self interview part 4

Attendees to dating conferences are discussing stupidities, like if Annie is pregnant or not, but not talking about Innovations, Legislation, ID verification, background checks, Quality Norms for the Online Dating Industry (the Big Agenda).

The Simpsons, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia, Bing, MegaUpload, Twitter are successes in Argentina,

NO online dating company (for serious daters) has success here in Argentina (Match, Meetic, eHarmony, Chemistry, PerfectMatch, PlentyOfFish, OKCupid, etc) nor Brazil or other South American country.

Badoo seems to be getting some traction for fun dating, for flirting purposes, but it is full of men and has little women.

I have the theory that if something is successful in Argentina, it could be a success in the World.
If it can NOT be a success here in Argentina, it will definitely NOT be a success in the World.

If you want to read press releases, Online Personals Watch is the right blog for you.
If you want to read useful insights of the Online Dating Industry, then Online Dating Insider is the right blog for you.
But if you want to read about INNOVATIONS for the Online Dating Industry, then Breaking The Online Dating Sound Barrier IS the blog.

self interview part 3 of 4

Innovations for the Online Dating Industry:

The Online Dating Industry needs Innovations, but the innovations the Online Dating Industry needs will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.

The 3 milestone discoveries of the 2001 - 2010 decade.
Only 3 major discoveries can help to revolutionize the online dating industry.

I) Several studies showing contraceptive pills users make different mate choices, on average, compared to non-users.

II) People often report partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life.  [uncovered by Eastwick & Finkel (2008); Kurzban & Weeden (2007); Todd, Penke, Fasolo, & Lenton (2007)]

III) The strict personality similarity axis.
Latest Research in Theories of Romantic Relationships Development shows: compatibility is all about a high level on personality* similarity* between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.

Also Personality Based Recommender Systems are the next generation of recommender systems because they perform FAR better than Behavioural ones (past actions and pattern of personal preferences)
That is the only way to improve recommender systems, to include the personality traits of their users and they need to calculate personality similarity between them.


TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4

self interview part 2 of 4

List of companies I analyzed
WeAttract (2003)
PerfectMatch, Duet Total Compatibility System.
eHarmony
Chemistry.
Match Affinity, Meetic Affinity, Dating Direct Affinity (Ulteem).
OkCupid.
Be2.
Parship / eCift.
The PlentyOfFish Chemistry Predictor.
The PlentyOfFish Marriage Predictor.
eVow's compatibility matching method.
12Like.
LittleHint.
datingDNA.
Zoosk Scientific Matching Service/System.
True.
LovePlanet.ru
MyType.
ScientificMatch.
Basisnote.
GenePartner.
RewardingLove.
ButterfliesAgain.
IntelligentElite.
Brainiac Dating.
IQ Gorgeous.
DoskonalaPara.
Nomoredates.
ThomasKnowsPeople.
MatchMatrix.
Moonit.
VisualDNA.
IntroAnalytics People Recommendation Engine.
FriendScout24 BQ check.
Clicck.
HowAboutWe.
Zin.gl
WriteMatch.
ASoundMatch.
Soul2Match.
FindYourFaceMate.
"FaceReader from Profiler1: Personality Traits analysis based on facial features."
Are We Good Together?
Opposites Connect.

and many more.

All of them are like placebo!



TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3

self interview part 1 of 4

Nobody better than Fernando to interview Fernando.


Fernando, you were interviewed nearly 3 years ago.

Yes, that interview is still fresh & valid, and I want to add:


C-Level executives are more worried about their golf scores than their company's long term strategy and innovations.


Mark Brooks had published the paper "How has Internet dating changed society?" and the word INNOVATION/s is mentioned only once by Mark Brooks, not by the other 39 executive members of the Internet Dating Executive Alliance.


