Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Psychotherapists The Speakmans Launch Dating Site

WLD - Apr 30 - Psychotherapists The Speakmans launched dating site, ‘SpeakmanDating.com’, on WhiteLabelDating.com platform. Nik and Eva Speakman have cured a range of celebrities including Holly Willoughby, Liz McClarnon, Kerry Katona and Kym Marsh, also releasing a number of best-selling self-help DVDs and books to help conquer fears, addiction and confidence issues. SpeakmanDating.com includes tips and advice from the husband and wife duo.

See full article at WLD

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WhiteLabelDating.com Reports Growth

XBIZ - Mar 29 - WhiteLabelDating.com has announced market growth across the U.K., South Africa and Australia alongside strategies to fully expand into the U.S. in 2013. Revenue from new memberships in UK has increased by 101% in the past year, 89% across the South African network and 250% in Australia.

by Bob Johnson
See full article at XBIZ

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WhiteLabelDating.com Powers 10K Sites

PRESS RELEASE - Mar 22 - WhiteLabelDating.com has launched their 10,000th site on the platform, shortly after welcoming their 20 millionth member on Valentine’s Day. Launched in 2003, WhiteLabelDating.com offers a platform for brands and individuals to power their own dating sites that currently includes The Independent, Evening Standard, Bauer Media and Dennis Publishing as partners.

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WhiteLabelDating.com Saw 928% Increase In Mobile Revenue After X-mas

WLD - Jan 3 - With smartphones and tablets topping most-wanted gift lists this Christmas, the surge in new handheld devices also had a knock-on effect with users signing up to dating sites through their new gifts. WhiteLabelDating.com saw revenue from mobile increased by 928%, making up 15% of all revenue generated during the last week of December (24.12. - 30.12.).

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25 Things I Learned At iDate Australia

OPW - Nov 9 - The Australian Internet Dating Conference, covering the Asia Pacific just finished up. Here's a few things I learned.

- There are 1.1 million monthly idaters in Australia.
- Oasis and RSVP and POF are the idating leaders.
- 5% of the 2100 scam victims reported to ACCC lost $100k+ last year.
- Operators say scammer safety warnings don't deter users.
- The iPad is the 'happy' device, used for entertainment and non-work apps.

- Consider using YouTube TrueView, Homepage and First Watch ads.
- Use Google Adwords Social Extensions and you'll see 5-10% CTR uplift.
- Use 'Ripples' on Google+ to Identify influencers.
- Use piktochart.com for quickly developing infographics.
- When planning content, use Google Trends and Linkedin Today to see what's making news.
- Use Spezify.com to identify content partners and search multiple media platforms and Hittail.com for getting content.
- For Influencer marketing: Traackr, Klout, Marketing Cloud, Twitalyzer, Followerwonk.

- Mobile ad returns are disappointing for Oasis.
- They get a lot better return on their msite than their app.
- 10-15% of Oasis ad revenues come from advertising other idating sites.
- Oasis is launching freemium products next month.
- White Label Dating has $7.5 million revenues (run-rate) in the Australia.

- Japan has 4.5 million idaters.
- The leading dating sites in Japan has billboards on trucks.
- There are 180 million bachelors in China.
- The Chinese idating market should be worth $315m in 2015.
- 18% of Asia internet traffic is on mobile, compared with 8% in North America.

- Mobile developers are increasingly using HTML5 web over native apps.
- The iDating industry is weak on engagement marketing (Push/SMS/Email) compared to the gaming industry.
- OtherLevels.com helps analyze and optimize cross channel engagement efforts.

WhiteLabelDating.com To Share Insights On Australian Dating Market Success At iDate Sydney

PR NEWSWIRE - Nov 1 - WhiteLabelDating.com, the dating software and services provider will be exhibiting and presenting at iDate Sydney, taking place this week on Nov 7 - 9. WhiteLabelDating.com Operations Director, Matthew Pitt, will be sharing the secrets of how dating start ups can successfully enter this market in his iDate Sydney session, ‘Eating the Big Fish - Methods to Compete with the Leading AU Dating Sites’, on Friday 9th November at 1.30pm.

