OPW INTERVIEW - Oct. 14 - Jim Safka just celebrated his first year as CEO of Match.com.
Jim came to Match.com from AT&T Wireless, where he served as VP and
GM of E-commerce. Prior to that he spent five years at E*TRADE,
most recently as VP Marketing, growing the customer base from 200,000
accounts to over four million. He held brand and product management
positions at Intuit (Quicken), Warner Bros, and Paramount Pictures, and
he has an MBA from Northwestern University and a B.S. Accounting from
U.S.C.

Nielsen and Hitwise show Yahoo as being the top online personals site? Is there anything you'd like to say about this?

I believe Yahoo does a terrific job in the category of
traffic. However, I think of the online dating category as a
subscription business measured in terms of subscribers. If
measurement is based on traffic and unique users alone, I don't think
that is a clear indicator of who has the most market share.
Yahoo! has the #1 site for direct traffic in the U.S (Match.com is #1
globally). However, Match.com has unparalleled distribution
through partner sites that also bring people to Match.com; such as AOL
and MSN. Here at Match.com we consider such things as: How many
paid subscriptions do we have? How many new subscriptions are
coming in? How much is each subscriber paying? How many
people are visiting and subscribing? Measuring traffic is a great
metric if you're running an advertising business. If you look at
the number of subscriptions, we have twice as many subscriptions as our
competitiors and to me that's the true mark of leadership.

Jupiter Research ran a survey this January and found 35% of
online daters were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with
personals sites.

We're constantly doing things to improve our site and to make the
member experience more meaningful and successful. In terms of
satisfaction, when you take a step back and look at relationships in
general and you consider that people have been dating or courting ,
forever, you'll see that dissatisfaction levels with dating and
relationship experiences have always been high throughout
history. As the Internet has become part of our daily lives, it
expands peoples' possibilities. Now, a lot of people know someone
who has met their spouse through Match.com. It's terrific in that
respect. At the end of the day, though, people are people, and
relationships are relationships. The new medium is a wonderful,
fundamentally different way to meet, but it doesn't change the human
dynamics.

What kind of paradigm and technology shifts will Match.com and the industry go through in the next 5 to 10 years?

The main thing happening is that online dating is becoming a
mainstream way in which people meet people in this generation. It
is just the way things work, so there won't be a real adoption curve
future generations have to jump over. It will be completely
natural for them. Online platforms will be a completely normal
experience. It will be much more romantic when integrated voice
and video are added. That will make it more natural and
exciting. We're looking at location- based services as part of
our wireless product, Match.com Mobile. It's interesting when we
talk to our customers about these services, but they're not clamoring
for it. So we'll see how it goes.

How will Chemistry.com stand distinguished from the likes of eHarmony and TRUE and PerfectMatch?

Chemistry is a breakthrough new product. We have been
working at this business and helping people find love for 10 years at
Match. It was the original company that started the online dating
category, and we've studied single people in great depth. We
commissioned what's considered to be the most extensive research
identifying the relationship needs, attitudes and behaviors of single
people in America, and we've gained important insights from the
hundreds of thousands of Match success couples. We worked on Chemistry.comwith a world reknowned anthropologist, Helen Fisher, to combine the
best of real world interactions with online services. Take the
Chemistry Profile. This profile very quickly figures out the
types of people we should match you with - people you're most likely to
have chemistry with. Users then go through our 1-2-3 Meet
process. We do our best to facilitate a face-to-face meeting,
because that's the true test of chemistry between two people.

After the first meeting, users tell us how it went. We put this
feedback back into the matching system, and Chemistry.com takes it into
account to help deliver even better matches. We're reinventing
this category the way we first did when we started Match.com 10 years
ago...

Does a personality profiling system for an online personals site really need to be validated?

I think the personality profiling products need to be evaluated by
the market and validated through successful customer experiences.
We ask the questions that really matter to consumers. Is it delivering
value? Is it facilitating the right kinds of relationships?
Are our customers ending up in enduring relationships? For our
products, we have a lot of proprietary data and patented technology
that our customers tell us is working for them. This information isn't
something we would feel comfortable turning over to a third party given
the competitive nature of our industry.

What will be Match.com's position on singles events in
2006? You learned a lot from matchlive I'm sure - is there some
potential to bring it back to life?

We're very interested in events. We still do events in the UK
and as part of broader marketing partnerships. Events have been a
terrific learning experience. I know for certain at Match, we're
a company that really knows how to get people together, and we are
terrific at building software! When it comes to a live events, we
need to find the right partner. We would love to pursue singles
events in 2006 and beyond! We're all about connecting people, and
events are just one more way to do that. Events can also introduce
people to online dating that may not otherwise consider it. As the
category leader, we have a vested interest in growing the category,
because we grow when our category grows.

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 match's position on safety going to be in 2006?

The privacy and security of our members is our #1 priority at Match,
and safety has been built into the site from day one. Since 1995,
Match.com has used a patented, double-blind email system to help
members communicate without revealing their personal contact
information until they're ready. We have dating safety tips and advice
right on our home page. The online dating category is becoming a
part of how America operates -- how they meet. People also meet at the
office, through family and friends, at restaurants, bars, and so
on. No matter how you meet someone or how you were introduced,
there are risks. And we believe that a bit of caution and
skepticism is appropriate until someone proves themselves
trustworthy. The most important thing is common sense and
trusting your instincts. The same caution should be used wherever
people meet. They should do that online just like any other
environment.

Match.com is 10 years old, what would you like to achieve in 2006; or, what does the future hold for match.com?

This is a growth category. Jupiter predicted the online dating
category would grow by 9% this year...and yet Match.com grew by 26% in
the second quarter (year over year). We're the category
leader. We have to continue to innovate. If you stall or
trip as the leader of the band, you end up back in the tuba
section. We will continue to grow this category by doing 3
things: 1. We will be the #1 player in the online dating
category by continuing to innovate; and help build the category to more
than $1 billion globally. 2. We believe the customer has
all the answers, so we'll keep listening to them. Something that
I do and every employee at Match.com does is stay close to the
customer. Every person is trained on the customer service
system. We're all involved in reviewing profiles, approving
photos, and providing customer service. It's a requirement for
everyone here at Match, from our receptionist all the way to me, as the
CEO. We're all listening to our customers. 3. Continue
providing a superior customer experience; we want to open up new
possibilities for people and give them the tools they need to connect
and build loving, lasting relationships. I get emails from literally
hundreds of Match customers every month sharing their success stories;
I even get invited to their weddings! We also stay in touch with Match
couples that met years ago and are now sharing their baby stories with
us. At the end of the day, that's what it's really all about, helping
people find someone that they can build a life with.