| TRUE.com Applauds Lawmakers for Passing Landmark Safer Dating ...
DALLAS, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/-- TRUE.com(R), the leading scientifically based online relationship service, congratulates New Jersey legislators for yesterday enacting the nation's first online dating legislation -- which is designed to protect the growing number of New Jersey citizens who are going online to meet potential dates. The Internet Dating Safety Act (Senate Bill-1977/A4304) requires online dating services to disclose their criminal background screening practices and to offer safer dating tips on their sites. With the growing concern nationwide about online safety overall, this legislation reinforces TRUE's steadfast commitment to safer online dating. TRUE's proactive policy requires criminal background and marriage screenings on all of its communicating members -- the only practice of its kind among major online dating sites.
Diller's Banana Split
If you walk into Barry Diller's ice cream parlor in a few months, you will finally have a say in the flavors you want to consume. The eclectic collection of properties that make up Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) media empire will be split into five distinctive cones. In short: Goodbye, vanilla. It's about time, really. If an investor is pumped about the prospects of the Ask.com search engine, it never made sense to hogtie that buyer to the steady-yet-clunky Home Shopping Network or subprime-battered LendingTree. By the same token, if someone believes that the talent-driven transformation driving Live Nation (NYSE: LYV) can also rub off on fellow concert promoter Ticketmaster, why should an IAC investor be forced to buy into time-share swappers or online dating sites? This isn't the first time that Diller has scooped out a sector.
Sentinel Lunchtime Blog (Valentine's Day Edition): The laws of love online
It's been a while since one of my singles blogs have been written and posted. Those of you out there who actually read these things may have wondered if I'd stopped writing because I'm no longer single. Sadly, that's not the case.Today is Valentine's Day and I, like many others, am single. If it weren't for writing this blog, I would have conveniently "forgotten" today was the day of love, flowers, candy and candlelight. However, while perusing stories from the Associated Press, I came across a relationships article detailing a new law in New Jersey requiring online dating sites to perform background checks on its users. As an alum of online dating, my interest was piqued.My first thought was, well, that's a good idea — Internet dating can be dangerous. Then I got to thinking and realized, as the article points out, background checks are pointless in the world of dating.Think about it.
SayHeyHey: Online dating gets video site
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Many online dating sites seek to connect soul mates, to bring together those looking for eternal and everlasting love. The latest Internet dating site, recently launched in Palo Alto, is not one of them. "It's not about marriage," said Alex Gurevich, co-founder of SayHeyHey.com, the first free all-video online dating site. The new site eschews the typical format of online dating sites where users carefully word profiles and post photos "from 10 years and 20 pounds ago," Gurevich said. Instead, users of SayHeyHey post videos of themselves talking, wakeboarding or — in co-founder Soudy Khan's case — utilizing a beer bong. If a visitor is interested in someone else's clip, he or she can send a video introduction.
Online Dating's Security Complex
All is not lovey-dovey in the high-stakes online dating industry.
The contentious issue of the moment — pitting one of the three biggest companies, True.com, against its major rivals — is whether online dating services can enhance their clients' safety by conducting criminal background screenings of would-be daters.
Last month, New Jersey became the first state to enact a law requiring the sites to disclose whether they perform background checks. True.com — the only large online dating service that already does such screenings — was elated by its successful lobbying and hopes other states will follow suit.
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Founders sell HotOrNot
UC Berkeley grads James Hong and Jim Young have sold HotOrNot for a reported $20 million. Hong confirmed TechCrunch's report but not the $20 million figure. The buddies created HotOrNot, which allows users to rate people on a scale of 1 to 10, during the first dotcom wave in 2000, creating a social phenomenon. It reportedly inspired future Web sites, such as YouTube. Since then, the San Francisco site has added other elements, including turning the site into an online dating service and, more recently, developing applications on Facebook. HotOrNot was acquired by the same investors as Avid Life Media, who will create Hot Or Not Media and grow the company. Hong and Young will not be regular contributors to the new company. "Next is just to hang out and help companies I've invested in for a while, then figure things out after a nice long summer vacation," Hong said in an instant messaging conversation.