See full article at The Business Journals

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UK Global Personals Allegedly Used Fake Profiles

CHANNEL4 - Nov 1 - Global Personals is one of the UK's largest internet dating companies. Headquartered in Windsor it makes £40M a year, has 130 staff and runs 7,500 dating sites. Two former employees have described how the company duped daters into parting with their cash. Ryan Pitcher and Tom (not his real name) were recruited to join Global Personals to set up and run fake profiles on the company's network of sites. The team members would scour social networks and steal people's photos to use on their fake profiles. Each team member would be running as many as 15 different personalities. In a statement, Global Personals said: "Global Personals was one of the first online dating companies to stop using fake profiles. For almost three years we have actively encouraged other online dating businesses to also stop this practice." The success of the company's pseudo team means it has built up a database of 2.2m people. Trading Standards in Windsor said it has had "ongoing dealings" with Global Personals regarding the company's alleged use of fake profiles.

See full article at Channel4

Mark Brooks: WLD claim they stopped using pseudos in 2008.  Small dating sites get tempted with bad practices.  I was surprised WLD used fakesters at all, but I certainly know them to be a model idating company now. [Full Disclosure: WLD is a prior client of Courtland Brooks] 

Ross Williams states: ...We appreciate the acknowledgement that Global Personals has received for being one of the only online dating businesses not to be carrying out this practice. We continue to campaign against pseudo profiles and ask the rest of the industry to stop this practice.

Your comments please...

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WhiteLabelDating.com Reports A Record-Breaking FY2012

PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 30 - WhiteLabelDating.com, which provides software and services to the dating industry has posted a record-breaking financial year. WLD paid out over $80 million in revenues to its top-tier and fast-growing partners. The company has enjoyed a 106% increase in new members on the platform in the past year, with 775,000 new members in August 2012 alone. According to Matthew Pitt, Operations Director at WLD, "2012 has been a fantastic year for the company and our partners, with total revenues growing by +61% to reach annualised revenues of £46m.”

See full article at IT News Online

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Casual.WhiteLabelDating.com Celebrates 2 Years Of Success

PRESS RELEASE - Sep 20 - Casual.WhiteLabelDating.com, the dating platform that powers dating sites for brands and individuals worldwide, will be celebrating two years of success with the platform’s niching facility this October. The network now boasts ~2,000 niche sites. Some of the most successful sites on the network cater to cougars, MILFs and redheads. Popular sites also include CougarDate.us, TheDoggingSite.co/us and DateADomme.com.

See full article at AVN

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Interview With Barry Frost, CTO Of WhiteLabelDating

OPW INTERVIEW - Aug 21 - If you think launching a mobile app is tough for your dating site, think again. White labellers have a compounded problem because they have hundreds to thousands of partners to keep happy. WhiteLabelDating’s CTO gave us the scoop on how they did it. - Mark Brooks

You've got a new mobile platform that you've launched for WhiteLabelDating.com. How's it doing for you, and can you tell us how it works?
We started the project one year ago and we launched it officially in May. It's a brand new platform we built using Ruby and Ruby on Rails. It uses Rackspace and JSON to transmit data under an API. It's a series of components, including search for sites and members, communication, and an API on top. What it really means is it's a great way for us to scale up and down because it's hosted on the cloud.

Did you think about using HTML5? Was that a consideration?
Yes, it's actually built with HTML5. Rather than using apps, we made a decision to use HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript as a platform.

LinkedIn took that approach as well. Their app is 95% not resident on the devices. Have you taken the same approach?
Yes. Again, it looks like an app, it interacts, it feels very native. It's a nice rich interface.

What are the downsides of using mainly an HTML5 approach?
You can't just tell someone to download our app from the app store. It gets that prime recognition. Also with apps, it has a bit more native capability. With an app, you can use your phone's camera. There's also more offline capability. Phones are richer in the interface and it can be a bit faster. But we felt the trade-off at the moment is that desktop and mobile web are getting similar to the app experience and it was the right choice for our project.

