Match Group

A received a number of visitors emails late yesterday informing me that PlentyOfFish.com was down. POF was offline for at least 8 hours on June 9, 2009 (thanks Glennis) and currently 3 hour this morning (June 10, 2009).

From what I could tell at 12:30am EST was the POF web server is up but not serving web pages. So it doesn't seem to be a network problem. I am just making an educated guessing here but, It could be a software glitch, a hardware issue (bad hard drive?) or maybe the dating site got hacked? When I get any new information I will post it here.

The last major downtime for Plenty Of Fish was back in late February (see Story).

Update #1: As of 8:30am EST, Plenty of Fish is online and working without any problems. The exact time it went back online is unknown.

Update #2: POF was down due to a power outage and a upgrade to the core database server (see Story).

For more information on this dating site, read our Plenty Of Fish review.

Two of OkCupid's co-founders, Chris Coyne and Christian Rudder (who met in a Harvard math dept.) created OkCupid's complex matching system, which they have coined the UberAlgorithm. The UberAlgorithm is all mathematics and essentially tracks the tests and quizs members take at OkCupid. The test answers are tracked and then analyzed so they can be compared with other members to create a compatible percentages. Members can then view these matches when they log on to OkCupid. One of the unique things at OkCupid is, these tests are created not only by staff but by users as well and cover all sorts of topics, whether serious or goofy. Members of OkCupid to date have answered more than 500 million 3 part questions, which equals over 1.5 billion pieces of data. From this data, personality trends are calculated based on 60 axes in which OkCupid tracks (religion is one such axis). Each member information is compiled and compared to each axis, which is also compared with others of your gender, age and sexual gender preference.

As other dating sites like Chemistry and Perfectmatch promote the fact that they have famous psychologists working for them to help create matching systems, OkCupid has stated that they don't need psychologists because their own members create their match algorithms. The UberAlgorithm takes care of figuring out each person's personality and the user tells OkCupid what type of person they want to date.

OkCupid has created a very interesting matching system that does work for a number of people. The problem is taking tests is not every persons cup of tea. This is why OkCupid tends to attract singles in their low to mid twenties. OKCupid hopes that as these singles age and mature, they will continue to use their site, increasing their over 30 age demographic. By being a free dating site, OkCupid doesn't have the funds for a research team of psychologists to help design a matching system. While users who know specifically what they want shouldn't have a problem with their matches on OkCupid, it's the members who are not sure that may suffer poor matches. Based on the members own personality, a match system needs to know that what the member is asking for in a partner is something that is compatible with his or her personality and requirements, not because that is who they think would make a good match. It is the job of the automated match system to know what makes a relationship last.

For the full interview, read Gelf Magazine. For more details on this dating site, read our OkCupid.com review.

According to a few reports, the dating site OKCupid.com went down late last night (May 28, 2009) for a couple of hours as apparently a cup of coffee was accidentally spilled on a router. When we tried accessing the dating site ourselves earliy this morning we received the following message:

So...We thought it would be cool to get a cat for the office, but we needed a litter box, and there wasn't really room in the bathroom, so we put it next to these servers in the back, and everything would have been fine, but the A/C repair guy was allergic and the cat reacts badly to loud noises and there were all these wires hanging back there and a bunch of surprisingly flammable packing material...

Erik thought it would be JUST AWESOME to put a paperclip on the end of a rubber band and shoot it at Vinay's eye, and it would have just been Erik and Vinay's problem except Vinay had a cup of coffee and was standing over James, who was fixing our router at the time...

Anyway, we'll have things back up soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. - Worker

Here's hope it is backup soon.

Update - May 29, 2009, 9:15 am - I just tried OK Cupid again and everything seems to be back to normal. Happy Testing!

CNN did a post about virtual currencies and economies. It is estimated that at least $1 billion USD were transferred into virtual currencies last year. The biggest use of virtual currencies are online games, followed by social networks and virtual worlds. Some websites even earn more revenue through virtual currencies than online advertising. The massive online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft (or WoW for short) uses WoW Gold. Even though it is against the rules set by Blizzard, this currency is bought and sold on the black market. This currency is so sought after, workers in China have been known to play the game just to earn the virtual WoW currency to sell to players in Europe and the US.

