Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Youja.cn Secures $3m USD Series A Funding

PENN OLSEN - Jan 17 - China dating app U+ (Youja.cn) has secured $3m USD series A funding from VC funds at UMC Capital, The9 and World Trend Ventures. The funds will be used to improve service speed and grow membership further. U+ was set up by serial entrepreneurs who previously founded business social network Wealink.com and Mobile Software developer Vogins.

by Willis Wee
See full article at Penn Olsen

Mark Brooks: One to watch. Youja has a strong founder pedigree and is inspired by the best of the mobile dating apps in the West. Especially Skout, Flirtomatic and Badoo.

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Ignighter Fires Up $1.8M

CITY BIZ - Jan 6 - Group dating site Ignighter has raised $1.8M of a targeted $2.4M from six investors. Previously, the company raised $2.7M of a $3.1M offering from 25 investors. Ignighter launched in NYC in August of 2008 and has users in 28 countries.

by Richard Rabicoff
See full article at City Biz

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eÇift.com Scores 3 Million Euro Round Of Funding

UNQUOTE.COM - Dec 2 - 3TS Capital Partners, the Growth Capital Investor for Central and Eastern Europe, invests in Elit Teknoloji, the owner of eÇift.com the market leading Turkish dating site. eÇift will receive 3M Euro. eÇift was established in 2009 by serial entrepreneurs Tamer and Akgün Kulmaç and Janset Çelik to serve Turkish speaking users looking for a serious relationship. In 2010 the business received equity financing from business angels; participants included b-to-v Partners AG, Parship.de co-founder Konstantin Urban and Hotel.de founder Stefan Morschheuser. By now eÇift became the leading Turkish language dating platform with ~1.5M registered users and cash-flow positive operation.

See full article at Unquote.com

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HowAboutWe Raises $15 Million Series B Round

BUSINESS INSIDER - Nov 18 - HowAboutWe has just raised a $15M Series B round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from RRE, FF Ventures and some angels. On HowAboutWe users post what they want to do on a date and then see if there are any takers. HowAboutWe launched in April 2010. They raised a $3.2M Series A round led by RRE in September 2010.

by Alyson Shontell
See full article at SF Gate

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Zoosk Looks to Attract Investors for New Financing

REUTERS - Aug 17 - Zoosk recently hired Deutsche Bank to help it raise $50 - $75M. The new financing will help Zoosk pay for more marketing and international expansion. Zoosk operates a dating community of more than 50M users in 60 countries and it recently extended a TV ad campaign from the US into the UK and Canada. Zoosk closed a $30M round of funding in late 2009, bringing total financing at that time to $40.5M.

by Alistair Barr
See full article at Reuters

See all posts on Zoosk

Zin.gl Mines SN Data To Help Singles Find Their Perfect Match

TECH CRUNCH - May 5 - Dating site Zin.gl was designed not to appeal to masses of users. Zin.gl instead aims for quality, not quantity, having developed a way to mine existing social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare for valuable ‘dating information’, and then feeding that data into its ‘social matching’ systems. People who sign up for Zin.gl will find compatible dating partners, with unquestionable real identities. Zin.gl was founded by Alexander Dresen, who previously started place.to.be, the first chat site in Belgium, as well as its first social network, LookNMeet. The company has raised $600K from angel investors.

by Robin Wauters
See full article at Tech Crunch

iWould: Facebook Dating App

HUFFINGTON POST - Apr 14 - iWould is a crush wish-list launched last month. The app allows you to go through your friend list and select anywhere from one to ten people you'd be interested in romantically. The application cross-references your list with those of your friends also using the app. If someone you selected put you on their list, you'll both get a notice of the match. The company recently received a valuation of $750K from a private investor.

by Katherine Bindley
See full article at Huffington Post

SNAP Interactive Raises $8.5 Million

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 14 - SNAP Interactive, the publicly listed company behind social dating apps and services like AreYouInterested, is to raise $8.5M in a private placement transaction. Under the terms of the transaction, SNAP has agreed to sell ~4.25Mshares of its common stock to institutional investors at $2 per share and warrants to purchase up to ~2.125M additional shares of its common stock. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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See all posts on AreYouInterested

Smartdate Scores Another €3.5 Million

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 22 - Smartdate announced a €2M round in Feb of this year so that people can start dating friends of their Facebook friends. But now Smartdate has raised an additional €3.5M with the fonders of PriceMinster, Pierre Kosciuscko-Morizet and Pierre Krings. Smartdate is rapidly developing and already has a 25 person team in place. The company is very similar to Zoosk in that it is basing its online dating service on Facebook. Smartdate has users connecting via Facebook Connect and requires that you be at least 18 in order to access the Smartdater community. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Mark Brooks: Smartdate started out with a 300k Euro round, then quickly added an additional 1.7m Euro in February.

See all posts on Smartdate

HowAboutWe Secures $3.1 Million

BENZINGA - Nov 4 - Online dating startup "HowAboutWe" has raised $3.1M in funding led by RRE Ventures. HowAboutWe is focused on proposing and accepting specific date ideas that complete the sentence "How about we..." The site is pushing towards a national rollout in the next few months. FULL ARTICLE @ BENZINGA

See all posts on HowAboutWe

FriendFinder Networks Completes $551 Million Financing

PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 28 - FriendFinder Networks announced the completion of its $551,235,000 financing. FriendFinder Networks has 125M unique monthly visitors. The Company owns ~30,000 websites with ~405M registrants in 185 countries and offers a wide variety of online services. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Mark Brooks: 29500 landing pages? Who financed them?

