Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Cupid In Dating Brands Lease Deal With Brightsolid

BBC.CO.UK - Feb 14 - Cupid is to take on several brands under a leasing deal with Dundee-based Friends Reunited owner Brightsolid. Under the 10-year deal, Cupid will operate Friends Reunited Dating, Friends Over Fifty and Swoon. Brightsolid will retain ownership of their domain names, trade marks and intellectual property rights. Brightsolid CEO Chris van der Kuyl said: "Our acquisition of Friends Reunited in April 2010 helped the company to achieve significant growth last year, with overall sales up by 75%. "However, it is clear that Cupid has real strengths in the online dating sector, so it makes absolute sense to enter this agreement with them for our dating business.

See full article at BBC.co.uk

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Valentine’s Boost For Online Dating Sites

FT - Feb 13 - Internet dating companies are expecting a boost in business in the run-up to Valentine’s day as increasing numbers of people log online for love. "We start to see an increase in activity from the end of Dec and that builds up to Valentine’s day,” said Karl Gregory, managing director of Match.com in the UK and Ireland. The UK market, with an estimated £120M a year in revenue, has more than 800 dating websites. Edinburgh-based Cupid, which trades under names including benaughty.com and girlsdateforfree.com, is the sector’s only London-quoted company. The company projects achieving £100M in revenue by 2014, a fourfold increase on 2010. It has spent more than £10M on acquisitions to raise client volumes, expanding operations to 16 countries using 10 different websites. Unlike Match.com, which builds up strong single brands, Cupid focuses on a lot of niche markets such as expat Indian dating and single parents.

by Christopher Thompson and Jennifer Thompson
See full article at FT

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Cupid – Eurozone Crisis Fails To Stop Continent’s Love Life

SCOTSMAN - Nov 23 - Cupid said Europeans showed no signs of losing their appetite for “fun and love” amid the economic turmoil, keeping its rapid international expansion on track. Analysts at Peel Hunt believe Cupid's profits before tax and other deductions will reach £11M this year, up from £5.6M in 2010, and should hit £20M by 2013. CEO Bill Dobbie said the firm was spending ~ £30M on advertising this year – more than half of estimated revenues. Cupid mainly advertises online but Dobbie said that adverts direct to mobile phones was a rapidly growing area.

by Dominic Jeff
See full article at Scotsman

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Flirt.com Android App Launched For USA And Australia

PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 18 - Flirt.com's Android App is now available in the USA and Australia. Flirt.com's app offers:

- Location-based search
- Alerts and notifications
- Chat rooms and more

See full article at Market Watch

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ClickandFlirt.com Launches In Australia And Canada

PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 20 - Cupid has now expanded ClickandFlirt.com to Australia and Canada. This latest launch is in response to the success of Cupid's other brands; including BeNaughty.com, Cupid.com, GirlsDateForFree.com and Flirt.com have already seen in the Australian and Canadian markets (currently ~3M active members).

See full article at PR Newswire

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New Cupid UK TV Advertising Campaign

BUSINESSWIRE - Nov 18 - Cupid plc has launched two TV advertising campaigns for its Cupid.com and BeNaughty.com brands across specific ITV regions. This is the first time Cupid has delivered its brand onto the small screen indicating the company's intention to push its brands out to a wider mainstream audience.

See full article at MarketWatch

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New Cupid Survey Results May Instigate A Boom For Dentists

PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 14 - Cupid has completed a survey of its members that reveals what people really care about on dating profile.

The highlights of the results are as follows.
- A great profile picture is essential for 42% of men and 50% of women 
- The most unattractive thing for a man (a majority of 30% agreed) in a woman's profile picture is when the picture looks too professional.
- Women don't like men with bad teeth (40% of women)

See full article at Sacramento Bee

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Cupid's Impressive Growth

THE MOTLEY FOOL - Nov 1 - It floated on AIM in June 2010 as Easydate. That caught the eye of easyGroup's lawyers and the company agreed to change its name to Cupid, having acquired companies of that name in the UK and US. International expansion has been boosted by recent acquisitions in Germany and Brazil. In the first half of this year, the company met its objective of earning 50% revenues from outside the UK. Revenues were nearly tripled to £25.4M, and operating profit doubled to £3.9M. The company now has ~34M members in 39 countries, but only a tiny proportion of those generate revenues. There were 460K monthly subscribers in June 2011, up from 324K last December. More than 40% of users now access the company's services through mobile devices or its Facebook app.

See full article at The Motley Fool

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Cupid to Join Facebook's Revolutionary New Mobile Ecosystem

PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 20 - Cupid.com will be the very first online dating community to be available through the all-new HTML5-based version of Facebook. Facebook has icreated a social ecosystem, which users can download directly onto their iPhones and iPad devices and then use to select and run whichever apps they choose, directly from inside Facebook.

See full article at PR Newswire

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Cupid Research: Different Messages Between Users Increase Revenue per Profile

PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 19 - Cupid has been collecting user behaviour statistics and now has decided to share some of its learnings from the data collected. Cupid found that the growth of the received ordinary emails (members send these to one another) shows a decrease in the number of payments and revenue from male profiles without a photo. Yet at the same time the average payment increases. This is closely related to the fact that customers who start spending more time on the site spend money on more advantageous packages. Admin messages work better to attract new users to the site. The more Admin messages sent, the greater the number of payments and revenue.