The Online Dating Industry needs to kill the Matchmaking Industry, like computers killed typewriters.
The biggest scammers are not from Ghana or Nigeria. They are precisely marketing executives from big sites. They use credit card billing trickery.
Lack Of Innovation & Decadence can summarize the Online Dating Industry since years.
The Online Dating Industry is performing like the Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Industry before the USA Food and Drug Administration was created.
There is no/weak Legislation, no ID verification, low reliable background checks, no Quality Norms.
The entire Online Dating Industry for serious daters in 1st World Countries is a HOAX, performing as a Big Online Casino, with a low effectiveness/efficiency level of their matching algorithms (less than 10%).

WorldWide, there are 5,000 -over five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!

but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!

but no one is scientifically proven!


The Online Dating Industry needs a major cataclysm to extinguish the big, old and obsolete dinosaurs (eHarmony, Match/Chemistry, PerfectMatch, Meetic, Parship, etc).

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2

FindYourFaceMate

In a previous post I had reviewed Soul2Match


Now I review FindYourFaceMate

Is there a glitch at the demo of FindYourFaceMate?

I had downloaded the photos used at the demo of Soul2Match and uploaded them at the demo of FindYourFaceMate and obtained always the same result: Satisfactory.


Peter and Maria
Soul2Match predicted compatibility score of 37%
FindYourFaceMate says Satisfactory

Jake and Diana
Soul2Match predicted compatibility score of 18%
FindYourFaceMate says Satisfactory

Dennis and Esther
Soul2Match predicted compatibility score of 8%
FindYourFaceMate says Satisfactory

Anyway both Soul2Match and FindYourFaceMate are HOAXES.

I would love to see a paper showing the correlation between facial characteristics and personality traits but with LOW DISTORTION.

The "Facial Analysis" path will lead you to a dead end, like the same happened to .. guess ...
DNA matching methods
Holistic Approach
modified biorhythms
BQ check
PlentyOfFish Marriage Predictor
Behavioural recommender systems
ASoundMatch
Astrological dating
RewardingLove (Psychoanalysis as the crux of a matching system)
Zoosk
and others like that.

Please do remember:
The 3 latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development is the source to find the innovations the Industry needs:
1) Several studies showing contraceptive pills users make different mate choices, on average, compared to non-users.
2) Behavioural Matching recommends people based on the type of person you have sent emails to, replied to, clicked on in search results and gone on dates with, but .... persons/people often report/select partner preferences that are not compatible with their choices in real life, that is why Behavioural Recommender Systems / Recommendation Engines perform so bad.
3) compatibility is all about STRICT personality similarity between prospective mates for long term mating with commitment.
*personality measured with a normative test.
*similarity: there are different ways to calculate similarity, it depends on how mathematically is defined.

another (big) hacking incident

It was launched during July 2007, nearly 4 years ago.
It peaked until January 2008, then the decadence began, the majority of its members migrated to Facebook (and never returned).

It has very little traffic.

It is an ads supported social net and now has 2 main functionalities.
- streaming music videos (mainly hosted at YouTube)
- online games.
You do not need to log in (nor even register - sign up) to use those 2 main functionalities.

FortunaWeb reported that social net was hacked (24th June 2011)



The official blog says (22nd June 2011):


"Dear Users,
We recently detected an unauthorized access to our systems.
We immediately took action to protect our members' data, reinforced controls and the security of our systems.
We recommend that you reset your password for your account. If you have used the same email and password combination as log-in information for any other site (email accounts and other websites requiring registration), we recommend you to change your password in those sites as well.
.............
"


Some time ago I had posted about the  Passwords^11 conference
(where they talked about the PlentyOfFish's hacking incident/s)
and
about the PlentyOfFish and eHarmony's hacking incidents

What really happened to the security audit that was to be held in last February on PlentyOfFish? swept under the carpet?

