Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Friends Reunited To Close After 15 Years

WIRED - Jan 18 - The website has had a turbulent history. Pankhurst launched the website in 2000, by 2003 it had 3M members, and was seen as an established rival to MySpace and, later, Facebook. By 2005 it was sold to ITV, for more than £125 million, in 2009 the website was sold to DC Thomson for just £25 million. Then, in 2012, Friends Reunited was rebooted as "memory box". In 2014 DC Thompson offered the website's ownership back to Pankhurst. Pankhurst now says he is creating a new social network, called Liife, that will be a way for people to store memories - but he said it will "no way [be] a replacement for Friends Reunited."

by Matt Burgess
See full article at Wired

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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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All 2012 Valentine's Day News

Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Nov 19th, 2009 - 4 mins

This is the news for the week of November 13th through November 19th, 2009. Here is the news we covered for this week:

• Earnings reports from SNAP Interactive
• October European Online Dating Rankings from Nielsen
• Cougar craze in full swing in Europe and North America
• eHarmony's marriage claims under scrutiny

New Friends Reunited Owner Plans Over-50s Dating Site

GUARDIAN.CO.UK -- Aug 7 -- Friends Reunited's 60 staff will all keep their jobs under new owner DC Thomson, with the Beano publisher planning to launch an over-50s dating service to appeal to users of its genealogy business Find My Past. DC Thomson acquired Friends Reunited from ITV for £25m yesterday. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

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This post also appears on Social Networking Watch.

ITV To Bring FriendsReunited Applications To iPhone

GUARDIAN.CO.UK -- Sep 1 --  ITV will launch two iPhone applications for FriendsReunited next year, one each for the social network and its spin-off dating service. Melissa Goodwin, controller of mobile for ITV, said its research had shown that 67% of iPhone users are men, so the application would focus on services that include sports such football scores. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK

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The Dating Revolution Cleans up its Act

THE NEWSQUEST HERALD -- Jan 26 -- This month a survey - by a British subsidiary of Europe's largest dating service which has more than 1.5 million members - reported that 3.6 million Britons used online dating services last year. That represents 65% of the 5.4 million Britons who are looking for a relationship, according to parship.co.uk. Not only are more people looking online for love but the mechanics of doing so have also improved enormously. A few of the UK's top websites; Datingdirect  promises "your next date is just a click away...", LoveandFriends provides "internet dating for thinking people", FriendsReunitedDating has "thousands looking for genuine relationships". Mysinglefriend.com has 15,000 members; a friend can register their single friend who then has a chance to look over, approve and add comments to the description before it goes live.  Or a single person can nominate themselves, ask a friend to describe them and, again, approve the description and add any comments before it goes online. 

Mark Brooks: The European online dating market is hot; growing at the same fast clip as the American market 2-3 three years ago.