2nd Annual Open Web Awards: VOTE NOW!

Please help us to win , vote for Copenda in the Dating and Romance category

Mashable Open Web Awards - Help us to win

Mashable announced the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, a unique opportunity for the most accomplished websites and services to achieve international recognition across scores of influential blogs.
Last year we got to the second place in the social search category and this year we want to finish at the first place.

Please help us to win, you can vote through their web site:

1. Dating and romance

2.Search and social search

Enter "Copenda" in the second text box , a verification email will be sent to you.

You can also vote directly from here:

First Category:

Second Category:

Hello From Italy

Just returned from a great vaction at North Italy.
Here are some photos:

how to meet people on the internet - new video

Ayelet Noff interviews Copenda

read more: Mashable

Orange to open up mobile social net service

Orange is to launch a major push for mobile social networking in the UK, introducing a service which aggregates users' accounts across the major social networks.
Launched as a trial in France last month under the name MySocialPlace, Orange has now partnered with the biggest social networks - Facebook, MySpace and Bebo - to introduce the service in the UK in the autumn under the Orange World branded website.
UK users will also be able to access the chat service Flirtomatic and the photo-sharing site Pikeo, while Orange customers in France can use the Skyrock community, DailyMotion video site and dating service Meetic.

If you are a developer or site owner who wants to develop mobile aplications similar to Orange you will be able to use Copenda's API which will be released soon.
For more information please contact us : info[at]copenda.com.

Read the full article : The Guardian

One company unites millions

One company unites millions
By Vladimir Shvorin , the jewish Advocate Staff
People often use online dating
and friend-finding services when
they don’t have the time or interest
to meet people the old-fashioned
way. A new website,
www.copenda.com, is improving
on this time-saving idea by providing
a comprehensive search
agent that encompasses many social
websites, and allows users to
avoid the inherent shortcomings
of having to plod through those
sites one-by-one.
But don’t mistake Copenda for
another social network. It’s a social
index search website. Users don’t
upload pictures and manage their
pictures through the site. Instead,
Copenda operates much like
“Google” for example, by searching
through their database of preexisting
profiles of people from various
social networks.
Currently, Copenda users are
able to search for any person on
several networks including: Facebook,
MySpace, Hi5, Plentyoffish,
Match and Friendster.
Copenda is the first search engine
that allows people to view profiles
from multiple social networking
and dating sites in one
place. Members can filter through
general preferences, such as gender,
interests, age, as well as location,
and the profiles are aggregated
into one location.
While Copenda is still in beta
form, the site has gone through numerous
refinements since it was
launched as a novel tool in December
2007 by co-founders David
Kariv, Tal Cohen and Gadi Richman.
The duo of Kariv and Cohen
came up with the idea behind the
website while brainstorming one
day. After their plan was conceived,
they contacted Richman to provide
funding for development.
“Through discussions between
me and Tal [Cohen], the idea of
Copenda was born,” explained
Kariv. “We thought, ‘There is nothing
like this on the Web.’ We decided
that we should create something
to fill this void. Then we
called Gadi, who we thought could
financially support us so we could
get off the ground. He liked the
idea and decided to support us. Before
Copenda, you couldn’t find
anything like it.”
Aside from the large-scale
changes planned for the site,
Copenda has been steadily finetuning
and adding features. The
newly added “Contact me” feature
enables users to connect with social
networking users directly from
Copenda. With the “Claim my profile”
feature, users can manually
add and associate existing profiles
with Copenda’s search engine,
centralizing all of their relevant social
networking accounts in one location
called “My Copenda.” In addition
to these recently added features,
the website is developing
other unique features.
“We’re still looking to incorporate
a mobile device version of
Copenda, which will be very useful
for people that are looking to
search anywhere, anytime,” Kariv
said. “People could use it, not only
in the dating field, but to find
friends, gamers, businesses, etc.
For example, if you wanted to find
somebody to play a videogame online
with you, you could find the
type of gamer you’re searching
for.”
The benefits of Copenda are
especially apparent to those interested
in finding people with certain
features. For instance, if a
person was interested in dating
on the internet, but only wanted
to seek-out Jewish candidates,
they could do so.
“If you wanted to, you could
search strictly by religion to find
people who are just Jewish,” Kariv
explained. “You can search for all
of the Jewish people across the
networks that are included in
Copenda’s index. And you will
find the exact type of person
you’re looking for.”
Copenda is currently looking
for partnerships in the U.S. to better
establish and develop the business.
Still, without any funds budgeted
for marketing or public relations,
the website is growing strictly
through word-of-mouth. Each
week, thousands of users frequent
the site, and this number is rapidly
growing.
“I met somebody in the States
a few months ago, and he actually
started talking to me about
Copenda,” said Kariv. “He didn’t
know I was a founder. He sent me
links to our website, praising it. It
was a funny and special moment
when it happened.”
To visit Copenda, go to
http://www.copenda.com/.
To contact David Kariv, e-mail info[at]copenda.com.

