OPW INTERVIEW -- Oct 4 -- Lorna Borensteinis the General Manager for Yahoo Personals, the single most trafficed
online personals site in existence today (per Hitwise,
Nielsen//Netratings). Prior to joining Yahoo Personals Lorna was
VP and General Manager for eBay Canada.

What did you learn from eBay that most significantly affected your approach to running Yahoo! Personals?
The
most important thing I learned there was that a site is only as good as
its community . If you're constantly taking care of the needs of the
community, then it has a sustaining value proposition and you can
develop revenue for the business.

Do you think personality profiling has a future? How has Yahoo! Personals Premier worked out for Yahoo?
Singles
are looking for help in making better choices for their happiness and
dating. When you think about the needs of singles, you have to
think about their overall relationship needs. From what we hear, both
from Yahoo! research and secondary research, singles want to be better
understood and want a more personalized experience. Our extensive
market research identified a clear opportunity to better deliver what
singles want: customized services and features that meet their diverse
needs. We were actually the first online dating company to offer
singles a customized approach to dating based on their varying
relationship goals.

To do that requires greater customization and personalization. It
can't be just photo personals, we have to help people to identify the
criteria that are most important for them and find others with those
matching criteria. Also, we need to help people understand
themselves better and enable them to take advantage of the screening
tools available for online daters. Then we let chemistry take
over. Anything to help people do a better job of understanding
themselves is a great advantage to the consumer. We believe that
this level of personalization gives Yahoo! Personals Premier a
brilliant future.

Yahoo! Personals drives a lot of its users from
Yahoo!. Now that the online ad market is booming, how has this
affected internal promotion and is Yahoo! Personals pushing for more
external promotion now?
We are blessed to be part of the
Yahoo! network. Yahoo! has more than 380 million unique visitors
a month. External advertising is increasing the extent of our
reach. We're very efficient at acquiring customers off the Yahoo!
network and we're working to diversify our order sources all the
time. The other thing that's great is that we have a search
business, so we're really be able to take advantage of search engine
optimization, search engine marketing and the like, which engage new
users with Yahoo! Personals.

Do you think Yahoo! personals could ever extend beyond the web into singles events and mobile phone personals?
I
think Yahoo! Personals will absolutely extend onto different devices as
the industry moves increasingly beyond the desktop. Singles are
looking for more of a 360 degree dating life and don't really separate
online and offline and all their different activities, so we are
continuing to build and extend beyond the PC. It's amazing what
is happening in Asia. They're so far ahead of the U.S. in terms
of embracing mobility as a way of life. Some of the
technologies are very compelling. You can give virtual flowers on
mobile devices to someone you're dating. We're very excited about
all of the possibilities and are looking into the opportunities that
make sense to our users with great enthusiasm.

When a man meets a woman he's interested in for the first
time, he has to communicate two things to her, 1. he's interested, 2.
he's safe. What is Yahoo! Personals position on safety going to
be in 2006?
We continue to have the same perspective; just
as in life in the real world and in offline dating you have to use
common sense when using online dating. Yahoo! is the most trusted
of online brands and Yahoo! Personals is a safe community to be part
of, but you still have to use common sense. We hope all users
will be aware and leery of any approach to screening that is out of
their hands and that might offer a false sense of security. Common
sense and the same approaches people have taken in dating for ages are
still the most solid. We encourage users to continue to use their
common sense, whether online or in the real world.

jupiter Research ran a survey this January and found 35% of
online daters were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with
personals sites. Only 29% were somewhat satisfied or very
satisfied. Yahoo! Personals taglines and text under promise...so
Yahoo! Personals can over deliver. What are the key areas Yahoo!
Personals is focusing on to improve satisfaction levels?
It's
quite purposeful that we choose to under promise and over
deliver. This helps us build credibility and trust, which is
exactly what we're focused on. Online personals are a way to make
better choices and have more variety in dating. We're working on
being able to incorporate user feedback in real time. We actually
just conducted our 3rd annual Singles Voice Survey that shows more than
75% of singles are looking for long term relationships. Many of
these are in the 45+ age group. Yahoo! Personals is focused on
helping people find great dates that have potential for the
future. Singles might also come out of a relationship or marriage
and be looking for a more casual relationship. We serve that
audience as well. As mentioned earlier, we were the first online
dating site to offer customized options for daters looking for
different kinds of relationships.

Online personals users send each other emails then they send
instant messages, then they're out on a coffee date. That's a big
jump! Where do video/webcam dating and the mobile phone fit in?
It
depends on the market we're playing in and the age of the person.
The phone fits in more with 18 to 24 year olds than with those aged
49+. Just like there's no single answer as to what someone is
looking for in a mate, there's no one answer to how our users want to
connect with that person inside and outside the online world. We
believe that the dating experience on a PC is not the same as on a
mobile device. We don't think the market is there yet for video
dating. We do believe there will be a strong future in video
overall, however. Mobile personals will eventually become part of
the online personals experience. Users will set up their profiles
and matching preferences, and those profiles and requirements from the
PC will also be in the mobile environment. When that user happens
to be out in the evening and another user happens to be at the same
club, the phone will beep with an alert that they're there. There
are some really fun applications for mobile devices which are really
going to make the online dating experience even more enjoyable.

Users will be able to share profiles with friends over coffee.
Mobile applications will extend online dating and take it out into the
real world.

What does the future hold for Yahoo Personals?
We're
expanding the community and enhancing offerings for the betterment of
all online daters. We will continue to keep our genuine,
authentic voice. At the end of the day, just as we say at the site,
we're deeply focused on helping people have better first dates and more
second dates.