No plans this week? Or, ever found yourself with an extra ticket to a concert or sporting event, but didn’t have anyone to go with? In the past, your solution was wading through Craigslist postings or calling all your friends. Well now there are two web-based services that allow you to find others to do things with — Who’s Going and MatchActivity. Who’s Going is the one that impressed me the most, although it lacks users and activities (they just recently soft-launched). The site is simple and very well thought out. The business model works like this: Posting activities are free and then people that “want to go” to an activity, pay an amount ($1 as of this writing) if they are chosen — if you aren’t chosen, you get your money back. Thus, if I had 1 extra ticket to a concert, I could post (for free) that I have a ticket and ask who wants to go — I might get 4 responders (who each put up $1 to Who’s Going). I then go through their profiles and choose who I want to go with — that person’s $1 goes to Who’s Going and the other 3 people get their $1 back. Note: Your friends can apply/attend for free. The site has social networking features — allowing you to browse profiles, add friends, message people, add people as favorites (to learn of any activities they post), post photos to your profile (people can comment on them if they are a friend), and post photos/comments to actual activities. They also provide widgets that you can embed in your blog or MySpace profile to promote a specific event or all your events. There’s not much more to say about this site – I love it. It just needs users and activities. I encourage you to go post an activity and use ‘TC’ in the title somewhere, so you can connect with some fellow TechCrunch readers in your area. So go ahead and find a TC activity or post an activity — a poker game, or a happy hour gathering, or fishing. Who’s Going is founded, coded, and designed by John Wehr. He is also the developer of the (now stagnant) Tagalag, which we profiled last year. MatchActivity has a dating spin to it — focused on finding activity partners for singles (but anyone can respond to any activity, whether they’re → Read More
Online dating is big business, drawing about 4 million U.S. Internet users daily in June 2006 (and 25 million monthly), and they spend a daily average of nearly 17 minutes each on these sites. That adds up to a lot of page views – almost 4.5 billion per month (source: Comscore). And that doesn’t take into account the billion-a-day Myspace page views, which many people argue is basically a very large dating site. All told, at least 15% of U.S. Internet users visit an online dating site each month. The two largest dating sites are Yahoo Personals and Match.com, respectively, with a combined 9.3 million monthly visitors. Both allow free browsing, but to communicate with other members you must pay a fee. Match.com charges $30/month for the basic plan; Yahoo’s fee is $25/month. Both sites also offer premium plans that attempt to help you find a compatible mate. An entire batch of next generation dating sites have emerged that are starting to nip at the established players. One, PlentyofFish, launched in 2003 and has over half a million monthly U.S. visitors. Recently, even Google has entered the space through their Google Base product. One big difference is that these sites are (mostly) free, making revenue from ad sales alone. But many of these sites are also experimenting with new ways to introduce people who may be a good match. More on each below. → Read More