Copenda’s New Features Ease Communication

At last we are live!!!

New features to the site include:

• Contact me – Enables one to contact social networking users directly from Copenda. All messages are flawlessly sent by Copenda through his or her social network account.
• Claim my profile – Members can manually add their profiles to Copenda’s search engine and associate existing profiles with their Copenda profile. After “claiming” their social networks and dating sites’ profiles, users will be able to oversee all relevant accounts in one, centralized location called “My Copenda.” Each claimed profile has a link to Copenda’s profile page which contains general information about the Copenda user.
• My Copenda – Users have a personal homepage in which they can manage their favorite profiles, edit their personal information and receive notifications.
  New filter option – Allows members to only have profiles in the search results from their favorite social networks or dating sites, which the user has identified.
• Cool people in this area – Shows people who are in nearby locations with similar interests; this information will appear on the profile page
• Invite my friends - Users are able to invite their friends to Copenda; their list of friends can be entered manually, imported from their email or from other social networking sites.

Here are some links for the Media covarge:

Official PR - http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/05/prweb943574.htm

Mashable - http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/copenda-relaunc/

AltSearchEngines - http://altsearchengines.com/2008/05/15/copenda-a-people-search-engine-for-love/

TMCnet - http://hosted-communications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-comm/articles/28236-copenda-upgrades-social-search-engine-site.htm

VCCafe - http://www.vccafe.com/5-israeli-products-get-the-spotlight/

Meet us at MashBash Tel Aviv

We're proud to be one of the sponsors of MashBash Tel Aviv , Mashable's first International MashMeet and it’s in Tel Aviv!

The event will take place on Wednesday June 11th, 7-10pm, at the Galina Beach Club, Hangar 19, Tel Aviv Port, Israel.

With a new version just behind the corner ,the timing is very good for us.

See you in Tel Aviv...


More details here

Recent online dating and social networks statistics

Mark Brooks the author of online personals watch has recently interviewed ,Alex Burmaster , the Internet dating and social networking specialist for Nielsen Online.

Here are some intersting numbres:

The strongest growing personals sites in the US:

The strongest growing personals sites in the Europe:

The number of people visited dating sites in the USA, and the countries that they cover in the EU, last month

US = 25.8 million
DE = 5.6 million
FR = 4.7 million
UK = 3.6 million
IT = 2.7 million
ES = 2.3 million

The number of people visited social networks in the USA, and the coutries that they cover in the EU, last month?

Member communities category (social networks & blogging)
US = 104 million
UK = 18.9 million
FR = 17.6 million
IT = 15.1 million
DE = 14.6 million
ES = 11.7 million

See full interview here

A sneak peak to the upcoming new version of Copenda - 4, Adding your profile to Copeda

One of the most frequent question asked by the users is how to add their profiles to Copenda.

Well...

The current answer was: it takes time but eventually our crawler will index all profiles.We knew it was not a good answer and we decided to allow users to manually add their profiles to Copenda. In addition users will be able to associate existing profile (allready in Copenda) with their Copenda profile. By claiming your social networks and dating sites profiles you will be able to Contact other users within the same network directly from Copenda,
Track your profiles and get notification when someone ,add new comment to your profile
Use future functionalities such as presence and more.

A sneak peak to the upcoming new version of Copenda - 3, My Copenda

The clock is ticking and the new version is just behind the corner.
Today I will expose one of the most important feature - MyCopenda.
MyCopenda is a personal area which will allow you to:

• Edit your personal information
• View and manage your favorit profiles
• Add your social network profiles to Copenda
• Invite your friends

In the future we plan to extend it to show an aggregated data from your social networks.

The future of today social networks

I have just read a very interesting article in economist.com about the social networks.

"Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business"

According to the author "The problem with today's social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks' lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users' information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid Internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag."

Our vision , in Copenda , is that Copenda will become the platform that will bridge the gap between the social networks.
We started it by enabling cross site people search and will go even further in the upcoming version with a new contact me feature that will allow you to contact any user from any social network without leaving Copenda.

Facebook IM service will debut soon

Facebook plans to launch an instant-messaging application for members to embed on their profiles as early as next week, TechCrunch reported Friday.
Details are sketchy, but it appears that this will be a Web-based IM service that would allow Facebook users to chat with other people on their friends lists without needing to go through a third-party program. Additionally, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington detailed, the service would likely be based on the Jabber open-source platform, which would mean that third-party "universal IM" clients like Pidgin, Trillian, and Adium would be able to implement it.
Facebook representatives were not immediately available for comment.

