Q: It’s been just over a year since you launched SpeedDate - and your site is already very popular. Most dating sites don’t grow that fast. Is there a “Speed Growth secret” you could share with our readers?

A: SpeedDate.com’s philosophy and the way we work is simple – we believe in instant chemistry, and that people know very quickly if they feel a connection to each other. The major dating sites require lengthy profiles and have a lot of steps before you can actually talk to someone you are interested in! We felt this was a pretty backwards approach to dating and wanted to create a site that was completely different and really catered to what singles wanted and enjoy. Because we allow people to meet each other in a faster and more fun way than many other sites, SpeedDate has mostly grown through members inviting their friends. Since we launched in 2007, we continue to grow quickly and currently host 160,000 dates per day! The growth that we have experienced shows that people are really looking for a new type of online dating experience focused on live interaction.

Q: You started as a free site; do you plan on adding premium/paid features and how it may affect site popularity and traffic?

A: While it is completely free to meet new people for live chats, SpeedDate also introduced a premium service, which is relatively new to the site. We are still in the process of introducing our users to the added features and functionality available with this membership level. The difference between a free membership and premium is that premium offers users the ability to be first in the dating line, choose specific individuals to date, see who has viewed them and much more. So far, the premium membership has been very popular and we have seen rapid growth since it was launched.

Q: Could you tell us more about your patented technology behind SpeedDate: what’s the major novelty of your invention?

A: SpeedDate.com leverages technology to create a fast and fun way to meet new people. One of the major innovations of SpeedDate.com is its method for introducing singles to each other via live interaction from the comfort of home or wherever they have an internet connection. Instead of filling out long profiles and questionnaires, SpeedDate users meet each other in three minute speed dates using instant messaging, and in-browser audio and video. SpeedDate has also developed a proprietary real-time matching algorithm that finds relevant dates within our online membership base in a near instantaneous fashion. SpeedDate.com leverages the rapidly expanding infrastructure for instant messaging and peer-to-peer video and audio chatting, which includes increasing penetration of broadband, webcams, as well as browser-based real-time video functionality.

Q: There are a lot of talks about scammers activity on dating sites. Do scammers bother you and how do you manage to keep them away?

A: It is extremely important for us to create an online speed dating environment where our users feel completely comfortable. We do not tolerate scammers or any other forms of misbehavior on SpeedDate. We have developed a combination of technological innovation and intelligent processes to make it as likely as possible that users can interact with each other in real time without worrying about scammers. The vast majority of our users use SpeedDate for its intended purpose – finding other singles in a fast and fun way.

Q: You recently released SpeedDate for iPhone: is it a tribute to the iPhone crowd, or a bare necessity?

A: We decided to create an application for the iPhone because it just made sense for our users and our brand. We were the first site to simplify the online dating process and allow singles to find instant chemistry – not lengthy, complicated profiles – to help our members connect with each another. Developing an iPhone application, which is immediate and portable, was the ideal next step. The SpeedDate.com iPhone application simplifies one of the biggest hassles of dating, finding the time to connect with new singles. We expect that the number of dates on our web site will increase as we provide new and existing SpeedDate.com users with the opportunity to make mobile love connections.

Q: What trends in online dating do you see emerging during the next 2 years?

A: Online dating is here to stay and will continue to grow over the next several years. The instant messaging and live video capabilities that we have on SpeedDate.com will definitely be an emerging trend. SpeedDate is at the forefront of the industry in terms of using live interactive technology to making it easier for people to meet each other. People nowadays don’t have time to email back and forth numerous times to see if there is a connection. Live interaction is the best and most immediate way to determine if you are a match with someone. Another area that will continue to grow will be development of dating applications on social and mobile platforms. Many dating companies spend millions on advertising to bring people to their sites. SpeedDate does the reverse. In addition to offering our destination site, www.speeddate.com, we bring our product directly to where people are already spending time: on social networks like Facebook and mobile devices like the iPhone. I believe these trends are good for singles because they’ll be more likely to find each other quickly and have fun while they’re at it.

PartnerMaps.com’s motto says ‘Professional Personality Testing for Relationships’. This UK-based project looks quite promising, especially if take into account all their science and experience behind this simple name. We asked Julie Gibbons, Vice President of Marketing in PeopleMaps Ltd. about the details of the project and its relationship with online dating world.

Q: Personality profiling by PartnerMaps – is it about matching people by personality?

