Category: Blog Post

As soon as I saw Tinder, I knew it was going to crush the competition. Unfortunately, I was included in that competition.

How did I know Tinder would succeed? Tinder found the Holy Grail — the one thing all online dating services (mine included) had been trying to find to no avail:

A way to stimulate word-of-mouth referrals.

Before Tinder, there was a serious stigma around online dating. You only told your friends you were dating online after you’d successfully met your match — and even then, it wasn’t information you went around broadcasting…

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In 2007, my company was in a precarious spot:

• We’d scrapped our product for a full rebuild.
• We were rebuilding our product as a Facebook app — a totally untested platform.
• We were quickly running out of funds.

We needed our new dating service, AreYouInterested?, to find traction quickly, otherwise we’d be out of capital.

I’m going to go ahead and spoil the ending — It worked out. AreYouInterested? is now FirstMet, a dating community with over 30 million users.

However, back in 2007, we had no idea it would work. We were sure of just two things…

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In 2007, my company’s marketing efforts were, in a word, lackluster.

I ran a dating service called IAmFreeTonight.com (later known as AreYouInterested, and now, FirstMet), and in 2007, we’d launched the following marketing campaigns:

• We dumped $50,000 into one Spring Break promotion involving helicopters, skywriting, and girls in bikinis. It netted us zero signups.
• We tested viral features that failed.
• We’d appeared in a few major media outlets — USA Today, Geraldo, etc. — which had driven some signups, but not nearly enough.

In short, we had nothing but a handful of good stories…

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Everything you PR team has told about when to issue your blog post or press release is dead wrong.

PR folks will tell you that timing is everything, and they are right about that. In order to get maximum visibility for your story, they will tell you to publish it when: 1) your target audience is available to engage your content; and 2) when bloggers and reporters are ready to spread your story while it’s still hot.

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