Personality and meta-accuracy

Dr. Mitja Back had attended ARP 2011 2nd Biennial Conference / Riverside, California / June 16-18, 2011 and presented the symposium
"Personality and meta-accuracy: A social relations model approach"

Read also
Two NEW & FRESH papers debunking speeddating for serious dating (also a big punch to Behavioural recommender systems like IntroAnalytics, VisualDNA, the one used at PlentyOfFish or other system that learns your preferences)

Featured ARP 2011 poster:

POSTER "Romantic Relationships, Significant Others, and Personality Change"

I also recommend to read
"Stability and change of personality across the life course "

NEW dating trend in Japan.

Tokyo, June 21th (EFE) .- The devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last March 11th has also shaken Japanese personal relationships, including that, triggered both matchmaking and  "divorce of the earthquake" phenomenons.
Women are now more flexible than before the disaster: their requirements to find a partner were, for example, a height or a certain income level, now focus more on the character of the person which seek to share her life.

Full article in Spanish by Yoko Kaneko.

Online Dating & Matchmaking Benchmark Report

NEW 2011 Online Dating & Matchmaking Benchmark Report

Euros 225 million down the drain

Euros 225 million down the drain ( into the pockets of Simoncini )

Global Map of Social Nets by usage

Behaviour Types:
active social networkers per country (in millions) GREY
% messagers and mailers MAGENTA
% content sharers CYAN
% joiners and creators of groups GREEN

Badoo increasing virality.

Badoo increasing virality. They offer to sign up with Yahoo, Google or MSN accounts, in addition to your Facebook account.

Testing Badoo Chile.

It performs the same as Argentina, Brazil, and other countries.
Full of men, lack of women.

acquisition costs

Those high acquisition costs from Meetic shows Meetic can not abandon the attracting, converting and retaining marketing stages; the automatic renewal of their members's subscriptions with dirty credit-card billing trickery.

Those high acquisition costs from Meetic also explains why Meetic (and Match, and Be2, and Parship, and eHarmony and others) had failed in the unexploited and over USD100 million Latin American Market, where persons do mostly not have credit cards, nor the one having credit cards will use for subscriptions.



Daters in the Latin American Market are fond / will be fond of the 1-month-subscription without renewal (one time transaction)

Meetic SWOT Analysis

"Meetic Fundamental Company Report Including Financial, SWOT, Competitors and Industry Analysis" report. (June 2011)

As Meetic is being *entirely* sold to Match (Inter Active Corporation) I think the report will be useless at all.

PlentyMoreFish and PlentyOfSyph

Recently PlentyOfFish Media Inc. had sued PlentyMoreFish but lost.
"Plentyoffish Media Inc is ordered to pay Plenty More LLP the sum of £2,300."

Now PlentyOfSyph had been launched as a parody of the popular online dating site, PlentyOfFish, to make awareness of infections.

The Passwords 11, A 2-day Conference

The Passwords 11, A 2-day Conference On Passwords & PINs was held last June 7-8, 2011
The Selmer Center, University of Bergen, Norway

They talked about the PlentyOfFish hacking incident(s)

financial information about Meetic

Important 2010 financial information about Meetic (published April 28th 2011) from a 265 page pdf document.

Cost of acquiring a new member Euros 63.8 (average) at page 43
Churn rate 13%, 6 months long membership at page 44
The average revenue per user (ARPU) is an indicator of the Group's ability to generate recurring revenue. The average monthly ARPU thus amounted to Euros 18.9 for the full year 2010 against EUR 18.1 in 2009 at pages 45 and 63

Diversification of income sources at page 46
Mobile represents 2% of entire revenue (separate charge from subscription, costs at page 65).
Revenue full 2010 fiscal year, Euros 186 million.

The Group believes it has significant qualified traffic: 3.53 million unique visitors on its
sites in Europe and more than 300 million pageviews (only for the Meetic brand) on the same
months (source: comScore, January 2011) at page 47

Meetic plans for 2011

More Tech bubble, Pandora IPO

It was LinkedIn first, then Pandora

Wikipedia says
"During the first three months of its 2011 fiscal year, Pandora reported USD90.1 million in revenue with a USD300,000 loss."

