Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

SNAP Interactive CEO Clifford Lerner Featured On CNBC

PR NEWSWIRE - Feb 14 - SNAP Interactive CEO Clifford Lerner was interviewed on CNBC's Worldwide Exchange.  Cliff discussed trends in mobile and social dating. As of February 14, 2012, AreYouInterested.com has 6.6M Monthly Active Users on Facebook, per AppData.com, and 15% of AreYouInterested.com logins occur on a mobile device.

See full articler at Sacbee

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SNAP Interactive Reports Q4 Results

PR NEWSWIRE - Feb 14 - Quarterly revenue increased 98% to $5.5M YOY. Annual revenue increased 188% to $19.2M YOY. Net loss for the quarter increased to $1.4M YOY while net loss for the year was $3.5M compared to a net loss of $1.2M for 2010. "At the outset of 2011, we identified two clear goals for SNAP: continued revenue growth and the build-out of the organization so that we could properly sustain our growth and build for the future," said SNAP's President and CEO, Clifford Lerner.

See full article at Sacbee

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All 2012 Valentine's Day News

Snap Interactive: Facebook's Fast Growing Social Media Company

SEEKING ALPHA - Feb 2 - With Facebook going public in 2012, the mobile and social media revolution will come to the forefront of investors' attention. Snap Interactive is the leading provider of social dating and location-based apps built on Facebook. Their core dating brand "Are YOU Interested?" has ~55M user installations, 8M monthly active users. Since being founded in 2005, revenues have grown at a torrid pace. As of the last 12 months ended September 30, 2011, the company has recorded $16.5M in sales. Quarterly revenues hit $5.1M (+198% YoY) in September, which puts the company on pace for~$20M in sales for 2011. The total market size for online dating is now in excess of $1billion.

by Ben Axler
See full article at Seeking Alpha

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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Facebook’s New Mobile Channels Are Boosting SNAP's Traffic

TECH CRUNCH - Nov 30 - Facebook launched a new set of social channels for apps to reach mobile users last month, that includes notifications, search, news feed stories and bookmarks in its mobile web and iPhone apps. Snap Interactive said its mobile traffic to that app got a significant boost. The number of average daily logins on its AreYouInterested iPhone app increased by 70% between the 30 days before the October 10th Facebook integration and the 30 days after. Overall, Are You Interested has 7.3M monthly active users and 610K daily active users on Facebook, according to Inside Network’s AppData app tracking service.

by Eric Eldon
See full article at Tech Crunch

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SNAP Interactive Reports Third Quarter 2011 Results

PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 15 - Snap Interactive posted record quarterly revenues of ~$5.1M putting the Company on an annualized revenue run-rate of more than $20M. Snap incurred a net loss of $511,290 compared to net income of $87,289. AreYouInterested.com brand added ~3.3M new profiles during the quarter; and the iPhone Mobile Dating app was downloaded more than 675,000 times, up more than 80% YOY.

See full article at PR Newswire

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SNAP: Mobile Dating Is A Rising Trend

SNAP BLOG - Nov 4 - No longer are singles relegated to their laptops -- as demonstrated by the AreYouInterested.com mobile dating infographic
- 4 out of 5 people surveyed prefer mobile dating to online dating sites.
- ~ 600 online dating profiles are viewed each minute on AreYouInterested.com.
-  61% of AreYouInterested.com users surveyed believed they are more likely to “hook up” on a mobile dating app than an online dating site.

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Snap Launches Mobile Web Version of AreYouInterested.com

MARKETWIRE - Sep 20 - SNAP Interactive, a social app developer with~50M installs across its properties, is announcing several significant mobile-related developments including the launch of a mobile Web version of its flagship AreYouInterested.com social dating app.

See full article at Marketwire

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Read the interview with Cliff Lerner, co-Founder of SNAP Interactive (September 2010)

SNAP Interactive: 600% Stock Increase

THE NEXT WEB - Sep 16 - In 2005, Cliff and Darrell founded SNAP Interactive, initially raising $200K privately from friends and family. The next year, SNAP went public in 2006 and they launched IamFreeTonight.com in November. In May 2007, Facebook opened its platform to independent developers and the two brothers decided to create the MeetNewPeople Facebook app, which drove traffic to IamFreeTonight.com. In a matter of weeks, they started seeing several thousand sign-ups per day. They decided to shut down IamFreeTonight.com in 2007 and transition the business entirely to building on Facebook. They launched AreYouInterested.com on Facebook on August 14, 2007. Today, AreYouInterested.com is one of the largest dating apps with 47M users. Overall, SNAP Interactive says it has nearly 50M installs and 1M daily visits across its properties. Its stock has gone up more than 600% in the past 12 months.

by Courtney Boyd Myers
See full article at The Next Web

Mark Brooks: Jiayuan, Cupid, Match (under IAC), and Spark Networks (JDate) are other public iDating companies. We summarize their results periodically, and you can see the pdf summaries on the left bar of OPW. We've also just added a stock ticker. Cupid and Snap are showing promising results.

