Linkages

Mr. Dell (Photo: Wikipedia)

Booting Up: Dell Said to Near Announcement for $23 Billion Buyout

Dell’s board of directors were said to vote last night on a $23 billion deal to take the company private, with private equity firm Silver Lake Management, Microsoft and company founder Michael Dell among the key players. [AllThingsD]

Competition between on-demand taxi service startups continues to simmer. Later this month, New York City will launch its pilot program for e-hailing yellow cabs. Meanwhile, Uber competitor Hailo is launching a subsidiary in Tokyo. [TechCrunch]

Nearly half of single women research prospective dates on Facebook before they meet, according to Match.com. Also in the survey, promiscuous sexters! Thirty-two percent of singles have sent a sext, while 51 percent of singles have received a sext, which by our math means some of you are sending more than your fair share.   [Mashable]

A group of Florida investors is hosting something called the “pitch house” at the Startup Conference next week. Sounds like a pilot. [Nibletz]

Benchmark Capital’s Bill Gurley, Chamath Palihapitiya of Social + Capital Partnership and SurveyMonkey’s Dave Goldberg talked Venture Capital and IPOs.  [Bloomberg Television]

Twitter is hiring engineers to beef up security after a recent hacking attempt. [Wired]

Law and Order

(Photo: Weblo)

Woman Sues Match.com for Matching Her with a Murder Suspect Who Assaulted Her

A woman in Las Vegas has filed a lawsuit against online dating service Match.com after a man she had gone on a date with through the service brutally attacked her in 2010. Mary Kay Beckman is seeking $10 million in damages after her match, Wade Ridley, hid in her garage and then stabbed her ten times before kicking her in the head. Ms. Beckman has had to have several corrective surgeries following the attack. Read More

Love for Sale

dating profiles

Is Your Dating Site Selling Your Profile? To Keep Membership High, Niche Sites Get Sly

Angela is a 34-year-old single woman from Alabama. She’s a Leo. According to her online dating profile, she is 5’8” with blue eyes and dark brown hair. “I am a creative, witty, intelligent girl looking for someone to shower with all my love and affection!” she declares, appending a smiley face.

Angela was included in a 1,000-pack of allegedly single, supposedly American women, which Betabeat purchased for $35. Her profile is one of a purported 14.9 million for sale on SaleDatingProfiles.com, where the inventory also includes 10,000 U.K. profiles for $200; 15,000 Russians for $240, and 70,000 Australians for $95. A pack of 2,500 lesbian profiles goes for $120, or 4.8 cents apiece; gay men are .003 cents each and are sold in a pack of 410,000. “High quality Gays adult dating profiles for sale with multiplay photos located in USA, United Kingdom, Canada and other countries,” the offer states. At the time of writing, SaleDatingProfiles was having a 75-percent-off spring sale.

Angela, who asked that her last name be withheld, has been dating online for years. But she never imagined her profile was for sale on the open market, or that it now appears on MeetGirlsGuys.com, which she never signed up for. “I have never even heard of that site!” she said, adding that she lives in Texas, not Alabama, and the photo is at least seven years old.

Online dating is a fast-growing industry, with current revenues estimated to run between $1.5 and $3 billion a year. But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate. Recruiting new customers is expensive; industry experts put the customer acquisition price at $1 to $5 per person.

SaleDatingProfiles and its competitors BuyProfiles.com and DatingProfilesSale.com offer a shortcut. They sell bulk packages of profiles that seem to include a fair number of actual singles alongside somewhat more questionable Russian beauties, Nigerian bankers and half-empty profiles, which sometimes sell for less than a dime a dozen. Read More

Love in the Time of Algorithms

via www.onlinedating.org

Researchers Say Online Dating Algorithms Are About as Accurate as Picking Up Strangers in Bars

The basic premise of OkCupid, Match.com, or eHarmony seems to be that science, or at least math, is a better judge of a potential partner than you are. While you (fallible human) may fall for a winsome smile, the algorithm knows whether that guy or gal is too religious or kinky or short for you to really get along.

