador.

Source: Mashable

Flickr application available for Facebook

There is now a Flickr application available for Facebook, bringing a bit more color and life to your Facebook profile than many of the applications we’ve seen in the past two weeks. The Flickr Facebook app is available here. It’s important to note that this application was not created by Flickr.
The Flickr app features include the ability to share your Flickr photos with friends directly through your Facebook profile, highlight recent photos, and connects you with friends on Flickr friends that are on Facebook as well. You can also browse through your own Flickr photos from Facebook. Geo-tagged photos have the geographical information displayed along with their respective photos. Of course it’s good that this is one of the more social Facebook applications, too.

source: Mashable

Online market for singles booming in Germany

According to experts the online-market for finding a parter for life is developing into a particularly lucrative business. In 2006 Germans spent 65.6 million Euros in order to find a mate on the internet. This corresponds to an increase of 49% as compared to the year 2005. For the year 2007 the Jupiter Research market research institution calculated that turnover in this field could increase by another 29% to reach 84.5 million Euros.
This development is not limited to Germany. Therefore, the forecasts by market researchers are very optimistic. Thus, the number of users of online-dating services in Europe is expected to rise from 2.8 million in 2006 to 6.0 million by the year 2011. Corrispondingly, turnover in this business is forecast to increase from 246 million to 549 million Euros in the same period. One of the most important markets in this respect could be Germany. Here in 2011 online-dating services with an expected turnover of 138.1 million Euros could generate one quarter of Europe´s total turnover. A similar German market share was already registered in the year 2006.

Read full article

Top 10 Most Clever Subject Headers

Online dating services like LavaLife, Date.com, and Match.com require an opening line or subject header, making it a great way for you to be creative, funny, or even philosophical.
Online Dating Magazine has searched through thousands of profile headers to bring you the Top 10 Most Clever Subject Headers that they found:

10) Down to earth Angel seeks wings
9) New girl on the block needs a tour guide
8) Looking to write a new chapter in my book of life
7) Take me to the moon. I’m not a halfway kinda girl
6) If FUN was a MUST then I must be the one you’re looking for.
5) Bright spark looking to ignite shared paths
4) Over 280,000 women looking for a relationship and all I want is one.
3) If I could arrange the alphabet, I would put U and I together!
2) Any good e-males out there?

and the number one most clever profile subject header....

1) Just like a new job, I offer excellent benefits.

by Joe Tracy, Publisher of Online Dating Magazine