Online Personals Watch Interviews Herb Vest, CEO, True.com
Online Personals Watch offers insight into the online personals world through a series of online dating CEO interviews
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) June 17, 2005 Online dating upstart, True.com,
states on it’s home page that married people will be prosecuted, has driven
online dating background checks legislation, and challenged the integrity of
it’s competitor’s personality profiling systems. What will it do next? Mark
Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch, interviews True.com’s CEO and Founder.
The following is an excerpt. The full interview appears at
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com (opw1.com).
You're a newcomer, an outsider; you
could have just been a VC without getting personally involved. What made you
want to be personally involved?
I'm an entrepreneur at heart and like to
be involved in running the business. A VC is more akin to banking than
entrepreneurship so VC's are not necessarily real good entrepreneurs, and vice
versa. I'm more socially oriented. I want to make a difference. What does
society need? One thing is money, the other is love. I handled the money with
HDVest, and so I then decided to try my hand at love. I know we can lower the
divorce rates. They're way too high. I believe True can do something about that.
How is True different than PerfectMatch and eHarmony? How is the site
better?
eHarmony is going after a particular group which represents
around 20% of the market; those looking for a long term relationship. The people
at True believe that love is a continuum. When you come off a relationship you
may say, ”wow, I never want to do that again,” but it may not be too long before
you wind up looking for another relationship. So, if you have people who are
looking specifically for long term relationships without regard to where they
are in life, they tend to fail. They are going into life with the idea that,
“I'm going to find my partner.” I think, going in to a relationship to have a
good time and ‘perhaps’ find a partner, makes more sense.
How will True
influence society over the next 5 years?
We plan to lower divorce rates in
this country, and others, with scientifically backed matching. We also need to
improve the courtship process. We will work on testing methods, dating tests and
things like that. There’s a big difference between dating and long term
relationships. For long term relationships it’s important couples agree about
raising kids, finances, household chores etc. For short term dating, the
relationship factors are not so important as sense of humor, mindset and
interests. We want to facilitate both sides of the equation, for the long term
and short term mindsets. You will see more and more testing on True; matching
base upon users goals, whatever they are within the dating continuum.
What’s next on the agenda?
We have ambitions far beyond just online
dating. As a relationship company, in the next couple of months we will
introduce pre-marriage counseling, pre-commitment counseling and self help
guides combined with a referral service to specialist counselors.
Can you
give me an example of why this is needed?
My wife and I occasionally argue,
as do all married couples. We stumbled on a technique where we become each
other’s attorney. We’ll put each other on the stand and pretend to be each
other, taking the others view. True will introduce conflict resolution
techniques over time. Every year suicides occur because of failed relationships.
People need to think through issues before they become hot issues. Many problems
can be averted. I have had a lot of experience with conflict resolution over the
years. There’s usually something that can be done.
What does the future
hold for True?
In a short time, just one and a half years, we’ve already
taken a substantial leading position in the industry. We will hold and gain.
You’re gonna see a whole lot more of us, raising a lot of ruckus. We made
progress with safer online dating. The industry needs to get more serious about
full disclosure and doing a great job for the consumer.
See
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com (opw1.com for short) for the full True.com interview
and online personals industry rankings (courtesy of Hitwise Competitive
Intelligence).
TRUE is a safety focused online relationship service whose
mission is to help singles find long lasting and fulfilling relationships. It is
the only online relationship service that conducts criminal background screening
and single verification screening. TRUE also guides its members step-by-step
through all stages of the relationship-building process with the help of
proprietary research and it’s team of relationship experts and
psychologists,
Online Personals Watch is the major news and information
portal for the online personals industry. The service is run by Mark Brooks who
worked for Friendster, FriendFinder and Cupid.com in the past. Online Personals
Watch is allied with the internet dating convention (idate2005.com), Hitwise
Competitive Intelligence (Hitwise.com) and One2One Living magazine
(one2onemag.com).
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb251902.htm