BENZINGA – June 12 – Lovestruck's singles can enjoy up to 12 months of Time Out magazine for free with a Lovestruck.com subscription. From comedy nights, hidden galleries, classic clubs and the latest bars, to film houses, hip theatres and pop-up cinemas, the iconic Time Out publication will provide Lovestruck's members with a smorgasbord of inspiring, romantic and culturally stimulating date ideas.
The full article was originally published at Benzinga, but is no longer available.
SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY – June 12 – On Friday, shares in the company behind websites such as benaughty.com and flirt.com soared by 9.1% to close at 216.5p, their highest-ever level and more than three times the 60p price put on the shares when they were floated on the Alternative Investment Market last June. Cupid's market value has risen from £45M to ~£175M.
by Perry Gourley
See full article at Scotland on Sunday
RED EYE – June 10 – Single guys in Chicago who signed up on WhatsYourPrice.com, are shelling out an average of $173 to "buy" a date, according to Brandon Wade, CEO and founder of the site. That price makes Chicago among the most "generous" cities when it comes to paying for dates. The site went live in March and now counts ~100K active members. How it works is users fill out a profile and go into the category of generous, which pays for a date, or attractive, which gets paid for a date. Then, an offer for a date is made, negotiated, accepted or rejected. Last week, the site surpassed the 50K first date mark.
by Leonor Vivanco
The full article was originally published at Red Eye, but is no longer available.
BNET – June 10 – 17 of FriendFinder Networks' 22 brands are targeted at a general audience. Most are dating sites, but they offer non-racy relationships, such as BigChurch.com for Christians and Slim.com for dieters. Some of those businesses have audiences that are far greater than FFN’s best-known brands. AsiaFriendfinder and Amigos.com both have more registrants historically than Alt.com, the kinky dating site; and BigChurch and Senior Friendfinder have more than Bondage.com. The 800lb gorilla in FFN’s business is AdultFriendFinder with 224M registrants since inception. Revenues from the adult businesses dwarf those of the general audience. In Q1 2011, FFN had $83M in total sales, and $55M of that came from its adult sites. Only $3M came from the 17 general audience businesses.
GRINDR – June 10 - Grindr, the world's largest Gay Social & Lifestyle App, hit 2M users today. Grindr has 45K active users per second on all 3 Grindr platforms (Android, BlackBerry, Apple) with 250 users refreshing their 'Cascade' display per second. Grindr launched in March 2009 and currently has 499,700 Grindr members logging on daily and spending an average of 1.5 hours a day using the app.
WLD BLOG – June 10 - YouvePulled.com, UK dating site, has released their very first TV and viral ad campaign following central character Dave who tries to chat up a string of ladies in his local pub with varying levels of comic failure.
OPW – June 12 – So you want a mobile app for your internet dating or social networking site? Apparently, creating an iphone app is so easy that even a 9 year old can do it. This 9 year old created a chiropractic app. He used Microsoft Publisher, Adobe Dreamweaver, Handbrake, and Phonegap to create the app. Phonegap is an open source platform that allows you to use HTML5 and Javascript to build apps for iPhone, Android, Symbian, Palm and Microsoft Mobile.
Also, if you just want to build an iphone/ipad app, check out myappress.
OPW – June 11 -Just in case you missed it, we've created a new blog. Check out InternetDatingScience.com. The purpose of this blog is to:
OPW – June 11 – Will you make money from selling profile verifications? Probably not. Will it help raise the perceived value of your services, by raising the 'quality' of your database of users. Quite possibly. A power user pointed out to us that Cupid Media is experimenting with profile verification checks on KoreanCupid.com. See image.
Mark Brooks: I emailed the CEO of Cupid Media, and he allowed us to run this comment…
Andrew, CEO, Cupid Media: Verification is important for a certain group of users and gives extra confidence in profiles for those users. It’s too early too tell on what type of uptake we will get, but at least users have the option to do it.
OPW – June 10 – We’ve launched a new blog with industry jobs listings for you – Internet Dating Jobs. Moving forward, we will list an extended list of job offers related to the dating industry there and a short notice that the post is live along with a few of the most interesting offers here on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
Below are several of this month’s top offers:
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From our esteemed Courtland Brooks clients:
Mamboo
Business Development Manager, US
WhiteLabelDating
Partner Account Manager
DatingStartsHere
Affiliate Manager, Dating Aggregator
Global Personals USA (Webdate, Fling, WealthyMen)
Internet Affiliate Sales Managers / Online Buyers
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eHarmony
Success Stories Coordinator
Human Resources Coordinator
FriendFinder
Project Manager
Grindr
Director of Technology (Mobile)
Match
VP Marketing & Business Development
VP Public Relations and Communications
Smartdate
COO
Spark Networks
Director of Acquisition Marketing
See an extended list here on Internet Dating Jobs.
Do you have dating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to petra@courtlandbrooks.com and we will add it to the list.