The hottest trends in online dating
Internet dating has been great for the industry. It has warmed an entire generation of users to the prospect of getting help in dating and paying for that help. It's like a giant sales funnel. At the top are generic dating sites and at the bottom are expensive matchmaking services. Online dating does take time and money. If you have considerably more bucks, you can go straight to the matchmaking service and have a date with somebody who is compatible right away. What new technologies are you seeing in online dating? One of the biggest innovations is avatar-based instant messaging. There's a lot of talk about how Web sites like Second Life will impact online dating. I've seen statistics that 80% of people will have an online virtual identity by 2011. That seems very high to me! One site that's pioneering the use of avatars is OmniDate.com.
NJ sex offenders banned from online socializing
The state Parole Board today banned the 4,400 registered sex offenders it supervises from using social networking Web sites, chat rooms and online dating services as a way to prevent them from possibly luring victims into real-world danger. The move comes after a state investigation into 268 New Jersey registered sex offenders found that using the site MySpace.com led to only two offenders being punished because existing state rules only banned those who used a computer to commit a sex crime from visiting such sites. "The protection of all of our citizens and particularly our young people makes the imposition of this new restriction critical," state Parole Board Chairman Peter Barnes said after the board unanimously approved the ban. Sex offenders will still be allowed to visit other Internet sites as well as use e-mail.
2008 haute couture creation of Hungarian designer Bori Toth
NAOMI, a 28-year-old single woman from north London, is fed up with online-dating sites after failing to find love in cyberspace.
Theyre awful, she sighs. People put their best foot forward on them, putting up the best photo they can find of themselves and...
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Girl-group get-togethers to plan for 2008
Many women have a love-hate relationship with Sex and the City. It was a great show but it spawned so many horrible things: New York bus tours that stopped at, among other show-specific sites, the store where Charlotte bought her "Rabbit Pearl" vibrator; sassy single-girl dating columnists; and online quizzes to determine which character you are. So when the Sex and the City movie was announced, we wearily resigned ourselves to the onslaught of more articles on what the fab four were wearing; if the on-set photos of Carrie in a wedding dress were a real part of the plot or just a dream sequence; and on the cultural impact of the series we just can't seem to get away from. We'd love to say enough already, but who's kidding who? Come May 30, we'll be in line for the movie with everyone else. Spice Girls The reunion tour! .
SyFriday: Living Life Out In The Open
Every once in a while, I like to pop over to the Battlestar Wiki site to see how Joe Beaudoin and crew are doing. Not only is the Battlestar Wiki a great resource on everything you ever wanted to know about "Battlestar Galactica," but I've known Joe online here for many, many years, dating back to our days working in the Galactica Newsletter Network. One of the neat things to read over at Battlestar Wiki is Joe's blog. Normally, I don't talk about what other sites -- especially those that some might consider competition -- is doing, but this was something I found interesting. Earlier this week, Joe shared a very detailed story about how Wikia offered him $2,500 to sell his site to them. .
Match.com Eyes Social Scenes at Facebook, MySpace
Online dating site Match.com has made its own resolution for 2008: to get out and meet more people, or in this case, potential subscribers. Match is in the midst of a foray into Internet social networks, testing an application for online hangout Facebook, and seeks growth in new vehicles for its subscription service, according to Chief Executive Thomas Enraght-Moony.
"We're extending Match to wherever people are," Moony told Reuters in an interview in New York on Monday. "MySpace has announced their platform initiative, we're exploring that. If they opened up the Nintendo Wii (video game console), I'd probably do that as well." After building sites for lonely hearts in 37 countries, Match posted slower global subscriber growth at the end of 2007 from a year ago as it fends off competition from rival services, as well as from social networks themselves.
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