Badoo Brazil / Badoo Brasil

Some screenshots from Badoo Brazil / Badoo Brasil: full of men and has very few women. 
It is like a big virtual speeddating event.
"dating" is a broad word to define a large group of different proposals. Badoo is a dating proposal only for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratifications, but nor for serious dating.

It is customary for men in Latin American countries, to send their Microsoft/Yahoo Instant Messenger Address to women inmmediately when chatting online or messaging (because although at Badoo it is not mandatory/necessary to pay in order to communicate with other members, chat is slow and women receive several chatting requests. A recently ComScore report had shown Microsoft's sites rank #1 in Argentina -also in several Latin American countries- slides #22 and #24)

Also it is customary for men in Latin American countries, to request the Microsoft/Yahoo Instant Messenger Address (msn) to women as this sample of other online dating site (It was AlguienAQuienQuerer, no longer exists)

And it is customary for many daters in Latin American countries to use the same nickname as their Microsoft/Yahoo Instant Messenger Address when registering in forums or dating sites.
i.e.
Suppose you see the profile of a woman whose nickname is JenniferSampleCow001
you can try the following instant messaging accounts.

JenniferSampleCow001 at hotmaildotcom

JenniferSampleCow001 at hotmaildotcomdotar if she is from Argentina

JenniferSampleCow001 at hotmaildotcomdotbr if she is from Brazil

JenniferSampleCow001 at livedotcomdotar if she is from Argentina

JenniferSampleCow001 at livedotcomdotbr if she is from Brazil

JenniferSampleCow001 at livedotcom

JenniferSampleCow001 at yahoodotcom

JenniferSampleCow001 at yahoodotcomdotar if she is from Argentina

JenniferSampleCow001 at yahoodotcomdotbr if she is from Brazil

That is why sites like Parhip does not allow you to choose your nickname and shows you profiles' names with a code (like ESFN3KTG, FS0MXG3F, ES94Z3PR and so on, to avoid any person can communicate for free, without paying the subscription)

Badoo from 7 to 9 superpowers

I am testing Badoo. Just discovered Badoo offers now 9 superpowers instead of 7.

I had previously estimated Badoo's 2011 worldwide annual revenue: in the range of USD 46 million.

World Map of Social Networks

Stability and change of personality across the life course

Specht, J., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (in press). Stability and change of personality across the life course: The impact of age and major life events on mean-level and rank-order stability of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Abstract
Does personality change across the entire life course, and are those changes due to intrinsic maturation or major life experiences? This longitudinal study investigated changes in the mean levels and rank order of the Big Five personality traits in a heterogeneous sample of 14,718 Germans across all of adulthood who were tracked across 4 years (2005 - 2009). Latent change and latent moderated regression models provided four main findings: First, age had a complex curvilinear influence on mean levels of personality. Second, the rank-order stability of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness all followed an inverted U-shaped function, reaching a peak between the ages of 40 and 60, and decreasing afterwards, whereas Conscientiousness showed a continuously increasing rank-order stability across adulthood. Third, personality predicted the occurrence of several objective major life events (selection effects) and changed in reaction to experiencing these events (socialization effects), suggesting that personality can change due to factors other than intrinsic maturation. Fourth, when events were clustered according to their valence, as is commonly done, effects of the environment on changes in personality were either overlooked or overgeneralized. In sum, our analyses show that personality changes throughout the life span, but with more pronounced changes in young and old ages, and that this change is partly attributable to social demands and experiences.