See full article at PR Newswire

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Interview: Bill Dobbie, CEO of Cupid.com

THE SCOTSMAN - Sep 23 - Bill Dobbie is CEO of Cupid.com, a dating site with ~12M users and 460K paying subscribers, up from 324K in Dec '10. Dobbie has never used a dating site himself. "These things just didn't exist," he laughs – thinking back to the time when he met his wife, Leonie. The company changed its name from easyDate last year, following a tense legal wrangle with easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Cupid's network of sites caters for all tastes – from datingforparents.com to maturedating.com and girlsdatefree.com. benaughty.com caters mainly for a more…transient…customer.

by Jane Bradley
See full article at The Scotsman

Mark Brooks: Cupid shares are doing well. Jiayuan, FriendFinder and Spark Networks shares, are not. We hope this changes. It affects the valuations of your idating companies.

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Cupid's Rockstar Quarter

INDEPENDENT - Sep 5 - The summer months are often marked by volatility on the markets. But there were winners amid the turmoil, with Cupid, which gained around 41% in the three months to the end of August, leading the way. Cupid has had a busy quarter, announcing the acquisition of two online dating business – first a deal in Germany in June, and then of one in Brazil at the end of July.

by Nikhil Kumar
See full article at Independent

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Cupid Profits Double Following New Overseas Market Expansion

THIS IS MONEY - Aug 30 - Cupid Plc, whose websites include Flirt, Be Naughty and GirlsDateforFree, has moved into markets such as Brazil, Germany and Italy and nearly tripled revenues to GBP 25.4M. UK revenues increased by 68% to GBP 11.9M, but the rapid growth overseas means these markets now account for 53% of its revenues, compared to 19% a year ago.

See full article at This Is Money

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Cupid Buys Brazilian Dating Sites

STOCK MARKETWIRE - Aug 22 - Cupid has taken over several Brazilian online dating sites for a total of $0.75M. The sites include AondeNamoro.com, a traditional online dating site, and SolteirosComFilhos.com, a dating site for single parents. The combined sites have 1.4M members.

See full article at Stock Marketwire

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Cupid Wins Over German Online Dating Business

STOCKOPEDIA - June 23 - Cupid has acquired a 75% stake in two German online businesses, OnlineLiebe GmbH and WomenWeb GmbH, for a total of €2.75M (£2.5M). The two companies are run together by the same team in Munich, led by founder Andreas von Maltzan, who is recognised as one of the pioneers and leaders in the German dating market, having established Neu.de, Germany’s most popular dating site, which was sold to Meetic in 2007. OnlineLiebe GmbH owns sites such as Zuckerjungs.de, Zuckerdaddys.de, Gleicheliebe.de and Gayjz.de. Its leading site, Zuckerjungs.de, was founded last year and has already become the market leader in the ‘Cougar’ dating niche in Germany, as well as in Austria and Switzerland. WomenWeb GmbH is Germany's largest online community network of female interest websites with domains such as Womenweb.de, Frauen.de, Kochrezepte.de, Allegraclub.de, Esoteriktreff.de, Hochzeits-club.de and eight other portals. Bill Dobbie, Cupid’s CEO, said: “This acquisition continues our stated strategy of international expansion and is an excellent opportunity for us to gain a foothold in the German-speaking markets.

See full article at Stockopedia

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Cupid Ahead of Market Forecasts

STOCK MARKET WIRE - May 25 - Online dating company Cupid is trading strongly and ahead of market expectations. Monthly revenues now exceed £4M and continue to grow. Cupid says North America is performing exceptionally well and ahead of plan and the UK's performance remains strong.

See full article at StockMarketWire

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Cupid White Labels Now Have Cupid Logo on Site

OPW - May 24 - A couple of days ago we added 'powered by Courtland Brooks' on the top right of Online Personals Watch and added the Courtland Brooks logo. OPW is one of numerous services we offer to the dating industry. Seems like the idea is catching on. Cupid announced today that they are pushing a 'powered by Cupid' logo onto their white labels. Here's their changes to their T&C's. In the past they linked to Cupid/EasyDate, but now they're adding the logo of the baby as well.  Cupid is a public company and we've summarized Cupid financials here, for you. (Full Disclosure: I was VP at Cupid in 2004)

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Cupid Placings Raise £12m

STOCKMARKET WIRE - Apr 11 - Cupid has raised £12M through a placing of ordinary shares with new and existing institutional investors. Cupid said £5M was raised via a placing of ~4.5M new ordinary shares and £7M through a placing of ~6.4M existing ordinary shares held by founders Bill Dobbie and Max Polyakov (through Opalta Limited) all at 110p a piece. Following the placing, CEO Dobbie and business development director Polyakov will hold 24,7% and 23.1% respectively of the enlarged issued share capital.

See full article at Stockmarket Wire

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Cupid Hits 7 Million User Mark On Facebook

PR WEB - Mar 23 - Max Polyakov from Cupid plc said; “What is of key importance to any online dating company is that they need to innovate. They also need to give their members new ways to meet people. Our presence on facebook ticks all of these boxes, so it’s a win win for us and our members”. In the first week of March, Cupid was positioned at no. 3 in facebook’s ‘Top Gainers’ chart, with ~600K new users in one week. Cupid plc also has the BeNaughty dating app, which has 1,494,470 monthly active users as well as others including GirlsDateforFree with over 650K monthly users and Flirt with 1,278,000 monthly users. Cupid’s portfolio of Facebook apps boasts over 7M monthly active users.

See full article at PR Web

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Cupid Revenues Up 202% At £25.7M

STOCK MARKET WIRE - Mar 8 - Cupid's revenues rose 202% to £25.7M in the year to the end of December. Organic UK revenues were up by 101% to £15.1M and the firm said international expansion continued with 42% of fourth quarter revenues from outside the UK.

See full article at Stock Market Wire

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