Went to my first event with the folks at ecademy they had very interesting speakers from five dating companies operating in the UK, Date the UK, Match. SpeedDater, Chemistry, JakeTM
Simon from date the UK gave an interesting insight into how fast things happen on the net. Within 10 months of putting the site up they attracted over 75,000 folks and revenues over £500K. Wow! Insights are that the male/female ratio is 2:1 that folks go on line on rainy days and their new site www.sexintheuk.com attracted 1678 members (no pun intended) in 4 days. Apparently the rate was driven by carefully getting site google wise!
The guy from match pulled a hat trick by finding someone in audience who had met and married from match! Which in a crowd of 200+ is pretty good. They have just bought udate which to me always got much worst results. In fact I met Suzanne through Match!
Speedater was started by a couple of redundant publishing guys, explained what a waste of money adverising in Metro was for them. The other interesting statistic is that by narrowing age gap of folks attending it increases participation although as is typical, apparently, offline events always attract a male female ratio of 1:2.
Chemistry is a different idea, they organise parties with ideas like a polaroid gallery etc interestingly more females than males puts a bit of alimit, all events are 1:1 he put this down to women been more organised at planning events in future wereas guys leave it till last minute.
Jake is for the gay community although I suspect it would also work more generally, they organise like a couple of small events a week and online chat dating. The site is done so it looks like a regular work site.
A very exhausting evening met loads of new people just need to get organised like Thomas Power and keep everything in a black book. Or even better print of delegate list first!