The perfect honeymoon - Cuba

Do Compatibility Tests Work When They Can't Measure Attraction?

There’s been much buzz lately about Dr. Helen Fisher and her work at Chemistry.com – an offshoot of Match.com. This is Match.com's attempt to enter the niche market of online daters seeking “long-term compatibility.” In the US market, eHarmony and PerfectMatch dominate this niche.
Dr. Fisher is getting good publicity, because she purports to have a “test” that predicts if two people have what it takes to sustain romantic love and passion – what people call chemistry – over the long haul.
This promise resonates with people, because research by independent research firm Synovate reveals that one of the top reasons people worldwide do not use online dating sites is that they would “just rather meet someone in person first”
The impression is that people don’t want to go through a “box” to meet and get to know someone – or in other words a computer and quizzes can’t really assess if you have chemistry with someone.
Read the full article

Official Google Blog: The next step in Google advertising

Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash (nearly double the size of their YouTube Acquisition). Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. Google gets access to DoubleClick’s advertising software and, perhaps more importantly, their customers and network.
DoubleClick was founded in 1996. DoubleClick was taken private in 2005 by Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity for $1.1 billion. The New York Times is reporting that DoubleClicks revenues are about $300 million/year.
10x revenue for a mature company is a…healthy…valuation. At least part of the acquisition price appears to be due to a desire by Google to keep this asset out of Microsoft’s hands.
Official Google Blog: The next step in Google advertising

Romantic Revulsion in the New Century: Flaw-O-Matic 2.0

I found an intresting article about new research of Flaw-O-Matic, a mechanism in the brain that instantly finds fault with any potential mate, can be reoriented positively in certain conditions through a newly identified process, the Sally Field Effect.




Read full article

Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox

Mozilla has released details on The Coop, a new product that will incorporate social networking features directly into the Firefox browser.

The Coop product will allow Firefox users to “subscribe” to friends in the browser, bringing those friends into a sidebar. Those friends can share content and web pages with you (receive content from you, and send content to you).
Adding a friend will mean getting access to a broad array of their published web content. Content will be pulled from that person’s Flickr photo feed, del.icio.us tag feed, MySpace status , YouTube favorites, etc. When you want to share content with that user, you simply drag it into their avatar (see mockups below).





Full Article

Why are Dating Site Prices Going Up?

One reason surely is that the big sites have been spending a lot more on advertising. See this article from BrandWeek.com
The advertising intelligence service said that while total media spend for such efforts was $149 million in the U.S. in 2004, it rose to $310 million the following year, and hit $430 million from January to November of 2006.
NMP said the most recent figures for media chosen showed cable TV led the pack with $130.6 million in reported ad spending last year. The Internet was a close second at $127.3 million, and spot TV ads were third with $75.1 million spent.

The big question is whether these dating sites offere added value services over free dating sites and social networks.

Full article

MySpace holds the first elections for the Presidential Primaries

MySpace will announce plans today to hold the first elections for the Presidential Primaries on January 1st and 2nd, 2008. The vote will occur prior to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, and will be open to all members of the MySpace community within the US. This is a virtual vote designed to gauge public opinion.
A month after the launching of the MySpace Impact Channel, MySpace is trying to extend the reach of its political network - twelve of the Presidential hopefuls have profiles on MySpace’s Impact Channel. But targeting the MySpace demographic in an effort to encourage political activity is among the best ways to garner this kind of support.
Beginning next month, MySpace will start holding monthly polls to see where the Presidential hopefuls stand up in relation to each other. This will offer a good gauge for who will win the virtual vote in January ‘08. The MySpace Impact Channel will also do its part to get as many users as possible to register to vote. They’ll be offering an online tool to spur voter registration, which will be huge for those that are often too lazy or simply unaware of how to go about registering in their home states. This tool is in conjunction with Declare Yourself, and quickly takes you through all the steps necessary to register for voting.

Read full post