However a new report commissioned by the Association for Psychological Science calls bullshit, basically. Along with four other psychology professors, Northwestern’s Eli Finkel found that while dating sites are a “terrific addition,” the algorithms they employ are no better than having a “real estate agent of love,” says Reuters. Does that mean they try to get you to go out with someone who is soulmate-adjacent? Read More

The Third Degree

greg-blatt-300x252

Greg Blatt, the Shouting CEO Who Runs IAC While Barry Diller Is Picking Out Carpeting

On the heels of IAC’s impressive year-end financials—showing revenues up 26 percent to $2.1 billion and profits up 75 percent to $174 million—the Financial Times decided to profile CEO Greg Blatt.

Mr. Blatt, if you recall, was put in place as Barry Diller’s successor in December, 2010. A former lawyer at Watchell Lipton, he helped take Martha Stewart Omnimedia public in 1994 and helped IAC spin off online properties like Expedia and Ticketmaster during the company’s “disaggregation period.” Read More

Can I See Some ID

Is that even a real flower? Tell us or we'll shoot.

If the DOJ Has Its Way, Lying About Your Weight On Match.com Could Become a Punishable Offense

Maybe you should take it easy on the second helpings at Thanksgiving. CNET has gotten its hands on a statement that’s supposed to be delivered by the Justice Department today that would make things like using a fake name on Facebook or entering a false weight on Match.com a crime. Salman Rushdie, we hope you’re paying attention.

In the statement, the DOJ argues that the agency needs to be able to prosecute violations of a website’s “terms of service” policy.  While it opens users up to potentially frivolous violations, the DOJ says scaling back the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),  “would make it difficult or impossible to deter and address serious insider threats through prosecution,” such as identity theft, privacy invasions, or abuse of government databases. Read More

High Forms of Flattery

Which came first?

Clone Wars: Rise of the Fast Follower Startups

A FEW MONTHS AGO, AN ENTREPRENEUR in the tri-state area was soliciting web development help via Craigslist. “I’m looking for a Meetup.com clone script,” the listing said. “It must have all the social community features that Meetup.com has, including the capability to add new groups, users events, polls, connect to other social communities, shopping cart, sponsors and sub sites.” Meetup, which was founded in 2002 and has about 80 employees, is reportedly valued at more than $50 million. The asking price for a replica was $300 to $600.

Last week, two ads appeared from the other side of the fence: a programmer-for-hire looking for something to build who claimed to have built a Facebook clone in four days, a Flickr clone in three days and a Google clone in two weeks. He noted that he’d also created a Craigslist clone, adding, “but no one visits it so we are posting this ad to Craigslist.”*

When it comes to internet startups, much is made of the entrepreneurs who first bring an idea to market—innovators or “first movers,” in the parlance of market researchers. But vastly more common are “fast followers,” the ones who jump on a hot idea and dash off a carbon copy. After all, the first mover doesn’t always win the race: just look at the Mac, launched in 1984, versus the Windows PC, launched in 1985, or at Facebook, which came after Friendster, Myspace and the Winklevoss social network HarvardConnection. Read More

Data Dating

Computers Have Helped New Yorkers Find Dates Since 1965

To kick off a fascinating and lengthy piece about online dating in The New Yorker this week, Nick Paumgarten looks at TACT, the Technical Automated Compatability Testing service pioneered by an I.B. M programmer and an accountant from Queens after a visit to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens.

For five dollars, customers got the chance to answer hundreds of questions where they offered their like, dislike and philosophies of life. Men got to choose their favorite hairstyle, women their favorite scene of a man at work. These answer were transferred to punch cards and fed into an I.B.M. 1400 Series. It got 5,000 subscribers in the first year. Read More

Antisocial Media

couple

Match.com to Marry OKCupid

Match.com just shelled out $50 million for New York’s homegrown dating site OKCupid, the dating site known for being free, giving its users quizzes, and turning those surveys into fascinating plunges into the human psyche at the OKTrends blog.

The press release indicates that OKCupid will not be shut down and its users siphoned into Read More