THE NEXT WEB - Sep 27 - Cupid is expanding its portfolio in the US with the launch of mature dating site LoveAgain along with a matching Facebook app. LoveAgain is the US version of Cupid’s existing UK site for the over 40s, MatureDatingUK. Cupid has a close eye on the American territories of course and acquisition is not off the agenda as the firm expands. "If we find the right priced acquisition in the US we could accelerate our growth", says CEO Bill Dobbie.
27 posts categorized "Outlets - The Next Web"
Cupid Launches LoveAgain, 50+ Dating Site In US
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IAC Buys DateHookup
THE NEXT WEB - Aug 31 - IAC today announced its acquisition of DateHookup.com, a free dating site that claims 1M unique visitors per month. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. DateHookup was founded by CEO Dustin Weirich in 2002 and has grown to become the 6th most-trafficked free online dating website in the US.
by Robin Wauters
See full article at The Next Web
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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POF Is Launching Luvmybox
THE NEXT WEB - Aug 3 - Plentyoffish.com (POF) has launched a side project dubbed Luvmybox. The new venture will ship you a discreetly packaged box filled with “adult oriented and flirty items” on a monthly basis for $34.95 a month. Every month, a ‘LuvBox’ will be sent to members, filled with “intimate and slightly risqué items”. No more awkward trips to the sex shop, in other words. POF says Luvmybox will start shipping boxes in the US and Canada in September.
by Robin Wauters
See full article at The Next Web
Mark Brooks: Markus commented "Its not owned by POF, and POF resources won't be committed to it."
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Zoosk Launches Couple Profiles
THE NEXT WEB - Apr 2 - Couples can now build their joint profile on Zoosk and share their lives together. The combined account has a ‘Romantic Moments’ feature that can act as a repository for images, updates and comments on events like anniversaries, vacations, special moments and more. Zoosk is available in 25 languages and has members in ~70 countries. The company was founded in 2007 by Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr.
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Online Dating Spend Grows By 60% On Last Year
THE NEXT WEB - Feb 11 - New data suggests that there has been a 57% increase in online dating revenues in the past year. Digital marketing and billing manager Vindicia has been tracking the global activity for its online dating clients. Social networking, and in particular Facebook, is contributing to the growth. Vindicia’s online dating clients attracted £3.4 million (US$5.4 million) in revenues in January alone this year, compared to the £2.2M (US$3.5M) spent in January 2011. Sales have increased steadily over the weekends leading up to Valentine’s Day too – with dating companies seeing individual spikes of up to 40%, and a combined global spike of 23% last weekend (February 3rd) against the previous weekend’s spend (January 27th). These figures are global, and are taken from across all of Vindicia’s online dating clients, which include SNAPInteractive, SpeedDate.com, Online Buddies and AvidLife. Online dating spend grows by 60% on last year, and the industry can only get bigger
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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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The Most Bizarre Sites for Finding Love on the Internet
THE NEXT WEB - Aug 4 - People usually have a particular thing that is really important to them. So niche dating sites have sprung up to serve these interests and commonalities. "People bond best when they share something in common. So this acts as a means of conversation and connection," says Mark Brooks, an Analyst and Consultant in the online dating world. Love Horse is a dating site for horse lovers. Yes! Mrs. Robinson is dedicated to pairing cougars with older women. For another cougar toy boy website, check out Toy Boy. On Brainiac Dating members earn badges for solving puzzles and playing games. For another geeky dating site, check out Seek a Geek. Cuddly Lover is for all the chubby chasers out there. Savage Hearts is a fiend finder service, for those proud to be a little different - Pin-up pretties, tattooed temptresses, gorgeous geeks or fruity fetishists. DateGinger is a dating site for people with red hair. For similar sites, there’s also Redhead Passions and Redhead World.
by Courtney Boyd Myers
See full article at The Next Web
Mark Brooks: Most of these are White Label Dating dating sites, btw. (Full Disclosure: White Label Dating is a client of Courtland Brooks)
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Cheek’d: Dating Service with “Business Cards”
THE NEXT WEB - July 19 - Cheek'd, a NYC based dating network, bridges the gap between online dating and real-world by providing members with physical cards that they can use to entice people from the real world to flirt with them in the virtual world. The company was founded last year. Each member receives a deck of calling cards including short, ‘cheeky’ statements such as: “act natural, we can get awkward later” “don’t overthink this” and “emotionally available”, as well as a link and code id. The recipient of the card logs onto the Cheek’d website, enters the code, reviews the card-giver’s profile and then can send the card-giver a message for free.
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Badoo: Social Networking & Dating & Location Based Service
THE NEXT WEB - July 17 - For microblogging, there’s Twitter, whilst Facebook is where you keep in touch with friends. LinkedIn is best kept for business acquaintances. Google+ seems to straddle a line somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn and it’s too early to say on which side it will eventually fall. What about SNS for people you don’t know? This is where the story of Badoo begins. Badoo was launched in London in 2006 by Russian serial entrepreneur Andrei Andreyev. His other ventures include SpyLog, Begun and Mamba. There’s a good chance you associate Badoo with dating, but this is an image the company is feverishly attempting to rid itself of. There’s two reasons. Online dating still has some negative associations. And secondly, not everyone is necessarily interested in dating – some people simply want to meet new people. You go to Badoo and connect with others in the area. It could be for drinks, dancing or a game. Today Badoo has 121M members in 180 countries, a turnover of ~$100M.
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New Dating API Could Become the Facebook Open Graph of Love
THE NEXT WEB - June 25 - Dating API is a new project that comes from comes from San Francisco startup VisionSync and is setting out to do for dating what Apps have done for Facebook. With the API, there’s a single sign-on for whatever supported site users wish to join, automatically feeding in all their profile information. The Dating API will also let users see updates and feeds of users’ social activity on the likes of Twitter; Facebook; Netflix; Pandora; Yelp; Good Reads and SoundCloud. Developers interested in trying the API can register for more information at datingapi.io.
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Interview: Clique, a Dating Site Facebook Should Be Jealous of
THE NEXT WEB - June 23 - Clique connects friends of friends—It’s how you meet people at a party, brought online. Clique users can’t connect with anyone who is more than two degrees away from a friend, so every date is vetted by someone he or she knows.
Q: What is Clique and why is it different from other dating sites?
Christy Purington, Founder: Clique is a dating site that connects friends of friends. We include those in relationships–dubbed “wingmen”–to help set up friends.
Q: What is the end goal of Clique? To set up all your friends?
A: First, for daters to discover new people in their social graph as potential dates. Second, its for users–single or taken–to set up their friends.
Q: How will you monetize Clique?
A: We want to avoid the subscription model if possible. One option is charging for the second tier of connections. These are the people who are close enough to your network to be meaningful, but far enough away that you may not have interacted with them yet.
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eHarmony Brings The Love To iPhone, iPad
- View your matches
- Receive match updates
- Upload photos
- Communicate with your matches
FULL ARTICLE @ THE NEXT WEB
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