A: Ah well, the simple answer to that question is no! PartnerMaps is a psychometric application designed by PeopleMaps and it produces a range of personality reports for singles and individuals in relationships. The principle is that the understanding of human behavior is the bedrock of successful relationships; the relationship you have with others and the relationship you have with yourself. PartnerMaps profiling is a method by which you can gain an understanding of your self – and it’s easy, instant and online.

For a relationship to work people need to share similar goals and values and without this, no matter what personality mix the relationship is likely to flounder. You cannot change another person’s behavior but you have complete control over how you respond to any situation. As Carl Jung (on whose psychology PartnerMaps is based) said, “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people”.

Simply put, any personality type can work with any other personality type, when it comes to personal relationships. You will have seen this from your own experience. You will know couples that are poles apart in terms of personality – and you will know couples that are two peas in the pod. People’s life experience is full of examples of this and you would be hard pushed to convince them otherwise.

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Along with other interesting persons and companies which Dating Ad Network staff met back in January, during iDate Miami 2009, there is Kendal Liddle, President of gimmeo.com . The idea of providing services for making real-world gifts available for the members of social networks and dating sites seems quite promising. Moreover, it’s also a great way to monetize traffic, even on free sites. Below is an extensive interview with Kendal, covering all the aspects of gimmeo project.

Q: Gimmeo - how did you come up with this name and the whole idea of the project?

A: We had a good idea and a great partnership model; we just needed a good name. Originally name for gimmeo was GiftFish but we wanted something more unique. The name came from my wife. She pointed out that the main reason gimmeo would be adopted by the end user was not because people wanted to give, but because they wanted to get gifts and we should make a play on that. She suggested the word “gimme” be used somehow. The “o” was added the following day by Hugh. It’s catchy and blatantly honest (plus the URL was available).

As a company, gimmeo started with a typical one-up conversation between friends. I was telling Hugh Plautz (CEO and Founder of gimmeo) about how iTunes went wrong and my great idea for distributing online media. Hugh one-upped me with his idea for real-world gifting through social media by means of an e-commerce privacy proxy. Needless to say his idea was better and he won the one-up contest as I began groveling for a chance to be a part of Hugh’s idea – this technically was our first board meeting.

The true origins of gimmeo as an idea goes clear back to 1999 when digital music first was becoming available online. Hugh thought it would be a great idea to be able to gift a song to a friend via the Internet. The idea evolved over time from digital music to real-world gifts and eventually into gimmeo as we know it now.

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What do you know about location based dating? Probably, not too much. Alex Bloom, Founder of BluePont.com service, puts BluePont as “a groundbreaking software makeover for your phone that makes it automatically discover other BluePont-enhanced phones around.” When two BluePont phones discover each other in a close proximity, they compare the matching preferences, and alert both sides if it’s a hit. We decided to speak with Alex and find out a little bit more about this mobile dating environment.

Q: How did you come up with an idea of BluePont.com?

A: We had this fantasy of an ideal natural meeting that’s spontaneous and unpredictable. You enter a coffee-shop, your eyes meet, a conversation begins to flow. You are intrigued by the person before you know much about them and you are acutely aware of the role of chance. We wondered as to how we can make meetings like this happen more frequently for people and, perhaps, more smoothly. So the idea was born…

Q: You’ve recently served a milestone 100,000 mobile meeting. What’s so special about your service and who is a typical client of BluePont.com?

A: Just about everybody can recall a number of instances when someone sparked your interest, but nothing happened and you’ll never see that person again. In addition to the few people whom you did notice, just imagine how many were two blocks away, walked by you on the street, sat in a cafe next door – people you could have met right then and there, if you only knew. With BluePont, the odds of that spontaneous exciting meeting are suddenly amplified like never before and they come with a smooth “Mobile Meeting alert” introduction. Let’s say, normally you’d have a meeting like this once a month or you’d have to go to a place like a bar to meet people in real life, off-line, but now even as you simply go about your usual routine, you can have such meetings regularly happen to you. That’s what’s special. Most BluePonters are in their 20’s and 30’s, but the 40+ contingent is growing rapidly. BluePonters are largely professionals, but there are people from all walks of life.

Q: Which platforms and territories do you currently support?

A: BluePont works on all phones that have Internet access, but how it works exactly varies by phone. Phone-specific instructions and recommendations are provided upon registration. Currently we support all major English-speaking markets (the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia).

Q: Do you have any solutions for dating webmasters? Is it possible to integrate your service into dating site?