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Read the interview with Cliff Lerner (September 2010)

SNAP Interactive Reports Q2 2011 Results

MARKETWIRE - Aug 9 - SNAP Interactive, a social app developer with ~49M installs across its properties, announced financial results for its Q2 2011. SNAP posted record quarterly revenues of more than $4.82M, putting it on an annualized revenue run-rate of ~$19M. Q2 Revenue increased 288% to $4,826,723 compared to $1,243,082. Net loss increased to $632,868 compared to a net loss of $68,861. AreYouInterested.com brand added ~10M new installs during the quarter. AreYouInterested.com iPhone Mobile Dating app was downloaded more than 370,000 times.

See full article at Marketwire

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What It's Like Running a Public Company That Relies on Facebook

BUSINESS INSIDER - July 22 - Until Zynga hits the public markets, there's only one Facebook app company you can invest in: SNAP Interactive. SNAP Interactive makes "Are You Interested," one of the most popular dating apps. SNAP's CEO Cliff Lerner talks about what it's like to run a business that resides entirely inside Facebook.

Q: Why did you decide to put your company on Facebook?
A: It was a very challenging decision. Iamfreetonight.com was getting significant traction. But in May 2007, Facebook launched their platform, we spent a couple of days building a basic application that got several thousand users in a few hours of work. We transitioned the business entirely to Facebook and shut down Iamfreetonight on the spot in 2007.

Q: In 2007, you're already a public company. Why so early?
A: A company called Udate had just been sold as a public company for a significant amount of money. So we thought that the market opportunity was there. We’ve never actually raised any VC funding, which is pretty unique for the industry.

Q: Why not?
A: I wanted to make sure we didn’t go the VC route because we thought we had ideas that could really disrupt the industry, and I wanted to maintain a very long-term view. A lot of our competitors that have raised venture capital money are long gone, mostly because of that. 

Q: What have you learned through the years from relying on Facebook for all of your business?
A: Well, I’ve learned that timing is very important. 

Q: How is your relationship with Facebook? Do have any concerns about depending on their platform?
A: You always have some concern in the back of your mind, being dependent on the platform, but for us it’s been nothing but a home run. We have ~50M installs. 

Q: What do you think of Google+ ? 
A: We’re always looking at new and exciting opportunities. 

Q: Have you heard anything about Facebook doing their own HTML5 mobile app market?
A: No. Only what we’ve all read on the web.

Q: Is that something that would appeal to you?
A: That would be very interesting because if anything, it would provide easy discovery of application. 

Q: Have you noticed any big differences between Apple's mobile app market and the Facebook's app market?
A: Yeah, what we’ve noticed on mobile is people are most interested in interacting with friends or new people who are nearby and online. So what that means is having the critical mass of users who are online in a specific area is very important. 

Q: What's the best method for acquiring new users on Facebook?
A: We have a pretty sophisticated system in-house that will put all our users into various categories based on their age range, their sexuality, their location, even their religion or ethnicities, and we know how much it costs to acquire a certain user. And we can build out a model on how much they’re worth to us.

by Jay Yarow
See full article at Business Insider

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AreYouInterested.com iPhone Dating App Update

MARKETWATCH - July 20 - SNAP Interactive has introduced a number of advances for its flagship AreYouInterested.com social dating app. Below are some of the new key features available in version 3.2:
 - Real-Time Notifications: Singles are alerted on their iPhone via push notification when a compatible match is nearby
- Spotlight: Users can purchase a slot to be featured in the Spotlight, where users are prominently displayed across the entire application. 
- Front-Facing Camera

See full article at MarketWatch

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SNAP Interactive Posts Q1 2011 Results

MARKETWIRE - May 16 - Social application provider SNAP Interactive has posted first quarter 2011 financial results. The company runs AreYouInterested.com and has over 41 million installs across that brand. Revenue has increased 303% to $3.7 million from $927k, net lost increased to $920k from $803K. Cash increased 238% to $10.2 M from $3M.

