Its Online Dating Season Again

Online Dating. The category I helped to create with match.com when I started with Electric Classifieds in 1994. Here's the short history.. And an update courtesy of today's Wall Street Journal . Several feelings about this -- wow $39.95 per month, very cool, we launched one of the very first paid subscription models with Match.com in 1995 and I believe we charged $3.95 per month (if we only knew . . .). The article lead is interesting "attracting older singles" not surprising, back when Match.com was started we knew that women over 29 and men over 32 were much more likely to pay (and this was more than 10 years ago when the net was dominated by more men and younger people overall). Match.com's former president is given alot of credit here; good for him, no doubt he did a terrific job. My regret is that after working so hard on Match.com for three years, when we were clearly ahead of our time in terms of the value of brands and community on the Internet, that I didn't stay with it. Complicated story, we sold it to Cendant for less than $10 million, Cendant wanted to move it to Connecticut (I wasn't going to move) and at the time my sons were still very small and I was burnt out, especially given how long I had been fighting for resources within Electric Classifieds. Alright, water under the bridge, I'm proud that I launched and helped to build one of the strongest /leading brands on the Internet, met some great people doing it, andmade an impact not only on Internet business but on people's lives (loves).