How do you accept money?
All of the desktop payment options are available on mobile. You can use a card, premium SMS which fits very nicely with mobile phones. You can also use PayPal.

What's the cut on premium SMS these days?
It's quite high and we've talked to our supplier about it, and they despair as well. But the carriers are charging a hefty premium on top.

Last I looked, it was on the order of 50%. Is it under 30% now?
I think it's a lot lower than that, but it's still a hefty amount.

Will the app be in the Apple Store?
It is mobile web, so it won't be able to use the Apple Store for mobile payments. Mobile web is actually a very successful system. Since we launched in April, we're now seeing about 20% of our daily signups on mobile. 10% of subscriptions are coming on mobile. That's about 7% of our total revenues. That's increasing about 10% month on month.

How else do the mobile daters behave differently than the web-sourced users?
We are finding that people are spending about twice as long on the mobile as opposed to the desktop.

You also have some internal brands. How are you recruiting people into the Global Personals brands?
Both us and our partners are starting to explore advertising networks, especially targeted campaigns. We also have online advertising as well using the ad networks.

How is WhiteLabelDating's mobile app different from other providers?
I think the main difference for us is that we focused on the mobile web. It's the fact that with a dating site on our platform, a partner can have a mobile site set up very quickly and get up and running in minutes.

One of the nice things for the WhiteLabelDating partner is that they must surely be seeing improved retentions because the users are able to access the dating sites both online and on mobile. Is that increasing your retention numbers?
Our retention numbers are strong. We've seen through our visitor stats that the number of people using mobile is increasing. 26% of our visitors are coming through mobile, which is great.

What do you think the numbers will end up at in a year's time?
I think mobile will exceed desktop internet usage in the next couple of years, maybe by the year 2015.

How about the iPad?
We're not viewing the iPad as a mobile device at the moment, in terms of the experience. It will still display the standard desktop version of a dating site.

Was the WLD mobile developed entirely in house?
Yes, we recruited quite heavily last year for Ruby and Ruby on Rails. It's a core part of our business and very strategic, so it's something we wanted to be in house.

Do you recommend building in house or using a third party for a mobile app?
We've got a team of 37 split between Windsor and London. We like to keep development in house.

So you're taking the Apple approach?
Yeah, I think with Apple, design is a big part of their ethos. We believe that you can get greater conversions and greater satisfaction through the user experience.

Having been through this process, the thinking, design, and evolution of this mobile platform – what lessons did you learn? What would you have done differently?
You've got to get it right. Testing is a huge part. One of the things is that when we started we had a nice bank of iPhone, Android, Nokia, Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows phones on hand to do testing.

What about WAP? It's still prevalent in those markets such as South Africa. Is it a consideration at this stage?
It doesn't work on WAP. We feels it's a dying platform.

What feature are you most proud of?
We're really proud of how fast it works. It's a very nice, slick interface. It really feels like an app. It doesn't really feel like it's a mobile website.I think that's the biggest thing. We are quite pleased by how well the location services work. It takes advantage of the latest browsers in phones.

Another favorite subject: geolocation. What do you think the biggest concerns and issues are?
I think with privacy being a big part of using any location services, it something we wanted to be very careful about. We don't tell anyone where a member is. We don't give their exact pinpoint location. We give a fuzzy range of how far away they are from you.

How is WhiteLabelDating doing overall?
We just had another record month for April for us and for our partners. As you know, we just went past 12 million members and we're expecting about 15 million by the end of the summer. That's about one member every four seconds. Annual revenue is about 36 million pounds. About 23% of our traffic is now non-UK. Australia is one of our key markets. South Africa is very strong, and of course US as well.

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WhiteLabelDating.com Offers Ex FriendFinder Affiliates 100% Rev Share

PRESS RELEASE - Aug 15 - Following FriendFinder’s announcement of the closure of 5,000 co-branded dating sites, WhiteLabelDating.com is offering ex-FriendFinders' 100% revenue share for 6 months for those looking for a new dating solution. WhiteLabelDating.com provides an ‘out of the box’ fully hosted and supported dating solution.

