online dating - cyberpop!

online dating concierges

June 10, 2010 By sem 4 Comments

Too busy for internet dating? How about outsourcing it?

The time-consuming task of online dating just got a little easier and even less authentic with the emergence of a new suite of services from e-dating concierges.

Done for You Dating is an example of a business designed to provide busy executives with some administrative support to optimize their investment in electronic matchmatching. For a hefty fee you can “leave your online dating to the pros” who will search for prospects, read profiles, initiate contact, and continue communication with possible romantic partners on their client’s behalf.

If someone onsite looks promising, the virtual dating concierge can book a restaurant, send some flowers, select your wardrobe, and order your car service. All with a few clicks of the mouse and a few swipes of your credit card. “I think it’s genius,” says Brian Jones, a 40-year-old single property manager from Seattle, interviewed for MSNBC. “You can have someone else weed through all the crap.” Lucky for the cynical Mr. Jones that Virtual Dating Assistants are paid to be charming on his behalf.

Personalization services like these allow users to carefully code their online personas and communication strategies, manage their online reputation, automate responses, and build networks of connections according to precise configurations. It’s all very efficient. What’s missing of course, is transparency and authenticity—two elements of what Chris Brogan calls the emerging trust economy.

With internet dating (d)evolving into something not far removed from an autofollow bot on Twitter, no wonder there is a parallel trend moving in the other direction. More people who are comfortable living social are opting in to streamdating, twitterdating, and videochat dating—three ways to make a person’s everyday social networking activities part of their compatibility rating in the quest for love.

adopting a social mindset

January 1, 2010 By sem 27 Comments

Click on image to download PDF of this ePaper.

In The Harvard Business Review, blogger and entrepreneur David Armano asks, “Are you living social?” The piece advises companies who are already engaged in or about to embark on, a social media initiative, to think long and hard about what it means to be fully engaged in the socially networked popular culture arena. Social media “isn’t a one shot deal,” cautions Armano, but rather, requires commitment, sincerity, transparency, and real-time response. Or to borrow a metaphor from Drew McLellan, social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

The best way to launch and maintain a social media presence is to recruit and retain employees who are already adept at living social. Armano presses CEOs to ask themselves: “Do any of the people who make up your company, agencies, partners and so on actually live social? Do they demonstrate that they work and play in a connected fashion?”

Armano concludes with a warning to administrators who might, on the one hand, prohibit social network access on company time/workstations, and on the other, hire a digital PR company or task an intern with managing a twitter feed: “If you’re not genuinely, honestly engaged in the social network, you won’t get far with those who are.”

What this Harvard Business Review piece is pointing to are the key ingredients of participating in socnet culture: authenticity and credibility. The kind of realness that comes from consistent investment in social media community building, online content creation, contribution, and curation, and genuine two-way communication. To foster a culture of connected living and working, we need only look to companies such as Starbucks, Zappos, and BestBuy who are out in front—or any of the highly influential companies profiled by Razorfish in their yearly index of socially savvy organizations.

For individuals, the dynamics of living social are no different from the “rules” for brands, as described by the experts cited above. Increasingly we judge other people on their lifestream, digital footprints and e-presence in social networks—on what Seth Goldstein calls “identity spaces” such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. To stay up-to-date, relevant, and “in order to get ahead in today’s information and online driven world,” Dan Schawbel (author of Me 2.0) writes,”you have to participate or be extinct.” Moreover, to opt-out of social computing may mean a loss of credibility, since for many of those who are living social, “If Google Can’t Find You, You Don’t Exist“—to borrow the title of an insightful blog post by Rosetta Thurman.

One of the emergent trends for 2010 according to Schawbel is elevated importance placed by employers on individuals’ online participation: “You will be judged on voice, not just your resume,” he warns. But it’s not just in the worlds of work and marketing that living social matters. In a culture where Googling new acquaintances romantic interests is commonplace, it should come as no surprise that the next trend in online matchmaking is stream dating.

Although LavaLife, eHarmony, Match.com and other major online matchmaking services have anonymity as the foundation of personal profiles that form the basis of compatibility quests—today the Facebook Generation seeks connections (romantic and otherwise) that are vetted via identity sites and their personal social graphs.

All of which raises the question: how would a prospective mate (or employer) rate your suitability, sociability, work-life balance based on a Google search? How would they assess your potential, relevance, influence, and vitality/appearance—and if there isn’t enough accurate/current information online to build a full picture of you, do you think they won’t do so anyway with whatever data is ready at hand? Today, for better or for worse, “our selves are all in the hands of Google,” but “social networking allows us more control over the image we present,” observes Andy Oram (in a 7-part series for O’Reilly about online identity). Configuring and refreshing one’s personal SEO is an ongoing everyday act in an increasingly real-time web—one that effectively identifies those who are adept at living social.