It is consistent with
Personality traits are highly stable in persons over 25 years old to 45 years old (the group of persons who could be most interested in serious online dating) They have only minor changes in personality (less than 1 interval in a normative test) and the 16PF5 test will not "see" them because the output of the 16PF5 test are 16 variables STens (Standard Tens) taking integer values from 1 to 10. STens divide the score scale into ten units. STens have the advantage that they enable results to be thought of in terms of bands of scores, rather than absolute raw scores. These bands are narrow enough to distinguish statistically significant differences between candidates, but wide enough not to over emphasize minor differences between candidates.

"Genetic and environmental influences on personality trait stability and growth during the transition to adulthood: A three wave longitudinal study. "
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (2010)
Hopwood, C.J., Donnellan, M.B., Blonigen, D.M., Krueger, R.F., McGue, M., Iacono, W.G., & Burt, S.A
and
"Personality trait change in adulthood." Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 31-35. Roberts, B. W. & Mroczek, D. (2008).

Does our personality affect our level of attractiveness?

Is there's something about personality that makes some people better at predicting whether others will want to meet them?

Dr. Lars Penke, one of the brains behind PERSOC is leading research in the speed dating events arena.
In a previous article, I had posted "Two papers debunking speeddating for serious dating"

Now a new study conducted by Dr. Lars Penke et al finds that certain personality traits contribute to being a good judge of whether someone else thinks you're worth meeting again.
In 17 groups, a total of 190 men and 192 women met members of the opposite sex—basically the standard speed dating routine, but that time, with psychologists collecting a lot of data. Among that data was personality information and the all-important question after each three-minute date: for each person you talk to, do you want to see that person again? They were also asked if they thought the other person would want to meet them.
On the whole, people are very bad at guessing how many of the other persons will want to meet them. Some people had no clue at all. But others did better. Success was correlated with particular traits that are stereotypically associated with the sexes: Men who have a more promiscuous orientation were better at guessing if a woman would want to meet them, and women whose personality was very agreeable were better at guessing if a man would meet them.

Back, M. D., Penke, L., Schmukle, S. C., & Asendorpf, J. B. (in press). Knowing your own mate value: Sex-specific personality effects on the accuracy of expected mate choices. Psychological Science.

NEW comScore report / Internet in Argentina June 2011

Internet in Argentina June 2011
Microsoft's sites had reached 95% of the online population, 13 million unique visitors (April 2011).
Google's sites in second place.
Facebook in third place (1st in time spent).
Men and women are nearly equally distributed.

Next Tuesday 14th June 11:00AM – 12:00PM EDT a free webinar will be offered.
Compare to the old report September 2010
and the special report about social networks from last January 2011 Argentina and Chile

Will Badoo collapse soon?

I am testing Badoo Argentina and discovered the real database of active members is
5% women
and
95% men

I will test Badoo Argentina using a dummy profile of a non pretty woman to check if happens the same as what happened with a dummy profiles of a pretty woman.
pretty woman 15 minutes to achieve the full inbox condition, saturated of messages.
ugly  woman 3 hours? to achieve the full inbox condition, saturated of messages.

I will also test Badoo Spain and Mexico (they will be in summer soon) and Badoo Brazil and Chile (winter soon) using a dummy profile of a not much pretty woman to discover if Badoo's real database of active members is
5% women
and
95% men

Badoo mysteries (part 3)

Before reading this article, please read "3 big South American failed proposals".
specially the "Alguien a Quien Querer" case, because Badoo Argentina is in the same road as "Alguien a Quien Querer". It attracts men and repels pretty women.
Remember: at Badoo it is not mandatory/necessary to pay in order to communicate with other members and instant chat is merged with messages.

I had created a dummy (fake) profile of a 25 years old pretty woman at Badoo Argentina for test purposes.
In less than 5 minutes, that profile received 11 chat requests.
At 10 minutes, the requests were 26.
A little after, 41.
At 15 minutes, the fake profile of a pretty woman had over 200 messages (chats) to read.
It was impossible to manage that.
A warning message about full inbox appeared.
The popularity increased from low to high in less than 15 minutes after the signup process.
See the screenshots.

