CBS LOCAL - Mar 30 - A number of new, online services are helping people connect offline for unique face to face experiences such as sushi rolling, beer brewing or yoga. Some sites, like Meet-Up and Group-O-Matic, allow users to create their own local circles for free. Other sites, like Lifecrowd, Grubwithus, and Urban Girl Squad partner with restaurants, retailers, experts and more for a slew of unique, curated activities.
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New Social Networks Helping People Meet Offline
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How Grindr Went Mainstream
INC - Mar 29 - Joel Simkhai founded the company behind an incredibly popular app called Grindr. Blendr began as an idea as early as 2010, just right around when Grindr really started to gain popularity. Blendr officially launched in September 2011, about two years after Grindr went live. Both companies are self-financed and through premium services and advertising revenue, though Simkhai is reluctant to offer revenue numbers. He says the company has spent no money on marketing, and downloads are completely driven by word of mouth. He does not plan on taking outside funding.
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Circl.es: The Latest Dating Site That Uses Facebook
TECH CRUNCH - Mar 29 - Circl.es users sign up with Facebook. Circles is also attempting to limit overexposure, as users are served Facebook “snapshots” of potential matches, and they can just click “yes,” “no,” or “skip.” If they click “yes,” both users are notified, Circles sends them both emails, and lets them take it from there. If they click no, they won’t see that snapshot again, and that person never sees their profile. Only the people they’re interested in get to view their profile. When they’ve browsed all the profiles, they hit a “You’ve Seen It All Page,” and that’s it. Circles gives people two weeks to meet up with an interest before the match expires, which is plenty of time to start a conversation. Expiring matches also prevent weeks of endless email reminders, notifications, and spam. Other similar new dating sites are theComplete.me and Yoke.
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Doomsday Dating Sites: 'Don't Face Future Alone'
CNN MONEY - Mar 29 - For people who spend every day preparing for disaster -- whether it's a 2012 apocalypse, a nuclear meltdown, an economic collapse, a hurricane or a tsunami -- it can be hard to find a compatible partner. Survivalist Singles, which officially launched in 2010, boasts the slogan, "Don't face the future alone." Its ranks are growing -- quadrupling to ~1,640 members from ~400 at the end of 2010. Members of the site range widely in their doomsday beliefs, said Andrea Burke. "Most will agree that something is brewing that may change life as we know it, whether it be a collapse of the economy, an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) or other natural or government disaster," Burke said.
by Blake Ellis
The full article was originally published at The Boston Channel, but is no longer available.
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Are You Selling Profiles?
BETABEAT - Mar 29 - Online dating is a fast-growing industry, with current revenues estimated to run between $1.5 and $3 billion a year. But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate. Recruiting new customers is expensive; industry experts put the customer acquisition price at $1 to $5 per person. SaleDatingProfiles and its competitors BuyProfiles.com and DatingProfilesSale.com offer a shortcut. They sell bulk packages of profiles that seem to include a fair number of actual singles alongside somewhat more questionable Russian beauties, Nigerian bankers and half-empty profiles, which sometimes sell for less than a dime a dozen. SaleDatingProfiles is based in Israel and Russia, a representative told Betabeat over Skype, and operates 150 dating sites of its own, which she declined to name. SaleDatingProfiles says its profiles come from users who signed up for a dating site in its network. Mark Brooks, a consultant who works exclusively with Internet dating companies, said he once fired a client for buying profiles. “When people have a bad experience on any Internet dating site, they just label it ‘Internet dating. ‘Internet dating sucks!’” he told Betabeat. “I don’t work with anybody who’s bad for the industry because in ten years time I won’t be working with anybody, because there won’t be an industry.”
by Adrianne Jeffries
See full article at BetaBeat
Mark Brooks: We did a study recently on profile selling companies.
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Sugar Daddies In LA Are More Generous
HUFFINGTON POST - Mar 29 - Angeleno "daddies" spend more sugar on their "babies" than anywhere else in the U.S., according to five years of mostly self-reported data from SeekingArrangement.com. Angeleno sugar daddies spend an average of $5,710 a month towards gifts, travel, dining, shopping and allowances for their ladies. Nationally, daddies only spend an average of $4,357 a month on their sugar addictions. There are ~2.31 sugar daddies for every 1K men in LA, their average age is 41, and they rake in an average of $415K a year with a net worth of $8M, according to the site.
by Kathleen Miles
See full article at Huffington Post
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State Senate OKs Online Dating Safeguards
CHICAGO TRIBUNE - Mar 29 - The Illinois Senate passed legislation requiring online dating sites to say whether they perform criminal background checks on prospective members. The legislation also would require dating services that say they conduct background checks to use government databases, including criminal court records and sex offender registries. In addition, the sites also would have to say whether they allow someone with a criminal record to sign up. Furthermore, the legislation would require sites to post safety tips, including warnings that background checks aren't foolproof and suggestions to leave their addresses off the sites. Sites that fail to follow the requirements or that lie about conducting background checks could face fines of up to $50K per violation.
by Alissa Groeninger
The full article was originally published at Chicago Tribune, but is no longer available.