Filed Under: social networks Tagged With: branding, digital footprint, facebook, Google, online dating, PR, SEO, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

digital duplicity

December 30, 2009 By sem 13 Comments

After weeks of news stories about how serial adulterer Tiger Woods was found out by his (soon to be ex)wife via a trail of sexy texting (and voicemails), people are talking about how digital technology is aiding and abetting modern hanky-panky. From the more explicit examples such as online dating sites that cater to married folks seeking to break their vows, to the everyday (and seemingly innocent) practice of Facebooking—there are many ways to use the web as a technology for two-timing.

As proof, in the UK a survey of the caseloads of divorce lawyers found that more than 20 percent of new divorce petitions contain references to Facebook. Inappropriate chats, flirty emails and wall posts are being used as evidence of “unreasonable behavior” in divorce proceedings.

Texting is the new lipstick on the collar, observed Parry Aftab, a privacy and Internet safety lawyer in an interview with Good Morning America. When having an affair, people forget that “they’re leaving a trail of cyber bread crumbs behind them that their spouse may see” Aftab said.

Although more people are concerned about privacy online, that doesn’t necessarily translate into acquisition of basic computer skills required to keep your browsing history, passwords, desktop trashcan, texting history, user account, IM chat windows and connections, and emails hidden from people who share a network and/or computer.

It doesn’t require mad skillz to do so, but in general people still lack a basic level of digital fluency—which is likely to be their undoing if they decide to use the web browser to betray their spouse.

There are numerous sites describing “how to catch a cheating spouse” online, all containing ideas for snooping on an untrustworthy partner. But does virtual flirting count as cheating too? Not surprisingly, online discussion boards are packed with position statements from both sides of that ongoing debate–and the blogosphere is well-stocked with counselors and experts weighing-in.

In the meantime, back at the keyboard or mobile phone, the mad flirtexting continues—as does the cybersleuthing of suspicious spouses. The result? “More and more people may be discovering their significant other’s indiscretions via social networks,” observes blogger JR Raphael at PC World, mainly because, to put it bluntly, “faithless spouses are too stupid to realize they’re leaving an electronic trail.” Indeed.

Filed Under: online dating, social networks Tagged With: facebook, online dating, texting, twitter

controversial connections

December 12, 2009 By sidneyeve 3 Comments

Textbook example of public relations genius: online dating site controls the conversations and whips up enough controversy to command mainstream media coverage, again and again

When Ashley Madison launches a new ad campaign, or even talks about doing so, people get all hot and bothered. Lots of people. So many, that the online dating service has earned media headlines from Hollywood (circa 2007) to New York City (2008), and this week, in Toronto.

At issue is the scandal of outdoor advertising (billboards and streetcars wrapped in vinyl) promoting, well, adultery. Ashley Madison is a web dating site for married folks who are looking to have an affair, and as such it has inspired protests from many directions—and not in just the most conservative cultural corners.

This pushback was no surprise: the company has been whipping up this same moral outrage, and performing a well-rehearsed PR dance for several years now, and yet there is no discernible diminishing of the furyFX that results each time they roll out the outdoor—or even threaten to. Without spending a dime on adverts (there are no branded streetcars in Toronto as yet, to date it’s just a concept), this stunt campaign is a wild success.

What’s at issue for many folks is the way that AM promotes the normalization of the message that marital fidelity is out of step with modern times, and that cheating is a natural part of everyday (and everyone‘s) life. Using online dating sites to have an affair is not a new concept, and the online dating scene is fragmented into many niche communities catering to various tastes. So Ashley Madison does not really have a unique product per se. What makes this site different is its aggressive and unapologetic in-your-face attitude and approach to using the web to support infidelity.

Though AM argues that seeing a billboard won’t make a happily married person cheat, they are well aware that mass media advertising is designed to encourage imitation and inspire participation. The success of a campaign is measured accordingly—and in this case, AM’s website impressions certainly went through the roof this week in Toronto, surging upward with each newspaper article.

From a marketing angle this campaign is both a public relations coup and textbook example of social advertising at its most effective. The AM communications strategy is purpose-built to go viral through both mainstream media and online social media communications channels. It’s sharable. It’s got sexy images. It’s got a sticky (memorable) tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

Guerrilla marketing is intended to incite controversy worthy of water cooler conversation. In a culture filled with ad clutter, only the most exceptional messages have any chance of capturing public attention. Selling sex and using sex to sell is so mainstream it’s unlikely to inspire more than a passing glance. Selling a cyberservice to help you deceive your spouse and break your marital vows without getting caught—now that’s pushing the envelope a bit. The AM online dating business and its adverts are intended to shock, offend, and provoke, and therefore to drive word of mouth (and word of web) marketing. Thus far it’s working wonders.

Filed Under: online dating Tagged With: advertising, marketing, online dating, viral