A: Absolutely, anyone interested in integration should visit this page, sign up and see a variety of methods including offering it on your site, co-branded with your name. We pay out 50% of all gross fees contributed by your users, in perpetuity, forever. BluePont is a service that’s uniquely sensitive to the number of users and their geo-density. So the more users join through each channel (site, etc.), the higher the revenue per each user becomes. Integrating BluePont can be a source of instant incremental revenue for dating webmasters.

Q: How do you see your service evolving in 2009?

A: We have a number of highly innovative enhancements in the pipeline, all aimed at making users ever more enthusiastic about BluePont.

Q: When did you launch your first online dating project? Please tell us more about it.

A: We launched MakeFriendsOnline.com in 2001. The idea was to run a free dating site and it was instantly successful in every way except the most important, it didn’t make any money. Online advertising was still very young; adsense didn’t exist and brands were only interested in advertising on other brand’s sites. We ran what ads we could get but couldn’t get even close to covering costs, so eventually we had to charge a subscription. This had the big downside that we also had to start seriously spending on advertising. Our biggest user base by far was in the US, but we couldn’t afford to enter that market with a subs based site, it was too big for the relatively small marketing fund we had, so we withdrew to the UK. Within a couple of years we were in the top 10 UK dating sites.

Q: What’s the current ranking for MakeFriendsOnline.com in UK and worldwide online dating?

A: A couple of years ago we noticed big changes in the dating market. “Free” was consuming market share, the largest players had begun to consolidate their share of the market and other companies were beginning to spend a great deal chasing them. We couldn’t compete with Match and Meetic, so we launched Smooch.com and moved the bulk of our marketing to Smooch, allowing MFO to move down the rankings. Smooch.com is now the fourth biggest straight site in the UK and probably the fastest growing. Meanwhile it sends loads of already monetised traffic to MakeFriendsOnline.com, so it’s a winner all round.

Q: What are the most challenging problems in switching from free to paid model in online dating?

A: As I mentioned before we really had little choice about moving to a subscription based model. Market conditions were good and we were very disciplined, ploughing all profit back into marketing for three years.

The greater challenge was going the other way, from subscription to free. We had to spend $400,000 before Smooch.com was even operationally profitable (that was two years ago, it would be harder now), and it cost us more in cannibalisation. Many members that considered makefriendsonline.com virtually their home until then moved to Smooch. They wouldn’t have moved to another free site, but when word got out that Smooch was an MFO site, they saw this as a recommendation and felt safe making the move to the less regulated environment of a free site. I predict that when DownToEarth grows Match will experience huge cannibalisation, but by then it may be too late. Making Smooch our main brand was always our intention, so we recovered after few months, but I don’t think Match have a similar plan. Rather than killing POF, they may kill Match.

Q: So, is Smooch.com going to stay free or you plan to introduce paid services on that site?

A: We’re doing that now. We’ve had a credit system, virtual gifts and premium search enhancements for a few weeks. Now that the virtual currency is in place we’re playing around with these and other new products, trying to figure out what works. We’re getting lots of interesting data and learning a great deal about the Freemium model. Ads are still by far Smooch’s main source of revenue for now, but it’s early days.

Q: What is your opinion on various white label dating solutions?

A: I have mixed feelings about White Label solutions. I’m not sure that they really offer the highly tailored solutions that niches require, and by making it so easy for people to enter the market they are pushing up acquisition costs for the rest of.

But they’re clearly a very good business for WL providers, who have experienced very impressive growth over the last couple of years. And they do offer opportunities to established sites who want to further monetise the existing databases. We are launching a few WLs ourselves. Upselling the huge traffic we have coming in from Smooch’s rapid growth to niches which we don’t or won’t cover.

What would you suggest for an online dating startup right now? Is it really worth trying to penetrate this market at the moment?

The short answer is not unless they have very very deep pockets, and even then maybe not. Member acquisitions are extremely expensive, retention has always been 3 or 4 months and still is, so the churn is horrible. It’s a highly fragmented market, the top few brands have become genuine household names and are gathering up more market share while the smaller brands are losing it to them and to the thousands of other small fly-by-night (but quickly replaced) sites out there.

There may be a few opportunities. If you can find a niche that isn’t yet saturated for instance, but that won’t be easy. We launched a gay site a year ago (mancentral.com) which has grown even faster than Smooch.com, but this year several other significant gay sites have also got traction. Every corner of the market is filling up so quickly.

Of course if you have a 10 million dollars to spend & take the long view with regard to profit, or have an amazingly viral idea, then you could just crack the market.