Online Personals

Mark Brooks operates a boutique consultancy that exclusively serves
internet dating and social networking companies. He has advised the
CEO's of Friendster, Friendfinder, Cupid, Webdate, PlentyofFish, TRUE
amongst others, and has worked in the online community space since
1998.

When Mark earned his B.S. Engineering Management from the University
of Hertfordshire (near London), online dating was just beginning to
take shape on the message boards and forums of the internet. He
originally ventured to the U.S.A. to help start a community aerial
photography company in Pennsylvania in 1991.

After graduating in 1994, he sold non-contact laser-based metrology
and particle measuring systems to the likes of HP, Intel and Seagate.

By 1998, Mark saw the potential that the internet held for helping
people connect and moved to California to start Ace-Club.com, an
adventure and social club serving Silicon Valley, and then help start
eturn (now Remoba), an early competitor to Plaxo. In 1999 Mark helped
develop an early personality profiling dating site called Hypermatch
which was sold to EZBoard.

In 2003 he worked with Jonathan Abrams at Friendster to seed the
Friendster community through media relations, promoters and events. He
then joined FriendFinder to assist Dr Conru and Dr Zhang with media
relations and business development. He left FriendFinder with Dr Zhang
to help design and build the personality profiling based diet site,
Diet.com, and then worked as VP for Cupid.com to overhaul the site
design and acquire a speed-dating company and expand it into 70 U.S.
cities.

June 2004 marked the first post on OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. 'OPW'
has become the #1 online resource for the business of online dating and
matchmaking. SocialNetworkingWatch.com followed in August 2006.
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com and SocialNetworkingWatch.com have no ads, no
fluff, just raw news, interviews, official rankings and commentary
relevant to the online personals and social networking industries.

Mark's expertise in the industry has made him a regular keynote
speaker at conferences around the world and a highly sought after
consultant to internet dating and social networking companies. He
currently serves PlentyofFish, World Singles, College Tonight,
myPartner.com, eLove, iovation, Jangl, Trustcash, and some other
early-stage startups.

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• Mark Brooks
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