MIAMI HERALD - Feb 12 - Jewcier, a new dating site for Jewish singles, is now open to the public and joins nearly 20 other general and niche dating sites owned and operated by Avalanche, co-founded by Meir Strahlberg and his business partner Kris Covino in 1997. Among Avalanche’s largest sites are Date.com, launched on Valentine’s Day in 1997; Matchmaker.com, which Avalanche bought in 2005, and Amor.com, a Latin dating site also launched in 2005, which has more than 20K members in South Florida alone. Avalanche’s domain names are words people naturally type into the Internet, so they don’t have to spend a lot in marketing, Internet dating experts say. “They’re well respected within the industry for being savvy operators,” said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry analyst and editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com. Within the last six months, Avalanche has added five gay dating sites to its portfolio, which already included GayDating.com, GayMen.com, GayMarriage.net, PinkWink.com, which is oriented toward gay women, MyPartner.com and Gay.mx, a Mexican site. Gay sites are “a growing part of our business,” Strahlberg said. Overall, the company’s sites have 10M members worldwide, and 5-10% of them are paying members, Strahlberg said. Strahlberg, who owns half the company, declined to disclose Avalanche’s revenues, but said it is “highly profitable” and has been since its inception. This year, the company may be looking for outside investors for the first time, he said.
by Ina Paiva Cordle
The full article was originally published at Miami Herald, but is no longer available.
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