While Dolphin 7 and 8 development is under way, we’ve attended iDate 2009 - the largest yearly event in the dating and social networking industry. Now we finally have a chance to share our observations and report about what we did there.

Goals

This time we landed at Miami intending to find as many technology partners as possible to extend Dolphin and get opinions on how to improve it. iDate is a wonderful opportunity to do both - there you can meet with decision-makers and see the faces behind businesses. Hundreds of CEOs, directors and senior managers gather to share ideas and strike deals.

Results

To cut a long story short - this iDate was GREAT for us. It felt like we had a chance to talk with everyone and got our fill of ideas and plans. What’s most exciting is that we’ve agreed to partner with quite a few companies, and you’re going to see the results of those deals in Dolphin 7 - very soon.

Dolphin 7 is already a lot more modular than 6.x and is much friendlier to 3rd party applications. We want to leverage that improvement and turn Dolphin into a platform uniting the industry’s most effective tools. I’m talking about anti-fraud systems, image-verification tools, alternative communication widgets, site-security add-ons and even integration with shared databases.

I know that the Dolphin 7 release has taken much more time than many of you expect, but hey... didn’t we make a mistake rushing out previous releases a little too soon?

Personally

Both Julia and I were thrilled and amazed with how positive, friendly and easy-going most people from our industry are. We could really feel that uniting people is a worthy mission... and it truly may change the world.

So

If you’re looking for fresh ideas, partnerships or just want to socialize with like-minded people - go to iDate. Plus, we’re likely to meet you in person then.

p.s. We’re in Los Angeles now and will be in London in March, so anyone willing to meet and talk...