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JRetroMatch.com Launches JMontreal.com
PR WEB - Mar 28 - Jewish Dating service JMontreal.com is launching in March 28th 2012 to benefit Jewish singles in Montreal. The service combines the match technology of JRetroMatch.com with local JMontreal matchmakers, to give the personalized touch.
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Hacker Group LulzSec Exposes 171K Military Accounts
LA TIMES - Mar 28 - The hacker group known as LulzSec appears to be back, claiming to have exposed the accounts of ~171K members on MilitarySingles.com. The programmers of the website are investigating the attack claimed by LulzSec and are taking measures to increase the site's security. "We have enacted a series of security procedures in response," said Robert Goebel, CEO of ESingles Inc., which owns the site. "Regardless of whether it was a true claim or false claim, we’re treating it as though it’s true just to be safe." But Goebel said he does not think the dating site was actually hacked. He said the website was down for some time over the weekend, but that was due to a scheduled maintenance. He also said he's not sure how the hackers could have dumped so many accounts when the site only has about 140K members.
by Salvador Rodriguez
See full article at LA Times
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The Coffee Club Set For Speed Dating World Record Challenge
FRANCHISE.NET.AU - The Coffee Club and dating site RSVP are combining forces to try and break a world record for speed dating. A free event on 1 May is expected to draw ~2K people to take part at ~50 cafes across Australia. The aim is to beat the current world record of 1,240 speed-daters set in Sydney in 2008.
The full article was originally published at Franchise.net.au, but is no longer available.
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The Online Romance Scam: A Serious Cybercrime
OPW - Mar 28 - Monica T. Whitty, Ph.D and Tom Buchanan, Ph.D shared with us their study about online romance scam. This paper presents some descriptive statistics about knowledge and victimization of the online dating romance scam in Great Britain. An estimated 230K Brits may have fallen victim to this crime in 2011 according to this study. These figures are much higher than SOCA or Action Fraud estimated and confirms Action Fraud’s suspicions that this is an under-reported crime, and thus more serious than first thought. In 2011 the UK National Fraud Authority estimated that fraud costs in the UK equate to over £38 billion a year, up from $3.5 billion in 2006.
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Gleeden Comes To America
HUFFINGTON POST - Mar 26 - This month, AshleyMadison.com, America's largest online extramarital dating service, celebrates its 10th anniversary and rapid growth worldwide. Hoping to grab a piece of this digital pie, Gleeden is now stepping up its marketing efforts in the U.S. It was launched in France in 2009 by two French brothers, Teddy and Ravy Truchot, who were approached by several women and fellow employees with marital issues. "The women voiced their need for a place, a playground for adults, where they'll be able to be in control and carry out an extramarital affair with utmost discretion," said Gleeden spokesperson. Gleeden positions itself as the first web site run exclusively by and for women.
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Grindr Celebrates Its 3rd Birthday With 3.5M Users
PR NEWSWIRE - Mar 26 - In 2009, Grindr started out as a small company with $5K in self-financing and an office headquartered in Founder and CEO Joel Simkhai's living room. Grindr officially launched on March 25, 2009, and within one month, 10K users downloaded the free app. Fast-forward only three years, and Grindr has 10K new users around the world joining up every day. Today, 908K Grindr users log on and send 7M chat messages and 2M photos to one another on a daily basis. The app is most popular in the US, but has seen incredible popularity in the UK, France, Australia and Canada, in addition to an emergent following in far-flung, unexpected spots such as Iran, Moldova, Malawi, Yemen, Albania and Djibouti.
The full article was originally published at PR Newswire, but is no longer available.
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Kingfish Labs Raises $500,000 To Turn Facebook Profiles Into Dating Profiles
BUSINESS INSIDER - Mar 27 - There are a lot of dating sites and many of them pull in Facebook data. Yoke is Kingfish Lab's first Facebook app. Kingfish Labs is a new company that raised $500K from Lerer Ventures and Softbank Capital to crunch Facebook data and create recommendation apps. Kingfish Labs was founded by Fishman and a fellow Huffington Post employee, Jeff Revesz. Rob Fishman served as Huffington Post's social media editor. Jeff Revesz joined the company in 2010 when his startup, Adaptive Semantics, was acquired. There they met Ken Lerer, Huffington Post's co-founder and an investor in Kingfish Labs. When a user signs up for Yoke, they can say if they're single or in a relationship. If they're in a relationship, they become a matchmaker and can introduce single friends to each other. If they're single, they can send a Yoke or Facebook message to a friend for an introduction to the second degree person.
by Alyson Shontell
See full article at SF Gate
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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Blind Fate: OkCupid & Chatroulette In One
OPW - Inertia, a software development company, has entered the online dating game with their new blind dating app Blind Fate. The app has attracted ~2K users since its launch in March 7th. Blind Fate claims to be a mix of OkCupid and Chatroulette without the nudity. The app is free for the first 5K users.
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