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.
Month: March 2012
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.
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.
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.
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.
Online Dating Vs. Online Gaming
HUFFINTON POST – Mar 25 – Online University put together a crafty infographic which makes the case that "online gamers get girls." The raw numbers point to the fact that online gaming is simply a bigger pool of individuals: While eHarmony has ~1M members, the most populated multiplayer gaming site, World of Warcraft (WoW) has 12 M.
Global Personals Launches Mobile Dating Platform
PRESS RELEASE – Mar 23 – GlobalPersonals.co.uk is to fully launch the WhiteLabelDating.com mobile platform later this summer. WhiteLabelDating.com provides a platform for brands and individuals to power their own dating sites and will now also offer partners the software and services to take their sites mobile. The launch follows a successful beta period, which saw a 133% increase in the number of members taking up full membership subscriptions.
Arranged Marriage For Chinese Babies
ROCKET NEWS 24 – Mar 23 – The infant matchmaking service was started by Chinese childcare site Baby Tree and reflects a growing trend in the country of parents looking online to find playmates and partners for their children. Using the website, parents create a profile, complete with a picture and the option to throw an online “wedding” once they think they’ve found the perfect match for their child. Baby Tree reports that ~200 families joined the site within the first week and already 40 pairs of oblivious toddlers have been made couples.
The full article was originally published at Rocket News 24, but is no longer available.
How CMO Jessica Powell Is Introducing Badoo To The U.S.
FORBES – Mar 23 - Badoo.com is launching a new marketing campaign in New York. Forbes spoke to Jessica Powell, the chief marketing officer of Badoo, to learn more about the start-up, her marketing initiatives, and the purpose of The Badoo Project.
Q: What’s Badoo.com?
A: Badoo is the world’s largest social network for meeting new people. It first launched in 2006, and we now have ~140M registered users worldwide and~125K new users signing up every day.
Q: How is it different than Facebook and LinkedIn?
A: It is all about meeting new people. People use the site for making new friends, chatting, flirting, and dating.
Q: Do you even consider Facebook a competitor?
A: Wonderfully for us, we view them as very separate.
Q: Tell me about your marketing strategy. How do you recruit new users?
A: To date, we’ve benefited from viral and word-of-mouth organic growth. Now, however, we’re at a stage in our company growth where certain more formal marketing strategies start to make sense for our international footprint. That’s how we’ve come to the launch of The Badoo Project, which is our first U.S. campaign.
Q: Explain The Badoo Project
A: To mark Badoo’s official U.S. launch, we’re holding a massive three-day photo shoot in New York to give people the ultimate online profile picture. Based on personality, energy and individuality, a final 24 will then get the chance to say hello to the city they love, by starring in a mixed media campaign, including billboards, banners and other media, across New York throughout the month of May. Judges will choose 22 finalists, and the final two will be crowned “People’s Choice” winners, voted for by the public with Facebook “likes.”
by Jacquelyn Smith
See full article at Forbes
Doctors Ask Out Patients On Dating Sites
HUFFINGTON POST – Mar 21 – New research suggests doctors are contacting patients on dating sites and engaging in other unprofessional online behavior – and sometimes getting caught. That's according to a survey of most state medical boards that license and discipline doctors. Most boards said they'd received at least one complaint about unprofessional online behavior; 25% had received more than three complaints. The most common violation was asking patients out online. Others were prescribing medicine and overstating medical credentials online.
by Lindsey Tanner
The full article was originally published at Huffington Post, but is no longer available.