See all posts on FriendFinder 

Triangulate Gets Cash From Playdom Chairman

PAID CONTENT - July 27 - Triangulate, a startup trying to build an online dating business on Facebook, has raised $750,000 from Trinity Ventures and Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson. Triangulate is the latest so-called “social dating” site to attract interest from investors; Zoosk, the most established player in the market, has raised more than $40M, while SmartDate, raised $2.2 M in March. Triangulate’s Facebook app, called Wings, uses data from a member’s Facebook profile, as well as from their accounts on Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Twitter and Foursquare, to automatically generate a basic dating profile for them, which includes topics they are interested in, where they like to hang out, and who their friends tend to be. FULL ARTICLE @ PAID CONTENT

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

EasyDate Raising £10m Through AIM Flotation

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - June 29 - EasyDate, Edinburgh-based online dating business, goes public with a £10m placing on London’s junior market. Founder Bill Dobbie and business partner Max Polyakov are floating their niche-focused dating business on AIM to fund acquisitions and international growth as they attempt to win more of a global market worth an estimated £1bn. Tomorrow’s listing will give the company, which has a turnover of £11.5M, a market cap of approximately £45M as it issues 75 million shares at 60p. EasyDate is currently adding 200,000 members a month, and projects revenues will hit £19M next year. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

See all posts on EasyDate

Online Privacy Startup ReputationDefender Raises $15 Million

TECH CRUNCH - June 22 - ReputationDefender, an online security startup, has announced a $15M Series C round led by JAFCO Ventures with existing investors, Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to $24M. The startup, which just raised $8.65M last year, helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

Online Dating Without The Creepy Strangers

CNN MONEY - May 20 - Thread.com is a new site that lets singles view profiles of their friends' pals on Facebook and request introductions. Facebook already has all the raw ingredients of the largest dating site in the world. More than 400M people worldwide have profiles. And since Thread relies on users' pre-existing profiles, rather than asking them to create new ones, it takes less effort to get started than most online dating outlets. Last year, Thread landed $1M in venture funding from First Round Capital and Sequoia Capital. Angel investors, including RottenTomatoes.com CEO Joe Greenstein and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, also put in additional $200,000. Thread's close ties to Facebook bring a few risks. "If Facebook decides to do something, Thread must follow along, and in one fell swoop it could take their bottom line with it," says Mark Brooks, an Internet dating industry consultant. Facebook is already at the center of a firestorm over privacy issues. Thread still has to figure out how to monetize its matchmaking, whether through advertising, subscriptions or virtual gift-giving. Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital, had already tried his hand at Facebook matchmaking -- cutting and pasting his friends' profiles and sending awkward e-mails back and forth -- when the Thread business plan hit his desk. "A lot of people were doing this manually, so I thought, 'What a wonderful idea,'" he says. Brooks, the Internet dating industry consultant, agrees: "They're bottling what we already do in the real world." FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY

See all posts on Thread.com

This is the news for March 3rd through March 8th, 2010. Please follow this link to enjoy the high-resolution version. Here is the news we covered:

• Spark Networks releases 2009 financial stats
• Great Hill Partners offers to take Spark private
• EasyDate showing impressive growth
• Smartdate.com raises 1.7 million Euros in capital
• SeniorPeopleMeet.com launches new magazine
• Match.com launches new ad campaign

Internet Dating Industry Weekly News March 2nd, 2010

This is the news for February 23rd through March 2nd, 2010. Please follow this link to enjoy the high-resolution version. Here is the news we covered:

• PlentyofFish continues to grow rapidly
• Match.com to acquire Singlesnet
• German online dating market booming
• Smartdate.com raises 2.2 million Euros
• Australians suffer heavy losses to online fraud
• Weopia.com launches new virtual dating service
• HerWay.com partners with HonestyOnline
• Maryland Bill proposes tight restrictions
• Harvard Professor Michael Norton to speak at iDate L.A.

Smartdate Secures €2M

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 3 - Paris based dating service Smartdate has raised €1.7M with European VC 360 Capital Partners. Smartdate, which previously secured Angel investment from four international Business Angels for a total of €300,000, was founded by Fabrice Le Parc, who also launched be2.com in France and Benelux in 2006-07. This €2 million total amount of seed funding will be mainly used to market the service as they have an objective of one million users before the end of the year. Smartdate wants to use Facebook Friends as a criteria for your dating search. Using Facebook Connect to log in to Smartdate, you search for single people among friends of your friends. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

See all posts on Smartdate

Lovestruck Raises £285,000

PR WEB - Jan 10 - London dating site Lovestruck.com has raised £285,000 in Series A funding. Lovestruck.com matches single professionals to others who work close by for coffee, lunch or after-work drinks. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Zoosk Secures $30 Million In Series D Funding

PR NEWSWIRE - Dec 3 - Zoosk, the social dating community, has closed a $30M Series D round of funding. The round was led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners, the oldest venture capital firm in the United States. Existing investors Canaan Partners and ATA Ventures also participated. Since its launch in December 2007, Zoosk has attracted~40M singles. Singles can join Zoosk via their social network by adding the Zoosk application on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

See all posts on Zoosk