Social networking sites like Hi5 and MyYearBook have created their own currency as well. Hi5 has the Hi5 Coin and MyYearBook calls their currency Lunch Money. Hi5 Coins are mainly used to buy virtual gifts while with Lunch Money you can buy virtual gifts, play games and even donate it to charities. Facebook is looking into a unified currency since all the games and application on their platform that use a virtual currency has been created by the application developer. The problem with this for members is, the currency is only good with that one application. Facebook also doesn't see any revenue from these virtual currencies. This could be a way out for Facebooks revenue problems. If they create one unified Facebook currency for the entire site, not only could members spend it through any Facebook applicationg they want, Facebook would get a cut from each transaction.

The virtual world Second Life also has a currency called Linden Dollars. You can trade real currency for Linden Dollars which you can then buy whatever is for sale on Second Life (virtual real estate, entertainment, stores, etc..). Just like with real currencies, the Linden Dollar fluctuates daily against the USD. The buy and sell prices are set by the residents of Second Life on the LindeX Currency Exchange.

Some dating sites have a form of virtual currency called points. While you can't trade or buy something from other members, you can purchase virtual gifts, features and extended memberships from the dating site itself. Usually the way you earn points is by using and / or participating in the dating site. Two dating sites that I know of who use points this way is, Plenty Of Fish and, the FriendFinder Network of dating sites. With POF, every time you log into the site you earn 60 points, with a maximum of 60 points total every 24 hours These points can be used to buy virtual gifts for other members. With FriendFinder you receive points for participating in the site by adding or voting on articles, replying to questions and voting on topics. When you have earned enough points you can then purchase membership upgrades with them. This can include adding extra months to your membership and having your profile highlighted.

Check out CNN.com Technology for the full story. Read our FriendFinder review for more information on this dating service.

Match.com was the first online dating site to ever run a TV commercial back in 2004 (see Story). Now Match.com is the first to run pre-roll ads on YouTube (at least in the UK) against premium content. For online video there are 3 main types of advertising. Pre-roll runs before the video, in-roll runs during the video and post-roll, which is after the video. Ads will be sold on a CPM-basis by a sales staff and YouTube has stated that it will impose a limit of 30 seconds per ad. Both the video owner and YouTube will share in the revenue earned from displaying the advertising.

In 2008 the U.S. population was almost 304 million with roughly one third or 90 million people being single. YouTube has 80.7 unique monthly visitors and is the internet's 6th largest destination. The average user spends 54 minutes each month on the video site. This stats make it an ideal place for a dating site like Match.com to advertise since 62 percent of viewers fall in the key 34 to 55 plus age range demographic.

For more on the story, read Marketing Magazine from the UK and for more stats on YouTube, check out their sales pdf document. If you are interested in finding out more about Match.com UK, read our review of this dating site.

Online Personals Watch posted a short summary of an interview they had with the CEO of Meetic, Marc Simoncini. Among the things they discussed was the recent purchase of Match.com European operations (see Story). Currently Meetic in the UK runs the following dating sites; Meetic, DatingDirect and now Match. From the interview It looks like Meetic will be promoting only one brand per country or market. This means the Meetic dating site will be the only one of the three which is actively promoted in the United Kingdom. Will this affect DatingDirect and its membership numbers? Not really, since both sites look and function identically and they share the same member database. This means, if you sign up for one of the above mentioned dating sites, you really are then signing up for all of them as your profile will be available on all sites. On a related note, I am working on another article which I plan to further dissect how the large Dating Networks like Meetic work and if the end result is good for its members.

Here are a few more details from the eight year agreement that IAC (Match.com) and Meetic have:

1. Match has no right to manage the daily business in Europe. It will be managed by Meetic
2. There's a reciprocal right of first refusal for acquisition
3. And there will be two members on the board of Meetic, from IAC] Another interesting fact in the summary is Match Europe (not sure if this includes the UK) will have their member database merge with Meetic.

For the full interview of Marc Simoncini, check out Online Personals Watch