I will suggest you, the reader, to create a fake profile of a pretty woman at Badoo in your country and test if the same problem happens.

I have the theory that if something is successful in Argentina, it could be a success in the World.
If it can NOT be a success here in Argentina, it will definitely NOT be a success in the World.

Badoo Argentina is full of men and has little women.  Severely unbalanced database.

Badoo's annual revenue.

Badoo's 2011 worldwide annual revenue: in the range of USD 46 million from streams 3), 4) and 5). (estimated by Fernando Ardenghi)

Five main revenue streams:
1) Ads: Is Badoo an ads-free site? This link shows you can place ads on Baddo, but as I use Firefox with AdBlock Plus addon, I do not see ads.
"Over 5 million adults visit Badoo each day, spending an average of over 15 minutes with us per visit. This generates almost 5 billion impressions a month and continues to grow at an astounding rate."


2) Selling data from its database to third parties.
From "Terms of Use"
"Disclaimer and Release
From time to time we may post links to third party sites on the Website. We provide these links solely for your use and convenience."


3) By subscriptions:
As it is not mandatory/necessary to pay in order to communicate with other members, I estimate 300,000 persons paying USD 25 per 3 months (on average), i.e. 300,000 paying members for Q1, the for Q2, then for Q3 and for Q4. That is USD 30.00 million.
The paying members are the ones who acquire the "7 superpowers pack" so their messages are delivered with priority, in first places and they avoid the delay queue to chat.
 300,000 paying members * USD 25 * 4 quarters is USD 30 million.

4) Virtual gifts:
LatinAmericans, persons from "Hispanic origin" are not fond of paying to send virtual gifts as the Asiatics do, so I estimate worldwide 2 million persons sending 3 annually virtual gifts on average. Each virtual gift costs USD 2.00 On a 50% revenue share basis for Badoo and 50% for the carrier, that means USD 6.00 million.
 2 million persons * USD 2.00 * 3 a year * 1/2 revenue share is USD 6.00 million

5) Paying to increase visibility:
Here my bet is 5 million persons paying USD 2.00, twice a year (on average) to increase their visibility (and popularity - they are mostly men) on a 50% revenue share basis for Badoo and 50% for the carrier.
 5 million persons * USD 2.00 * 2 a year * 1/2 revenue share is USD 10.00 million.

Badoo's 2011 worldwide annual revenue: in the range of USD 46 million from streams 3), 4) and 5).

I has previously posted
"Badoo mysteries (part 1 of 3)"
"Badoo mysteries (part 2 of 3)"
I am writing the "Badoo mysteries (part 3 of 3)" but Badoo is full of men and has little women.
Badoo also sends passwords in plain text like this email sample:

Badoo is only for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratifications, but nor for serious dating.

Badoo mysteries (part 2 of 3)

I had invented a male fake (dummy) profile at Badoo. Just after the signup process I had received 4 messages for women.
I tried to read them, I clicked each and every message, but the profiles of women appear instead of a message. Then they say they want to chat but all of them were offline. The "find the 7 superpowers" screen appears, and the subscription cost is USD25 per 3 months. You can pay using your credit card, PayPal and better printing an invoice/bill with barcodes and you can pay in the bank, supermarket or where Rapipago, PagoFácil, etc are available (they are some sort of "kiosks" to pay invoices/bills)
If you want to increase your visibility, you need to pay 100 credits (USD 2.0) and you can pay them using your cell phone.
Badoo suggests you to send virtual gifts, but if you try to send one, the cost is 100 credits (USD 2.0) and you can pay them using your cell phone.
If you want to see the photos of other members, you need to upload at least 3 photos of you.
Badoo Argentina seems to be "full" of men online but with a low quantity of women online.
Without paying you can chat for free with women, although the chat is a terrible low speed application.
I had searched for online women and could chat with only one, who had recently created her profile there.
(will continue in a next post)