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Alexander McCall-Smith Engages Web 2.0

The Daily Telegraph is in the middle of a 20-week serialisation of an online book created by author Alexander McCall-Smith, his first such project. New Media Knowledge caught up with the organisers to discuss ‘Corduroy Mansions’.

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Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future

Google has announced it will incentivise advertisers on its video properties as well as launching research programmes into how Web users consume Internet video material. New Media Knowledge spoke to a number of industry players to gauge their views on where the video advertising market is going.

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‘Virtual Home’ for Ex-Pats in London Established

A social network aimed at providing information for ex-pats living in London has been established. New Media Knowledge met the site’s co-founder to find out more.

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• What Happens to Newspapers?

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Love is in the Ether

Not normally known for his sentimental streak, editor Ian Delaney shoe-horns romance into a story about online marketing for the sake of Valentines' Day. Only once a year, promise.

Not normally known for his sentimental streak, editor Ian Delaney shoe-horns romance into a story about online marketing for the sake of Valentines' Day. Only once a year, promise.

Subject: membership
Date: 08-Dec-06 05:23 AM
Status: Deleted
please dont take any further monies as i wish to surrender my account as from your site i have found the l.ove of my dreams. im sure in the near future there will be wedding bells to be heard.

carl

Subject: Cancelation of membership..
Date: 04-Jan-07 05:53 PM
Status: Deleted
Please take this mail as confirmation that I wish to cancel my membership.
Through your site I happened to meet the girl of my dreams ( who only lived 300 yards from me ) and we are now engaged...

Thank you...

Regards

P Ferguson...

Poor Carl. Poor Mr. Ferguson. Two more good men lost to the realms of the married and "Sorry, I can't come out. Maybe on Wednesday about 3pm for ten minutes?"

It's worse news for Steve Pammenter, who heads up Global Personals Ltd., a white-label internet dating company that runs personal sites for emap and singles365 for itself: "the more successful we are, the more we fail".

So what makes for a successful dating site?

"Fill in all of your profile and upload photographs," says Pammenter. "If you leave out pieces of information, then it begs the question. The most frequently unfilled slots on our profiles are 'smoker?' and 'children?' Basically, if people leave those blank then you can take it as a 'yes'. I suppose those people are looking for people not to judge them because of those things."

Pammenter's comments echo those found in a study conducted by Dr. Rachel Jones of people-centred agency Instrata. Jones found that people in online dating environments mirrored their activity dating offline. There would be online analogues to the cafe or the restaurant or the party. And that people's behaviour in such circumstances would be analagous. They also found that a certain amount of lying was permissable - in much the same way that it would be permissable in any offline dating scenario. I am single might mean I am in the process of getting divorced. The process went further and disabled people, for example, did not reveal that in online dating scenarios, in much the same way that such things are not revealed in newspaper personals columns, I suppose.

Online dating demands the utmost usability. Pammenter says that because dating sites are aimed at the whole of society, it's important that users feel on familiar ground quickly. "They used to be just a database of profiles; now they are very dynamic." So the information needs to be arranged in the most intuitive way possible. It's a crash course in usability to develop one of these sites - everything needs to be where is should be or the site will fail fast.

Dating sites are quickly turning into social networks, it seems. Users don't go away once they have given up on finding 'the one' or indeed have found that person. They stick around and share observations with same-sex friends about potential dates. People over 50 are apparently very keen users of dating sites. And while they may not be expecting romance from the services, they are especially keen on the chat and conversation side. "They log on more frequently than younger users," says Pammenter, "to catch up with what's going on."

Jones' study turned up some interesting differences between UK and German users of dating sites. "In Germany it is far more formal," she told me. You are far more likely to meet people through other friends in Germany, and to take account of their recommendations. If German online dating had an offline equivalent, it would be a dinner party. The Germans liked the idea of pre-written messages to signal the stages of date success. On the other hand, "UK users want a cafe environment. You meet someone's eyes across a crowded room." Internet daters in the UK are a lot more likely to accept and date strangers than those in Germany.

Jones told me that those sites that are most successful will allow users a large amount of freedom in constructing their profiles. "People want to express their personalities," and maybe have an arty shot or a profile rather than the normal head-and-shoulders. Artistic pictures are, apparently, more appreciated than 'straight' shots by other users.

Market share for dating sites is, of course, a critical barometer for the industry. I asked Steve Pammenter whether the emergence of dating 2.0 through free sites such as plentyoffish was having an impact. "Of course it is," he replied, "the guy [Marcus Frind] is expected to overtake match.com before long and between a quarter and third of the UK dating market. And we're looking at different business models for our next releases. However, there's still enormous anxiety about the safety of online dating, and that requires considerable levels of service to be delivered. We're looking at a service that does cross-checks against the profile, a minimum of two uploaded photos and other security checks. That's going to be hard outside of a subscription service."

More Data Points From the Industry:

• A profile with a picture is ten times more likely to get feedback than one without
• Women read through the profiles properly
• Men read height, hair colour and look at the photo
• Men tend to make the first advance
• Within 24hrs of creating a profile, the average female will have 10-15X more responses than the average male
• Men log on to dating sites three times more frequently than women
• Men log-in later at night than women