The folks at Formula PR have a good sense of humor.

We are pleased to announce that SpeedDate.com, the world’s first online speed dating Web site, and Formula took their relationship to the next level and are officially together. For information on the world of online dating, survey results and expert commentary on love in the virtual age, please be sure to get in touch with us.

Nicely done. Actually got me to visit their site and introduce myself.

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Roger Limon, Calisto100 CEO, emailed to let us know about Calisto100.

What are the criteria by which people are selected? We are looking for singles with something special to offer more than skin deep. Confident, ambitious, adventurous, honest, humorous singles with a positive outlook on life are the core qualities we focus on; however, it simply depends on the person. It is no secret that dating/quality is subjective, but Calisto100 aims to filter out the vast majority of singles online who aren’t focused on substance. There are plenty of singles out there looking for quality, and we want to offer them a place on the web where quality actually matters.

Who does the selecting? The company reviews all applications. All decisions are unanimous in order to make the list.

Why 100 people? It felt better than 99 or 101. We are offering a platform for singles to be featured, and it is just too easy to get lost in the crowd on all the other dating sites. We wanted a simple interface where users could simply click a city and see the top 100 all at once. No searching, no filtering, we do that for you.

What is your revenue model? We are subscription based. Calisto100 members who make the list pay a monthly subscription. The first month is free as of now.

What makes you think people are going to apply? In one word…quality. The web is saturated with online dating, but there seems to be no filter. Free sites bombard members with senseless ads, and paid sites will accept anyone who pays. Where do users go to find a quality single online? That is the gap we are trying to fulfill.

We believe that once Calisto100 develops its presence on the web focusing on quality, singles will then take the time to apply. And remember, the application is FREE. This is not going to be easy, and we know it. Users are used to signing up within seconds, and joining free communities; however, that is part of the problem. There is no filter in the dating world, and we believe that there is a need for quality. Calisto100 also offers an extremely different model. Anyone, member or non-member, can contact a Calisto100 member. This is free for non-members. All of those singles who want to online date without joining a community now can. Calisto100 members are able to control who contacts them, so this is a very unique spin to the standard online model.

I talked to someone about this exact idea a few months ago. Screening is a good idea, but people seem to have a problem with the arbitrary notion of what makes someone worthy.

There are several sites that only accept beautiful people, which means classically good looking. If you are that shallow, go right ahead and join and good luck to you.

First they say it’s subscription based, then it says it’s free. Perhaps they are talking about a social networking application. I’m concerned that people are not going to want to pay a subscription fee for Calisto100. I definitely wouldn’t pay until I was approved.

Calisto100 would be better if acceptance process was crowdsourced from the membership instead of relying a group of dudes sitting in a room looking at profiles. Can you imaging those meetings? Reviewing thousands of profiles every week? I would go numb and just start picking the hottest people, who has time to read profiles?  

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Happy new year to everyone, hope your 2009 is starting off well. I’ve been sick and took some time away from the keyboard and am back and recharged. I have a many posts backed up from over the holidays and other tidbits that I’ll be posting this week.

I heard from Meezog CEO Erez Mizrachi, who was nice enough to send along details about their new service.

Meezoog was founded in 2007, raised $320K from private investors, including Dr. Yossi Vardi (Mirabilis – ICQ). Meezoog Alpha was launched on March 2008 with a private international community and expanded by way of invitation. About 200 seed members invited over 3,000 of their friends.

The key differentiator of Meezoog is in the implementation of unique Trust technologies. Meezoog allows virtual strangers to interact with each other in a safer way. Meezoog utilizes an innovative algorithm engine to calculate a set of “social trust” measurements (patent pending).

Today we’re on the verge of launching Meezoog Beta, which will be publically open, allowing people to connect with people they know in Meezoog or to start their own communities.

Meezoog is not just a “stand-alone” or a “destination site”. Meezoog utilizes the Company’s Cross-Platform Social Layer to cover leading social networking platforms and sites (e.g. MySpace, LinkedIn, HI5). And as aforementioned, this platform is empowered by a proprietary algorithm engine. The purpose of this platform is to allow members the interaction with others, regardless of the “network of origin”.

Today Meezoog Social Layer includes Facebook and Meezoog.com, and soon will include additional platforms and social sites. Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that unlike social graph and data portability applications, Meezoog provides measurements of “social trust” as well as trust-based “human paths” that connect people. Those measurements are designed to imitate “real-life” trust among people and allow the social validation of users’ representation on the Net.

Additional important points:

• Meezoog allows the formation of private communities and networks to integrate like-minded individuals.

• Search results are presented in order of “social proximity” and a “trust gauge” shows the calculated “social trust” for every person in the network.

• The system analyzes and locates the most trusted paths between people.

• Instead of referring to all connections as “friends”, Meezoog specifies and embeds the nature of relationship: “teacher”, “close friend”, “uncle”, “coworker”, etc.; its duration (days, years, etc.); the frequency of communications (daily/monthly/special occasions, etc.); etc.

• Meezoog members also include non-singles who wish to bring in and vouch for their dear ones.

Cross-network interaction (think social graph) is going to be a popular feature in 2009. People want to be able to take their data with them and it should be easier to move to a new social network or dating site.

Meezoog has obviously done a pretty deep think about what it means to be friends and how to improve on the current oversimplified notion of a friend on social networks. Understanding the social proximity of people I’m interested in to people I trust sounds useful, but is it the kind of functionality thats unique enough to drive the growth of an entirely new site? Seems like this could be added to Facebook, avoiding the cold-start empty database issue. Actually, this would have been a great feature for Engage.

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Online relationship network FriendFinder Networks has registered for a $460 million initial public offering. FriendFinder Networks used to be called Various, Inc. until it was acquired by Penthouse Media Group in December 207. FriendFinder Networks owns many dating sites, including flagship adult site, AdultFriendFinder.

I briefly met Marc Bell, the CEO of FriendFindher Networks and Managing Director of Marc Bell Capital Partners at iDate last year. I also remember him from 2000, when I was tracking datacenters all over the world and his Globix company was front and center in the IT world. I’m sure Marc snatched up Various Inc with the idea of an IPO from day one.

The offering is “up to” $460 million. That is an absolute best-case scenario. AdultFriendFinder should be fairly recession-proof, given that people are naughty regardless of the economy. However, it’s an unfortunate time to plan for an IPO, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to pull it in the spring if market conditions continue to worsen. I wonder if FriendFinder Networks could make it into the Vice Fund?

We don’t have much to go on until the prospectus is published. I’ve worked with several companies during the quiet period, and given the handcuffs the SEC puts you in, expect rampant speculation based on few facts.

Like so many relationship sites, AFF had a massive traffic spike over the summer. To put FriendFinder Networks in perspective, it made somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million last year with approximately 20 million unique visitors per month.

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