One of the things that we are currently evaluating is a web messenger platform to embed in our search results.
There are couple of good options : Live messenger, Yahoo messenger , Google talk and smaller third parties IMs.
I don't think that Facebook IM can currently compete with these IMs but personaly I will use it in Facebook if it will be embedded like gtalk in Gmail.

Source: Webware.com

A sneak peak to the upcoming new version of Copenda - 2

On my last post I exposed the new "Filter by site" search option , today I want to expose one of the coolest feature of the upcoming version : "Contact me".
The new "Contact me" feature will enable you to contact social networks profiles directly from Copenda without leaving Copenda.
The massage will be sent via Copenda from your social network account. Any response from the user who got the massage will be delivered to your social network inbox.

Podcast: A Conversation with Copenda’s Greg Shverdin

A sneak peak to the upcoming new version of Copenda

For the last 3 months since we exposed the first version of Copenda we are working hard on a major upgrade to our platform which will be available very soon.

In the next following weeks until the release I will expose here the new functionalities that will be available in the upcoming version.

The first new functionality wanted to tell you about is a new filtering option.

Many of you asked us to add the ability to have search results only from your favorite social networks or dating sites. We added a new filter option which will enable you to have profiles in the search results only from your favorite social networks or dating sites.

Happy Valentines Day

The Challenges of Social Networks

Jeremiah Owyang , Sr Analyst at Forrester , listed in his blog some of the chalenges social networks are faceing these days:

Difficult to Monetize
Members aren’t hunting for information like they do on a search, instead they are communicating with each other, and self-expressing. (We’ve data to back that up too), “Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them”

Excess of Players
In the case of the many white label social networks (white label means you can rebrand, and create your own Facebook), there are too many players in the space.

As Marketers Move In, Users Move Out
Remember Friendster? Tribe, or waay back and eCircles? Nothing is new, as communities form, marketers will move in, and in some cases bastardize the experience and the hip, cool, influencers will leave to the next network.

Lack of Metrics Makes Success Hard to Measure
For many marketers who want to deploy a campaign on a social network, access to server metrics isn’t always available. As a result, they have to often visually monitor the interaction on the site, or measure click throughs to their site. In some of the more sophisticated platforms, a crude dashboard is provided.

Stalkers and Other Unwanted Activity Ruins Lives
Child stalkers in MySpace continues to be a problem, and in some cases, masking oneself as someone else is easy, and to readily fool others.

Plateau or Social Network Fatigue?
recent reports show that suggest that the usage of social networks are slowing down, if not reducing perhaps it’s from the endless tasks that occur, or the shinyness has rubbed off.

Successful Networks have hard time scaling
Facebook and Twitter (yes a social network too) are suffering from scaling issues, as a result, their sites have a great deal of downtime or latency. The complicated applications will only increase in intricacy as more users are added.

Loss in workplace productivity “Social not-working”
Companies, organizations, and individuals are concerned about the time wasted in managing social network profiles, in some cases, companies have banned Facebook from their employees, often using Firewalls.

see full post at web-strategist.com

The Social Networking & Internet Personals Industry - Issues from Executives and Management