See full article at World News Report

Australian Online Dating Market

WLD BLOG - July 27 - Australia is 50 times the size of the UK. Aus is well connected, with 17M online (80% of population) and 18M mobile subscribers. Australia has a mature and developed online dating market with lots of established local dating brands. 62% of Australians are stating that they ‘have used or are considering using online dating sites’. The arrival of new dating sites lead to a +30% YOY rise in dating search queries in Q1 2012. WhiteLabelDating.com claims 1200% YOY revenue and members increase in Australia.

See full article at WLD Blog

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Bella Magazine Partners With WhiteLabelDating.com

WLD.COM - July 10 - WhiteLabelDating.com has launched Bella Dating, a service for Bella Magazine. Bella is the classic weekly magazine for the modern woman. Readers of the magazine will now be able to access an online dating service via the magazine’s website at http://www.bellamagazine.co.uk/dating.

See full article at WLD.com

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WhiteLabelDating.com Partners With Established Media Brands

PRESS RELEASE - June 6 - WhiteLabelDating.com signed up new media including The London Evening Standard, UTV Media and Take a Break to its platform. The Evening Standard launched their new dating brand ‘ES Dating’ using the WhiteLabelDating.com platform. UTV Media will be rolling out dating sites for a selection of key radio brands including Juice FM, The Pulse, Peak FM and The Wave. Take a Break, part of H Bauer, will be launching dating site ‘Take a Break’s Perfect Match’ in June.

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WhiteLabelDating.com Mobile Traffic

WLD BLOG - June 1 - With the mobile market worth £152 Billion in 2011 (and predicted to grow to £425 Billion by 2015); the world of mobile is big business. According to Google, mobile dating queries are growing 123% YOY. Mobile traffic from the WhiteLabelDating.com South Africa network has increased by +225% (Jan- April 2012). Mobile traffic from Australia has nearly doubled since the January launch.

See full article at WLD Blog

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Urban Social Migrates To WhiteLabelDating.com

WLD.COM - Apr 4 - An established dating brand since 2004, Urban Social decided to migrate their dating site to the WhiteLabelDating.com platform so they could solely focus their time and budget on marketing and promotional activities. WhiteLabelDating.com will provide all of the back-end requirements such as the dating software, payment processing, customer support and hosting infrastructure.

See full article at WLD

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Global Personals Launches Mobile Dating Platform

PRESS RELEASE - Mar 23 - GlobalPersonals.co.uk is to fully launch the WhiteLabelDating.com mobile platform later this summer. WhiteLabelDating.com provides a platform for brands and individuals to power their own dating sites and will now also offer partners the software and services to take their sites mobile. The launch follows a successful beta period, which saw a 133% increase in the number of members taking up full membership subscriptions.

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TOWIE Star Lauren Pope Partners With WLD.com

WLD.COM - Feb 21 - Lauren partnered with WhiteLabelDating.com, the award-winning software and services provider to the online dating industry, with the desire to set up her own dating site and so ‘Hope with Pope’ was born.

See full article at WLD.com

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Valentine’s Day To Be ‘Starting Gun’ For Investment In Online Dating

PRESS RELEASE - Feb 14 - This year Valentine’s Day will mark the start of a business boom across the online dating world with more companies seeking to capitalise on the millions of people turning to online dating. Over February 13 & 14 in 2011 Global Personals.co.uk saw a rise ~30% in subscriptions across its sites. Global Personals expects these figures to rise again in 2012 by 150%. Global Personals operates its own dating sites including Singles365.com, DatingAgency.com and JustSingleParents.com, whilst its B2B service, WhiteLabelDating.com, offers a platform for brands and individuals to power their own dating sites.

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All 2012 Valentine's Day News

Real Radio Partners With WhiteLabelDating To Create Dating Site

THE DRUM - Feb 9 - Real Radio, part of GMG Radio, has partnered with WhiteLabelDating.com to create its branded online dating site, with the tagline ‘Real Good, Feel Good’.

See full article at The Drum

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