See full article at Marketwire

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SNAP Interactive Reports Q4 And Fiscal Year 2010 Results

MARKETWIRE - Mar 31 - SNAP Interactive, a leading social app provider with ~40M installs across its social dating apps, announced its fourth quarter and fiscal year financial results for 2010. 
- Revenue increased 242% to $2,791,418 in Q4 2010 compared to $816,390 in Q4 2009
- Net loss increased to $382,048 compared to a net loss of $237,555;

SNAP is pleased to report that the quarter ending March 31, 2011 will produce SNAP's highest revenue total ever and represent their eighth consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

See full article at Marketwire

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Snap Interactive Shares: Buy And Hold Me

SEEKING ALPHA - Mar 28 - Snap is directly leveraging Facebook’s customer base for their dating app, AreYouInterested.com, and those dating app revenues have been growing at a rapid pace. Right now, AreYouInterested.com has 30M users, and is adding 50K new users a day. Soon, Facebook friends will be able to share their exact whereabouts via a mobile app called WhoIsNear.com. Snap recently raised $8.5M in a private placement to develop and beta-test Whoisnear.com. Unlike many secondary offerings that can suppress the price of a stock for months or longer, Snap’s shares have held firm above the $2 level. One of Snap’s main LBS competitors, Foursquare Labs, started in 2009. They currently have 6M users, and raised $20M last year, who valued the company at $120M.

by Jon Slotnick
See full article at Seeking Alpha

Mark Brooks: Match (via IAC), Spark Networks, and Cupid are the other public iDating companies. Their numbers are listed in summary pdf's on the right bar of OnlinePersonalsWatch, fyi.

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Snap Interactive To Target International Markets

OBSERVER - Jan 18 – Snap Interactive, creator of Facebook dating app AreYouInterested, ha seen impressive revenue growth of 230% since 2009 along with 50,000 new users a day. The company reported $2.7-2.8 million in revenue for Q4 2010. Shares of Snap Interactive rose more than 1000% after Goldman Sachs had invested in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation. Snap Interactive now has the resources to expand into international markets. "We've always had to operate very lean, so this recent funding was a real game changer for us," says Darrell Lerner, co-Founder of Snap Interactive. "We're no Zynga yet, but expect us to use this capital to expand AreYouInterested in a big way and begin to work on some new offerings as well." FULL ARTICLE @ OBSERVER

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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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Snap Interactive Surges 150% On Heavy Volumes

EFREE PRESS RELEASE - Dec 28 - Snap Interactive spike up by 150% or $0.75 to trade close at $1.25 after Bloomberg reported on Dec 23 that the company’s dating app AreYouInterested.com adds ~50K users a day, while Match.com adds ~20K new users daily. The Company recorded quarterly revenues of $1.65M in October, more than double the revenue of the same quarter the year prior. It had recorded $3.9M in revenue in the first nine months. FULL ARTICLE @ EFREE PRESS RELEASE

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Facebook Friends In Search Of Romance Drive Dating App Growth

BLOOMEBERG - Dec 23 - With the growing popularity of social networks, people turning to apps such as Snap's AreYouInterested. AreYouInterested.com is adding ~50K users a day, compared with the 20K new daily users Match.com reports. AreYouInterested.com is now the largest Facebook dating app, with ~13M average monthly users. Its popularity may cut into the growth of Match and eHarmony, whose Facebook programs have 72,712 and 8,607 average monthly users respectively. Snap had $3.9M in revenue in the first nine months, up 65%. One reason dating apps on Facebook are popular is that they give romance-seekers insight into potential partners through the social network's existing information, according to Darrell Lerner, Snap’s co-founder. FULL ARTICLE @ BLOOMBERG

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SNAP Interactive Releases Q3 2010 Operating Results

MARKET WIRE - Nov 17 - SNAP Interactive, a social dating app provider with ~25M installs across its social dating apps, released its Q3 results. Revenue increased 113% to $1,706,691 YOY. "Our Q3 revenues represent our largest revenue ever in a quarter", said SNAP President and CEO Clifford Lerner. Net income increased to $87,289 for the Q3 from net income of $22,736 in Q3 '09. For more details, download SNAP Interactive Financials PDF or or visit the link on the side bar under 'FINANCIALS'. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WIRE

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SNAP Interactive Expects Surge In Q3 Revenues

STOCK MARKETS REVIEW - SNAP's projected revenue for Q3 is $1.65M, more-than-double compared to $0.80 M reported for the last year's comparable quarter. This projected revenue represents the largest quarterly revenue in the company's history. FULL ARTICLE @ STOCK MARKETS REVIEW

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