Here is another summary of an interesting discussion about "The Social Networking & Internet Personals Industry" from the internet dating confirence.
Panel Members inlude:
6 Panelists:
Penthouse Media – Mark Bell
Meet MOI.com -- Andrew Weinreich
Thunder Road Inc. – Mike McQuown
OKcupid.com
Mate1.com – Elizabeth Wasserman
Plenty Of Fish – Markus Frind
Moderated by Mark Brooks of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com
Differentiators between the sites on the panel:
Plenty of Fish is Free
Mate1: Free for women, overpriced for men (jokingly said)
OKCupid.com focused on community and non-dating
Andrew W. completely mobile
Penthouse: we make money
Q: How big a threat are Social Networking Sites
Largest dating subscription site has less than 1% of all US daters so there is still a lot of growth potential.
Q: Can you start a generic dating site in this environment over?
Yes, most panelists say it’s too late to enter the market as a plain vanilla general site.One alternative view from a panelist was that just when you think there was a winner on the Internet, that winner gets unseated so there is no reason to think that won’t happen in the dating space. Niche sites can convert better and cost less than a general site for marketing.
Another panelist recommended buying an existing site that has a database that’s not innovating rather than innovate but not have a database (unless you have unlimited funds).
Numerous references of how no one could beat Friendster (myspace and facebook rose to do so) and how Yahoo was #1 in search, but then Google overtook, so anything can happen online.
Q: What can you do to add value to online dating subscribers.
Facebook figured out that providing a way for people to give pointless updates about what your friends are doing several times a day generated lots of traffic. As opposed to online dating where you don’t really know the other people on the site. Dating needs to get out of the static experience (except who’s new) of posting a profile / viewing profiles.
User generated content is driving lots of activity online. How often is the average dating profile updated? Add more dynamic elements such as forums, so you can see what an other dater wrote, or areas of the site they interacted with that are related to a particular subject that gets automatically added to their profile.
Q: How does user generated content make you more money.
It isn’t a big factor for Plenty of Fish, as a fraction of a percent of all traffic is forum generated. Penthouse media had a different take in that user generated content enhances the connection of the customer to the site and therefore keeps people staying longer as members.
Q: Question about customer service.
One panelist recommended that dating executives do the customer service to understand the issues. Plenty of Fish jokingly said they don’t believe in customer service. Mate1.com does it in-house and tries to reply within 48 hours. The fewer people who you upset, the better chance you have of referrals. Another panelist talked about there’s a difference between reading customer emails and responding. Biggest issue with one of them was that people were upset they were billed and how to deflect that to more about what got them upset to begin with and correct that.
Q: What about converting more free members to paid?
Not everyone who goes to a dating site want to date. Some are voyeurs. Target your customer service toward those who want to date and not just poke around. Markus from Plenty of Fish postulated that most online daters who pay are tricked within the first minutes of visiting a site/landing page. Slight change of subject, another panelist talked about guarantees, and how Match.com offers one now. If you are large enough, you can maybe offer a guarantee but not so easily for smaller ones. Also tighten the guarantee to if you try to meet people who are close to your age, local to you, (this part somewhat jokingly said:) similar in your appearance (ie, 6’s must contact only 7’s and lowers) you can be pretty sure they will actually meet someone.
Some members will pay, and some will never pay. If you can identify the ones who will never pay, you can try to monetize them or at least get something from them such as requiring them to post a photo or add content. Another idea: get them to refer people over to your site to get free memberships. One audience member said in his experiment fuzziness of benefits generated more conversions than being exact.
Q: What affect would Microsoft’s potential purchase of Yahoo have on buying ads.
Some people feel that yahoo isn’t a huge factor as it is, so things should only improve.
Q: Future of online dating – What could stop the industry from growing to $1B to $2B a year.
Spark is down 15% from 12-18 months ago, Match is down 2%. The sites that are publicly traded are shrinking. One panelist said he’s not public but he’s growing, mainly through launching more niche sites and his contention is they are cannibalizing the big general sites.
Security and fraudsters are a threat, and one panelist recommended the dating sites to share information on the fraudulent users (IP addresses, email addresses, etc.).
There are more choices today than 3 years ago, so even though some sites are showing lower numbers, the belief is that the market is still growing overall.
Q: What about offline coaching and matchmaking integration with online dating?
There’s a lot of opportunity in this area. Revenue per employee for an online web site is significantly higher than offline. One item was that matchmakers are still too fragmented and until there is a central source to connect with.
Q: What are the 3 top things that each panelist would change (long term) to triple revenue.
Penthouse’s response:Expand mobile. China.Technology.
Panelist: AndrewSimilar to Penthouse’s response. Mobile, international expansion and new technologies.
Panelist: Mike M.Niche sites, international members, expand payment options.
Panelist: OKCupidThink outside the profile.
Panelist: Mate1Internationalization. Move dating from static to dynamic environment.
Panelist: Markus.Since I only need to triple, I’ll just go on more vacations as I don’t need to do anything. LOL.

Gay Dating Services Industry

Here is Patrick Perrine, Founder MyPartner.com , presentation at the internet dating conference.

About The Community
According to Kinsey, 1 in 10 people are either gays and lesbians. Is that true? According to Witeck-Combs, its about 7% of the US population. Ahout 15 million adults are in the US, and 77% consider themselves as openly gay. Gays and lesbians live in 99.3% of all US counties. More than 6 million gays and lesbians are estimated to be living in partnered relationships in the US. 1 in 4 gay men and lesbians live in households with choldren under the age of 18. The consumer market is estimated at $690 billion in buying power in 2007. There is an expected rise to $835 million in 2008. 80% of gay men are actively online.
The Market
The average gay online date has 3-5 active profiles as compared to 1-3 for heterosexuals. Users have a higher user engagement for social network. They also report a much higher usage of blogs. eMarketer estimated that there were 12.1 million adult GLBT internet users in the US in 2007.
What does this mean?
The online personals market is estimated at $649 million dollar and is expected to grow 8% a year.The Opportunity87% of gay men and 58% of lesbians use the internet to find a partner. Only 18% of men and 27% of women have had a serious relationship. Research is finally showing that gay men and lesbians do want serious long term relationships. 47% of gay men and 41% of gay women are actively looking for a serious long term relationships. 71% of gay men and women have visited a chat room or registered with an online dating site. However, 87% said they like to flirt, but fear of rejection prevented them from making the first move. Trust issues are big factor.
What are the differences between the gay market and the online market?
The LGBT population is not a homogenous group. There are differences within itself. What works for gay men may not work with lesbians.Traditional dating sites right now are promoting hooking up verses long term relationship. They tend to be XXX and foster quick relationship versus partnerships.What myPartner.com is doing to lead the way --Partner Perfect Compatibility Matching System, an enviroment fostering long-term relationships for gay men, and providing online and offline matchmakingWhere is the industry heading?More mainstream sites are targeting the gay demographic.Offline gay matchmaking servicesPopularity of Gay Niche relationship based sites growing.
What is lacking?
Very few lesbain servicesVery few onlne dating sites for lesbians

Via onlinepersonalswatch

Where's Dating 2.0? Innovations in the Online Dating Industry

Here is a summary of Sam Yagan (CEO & Co-Founder) OKCupid presention at the internet dating confernce.

Sam Yagan is the speaker for Where's Dating 2.0. Here is a little background on him: CEO of www.sparknotes.com (1999-2002), CEO of www.edonkey.com (2002-2005), and CEO of www.okcupid.com (2004- )
We incrementally innovate. Geocities has turned into Livejournal. Friendster is now Facebook. Online dating sites just changes their logo.Do we need to innovate? Yes! Dating sites were among the first to embrace UGC in form of profiles. Dating sites have the deepest and most honest data on its users. We need to leverage the tools that are out there. You need to leverage word of mouth virality and "link love".What is the business model of the future? How many large, growing, consumer subscription industries can you name? If you ask your friends how many subscriptions they have online, most will say none.The top 5 innovations that were discussed this morning (see State of the Internet Dating Industry)--
is this really where online dating is?
Is that going to lead us into the feature.Ok Cupid's Web 2.0 Elements 30,000 user generated personality tests, user driven matching algorithm, dating blogs, collaborative profile ratings, and its free.
What is so exciting about free?
When Ben & Jerry's have free ice cream, there are lines around the block. People do that just to save $3. He can't explain why that is. There is also the thinking that you also don't have to call yourself an "online dater" if its free.
Why aren't dating sites using targeted ads better?
It has a lot to do with the numbers of people to be able to target better.

Via onlinepersonalswatch

Winter is #1 Break-Up Season

Research conducted by Yahoo! Personals shows that we are now in National Break-Up Season. The survey revealed some major faux pas to avoid when it comes to breaking up: Digital Don'ts – 28% of the respondents selected "sending a text or instant message" or "through e-mail" as the worst methods for breaking up. 19% considered Monday the best day to break up with someone. 37 % selected "a public place" as the worst location to break up. A complete National Break-Up Season survival guide can be found online at:
http://personals.yahoo.com/breakup

Source: Online personals watch

White version of Copenda

Hi,
I want to invite you to test our white version of Copenda :
http://www.copenda.com/clean

Just the search engine without the social functionalities - what do you think about it?

Top 10 Worst Pickup Lines

In general, most pickup lines are lame. But some are a lot worst than others. As a result, Online dating magazine assembled the Top 10 Worst Pickup Lines of All Time.
Starting from number 10:
10... You remind me so much of Pokemon that I just want to pick-at-choo.
9... I’m new in town. Can I have directions to your house?
8... I misplaced my Teddy Bear. Will you sleep with me?
7... Wow, your legs must be really tired because you have been running through my mind all night!
6... What's that in your eye? Oh, it must be a twinkle from when our eyes met!
5... Did you clean your pants with Windex, because I can totally see myself in them.
4... Those must be space pants, because your legs are outta this world.
3... Hi, my name is Justin… Justin Credible.
2... I may not be Fred Flinstone, but can still make your Bedrock.
And now for the worst pickup line of all time:
1... Is your name Visa, because you’re everywhere I want to be.

Lessons From Entrepreneurs: Copenda

Steve Spalding the author of the successful blog How To Split An Atom recently interviewed Tal Cohen , one of the founders of Copenda.
Tal was kind enough to not only give him some insight into what Copenda is all about but also give us a backstage pass into what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in Web 2.o.

Read the full interview here