TECH CRUNCH – Apr 19 – Badoo has appointed long-time Google executive Benjamin Ling as COO to help push it out across mobile and Web platforms. Ling was product management director of Search Products and Local Business Products at Google. Ling will begin his new role at Badoo in May.
by Mike Butcher
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
OPW – Apr 18 – The Funders and Founders event will be streaming live tonight at 7:50pm PST.
After that a team of investors and I will question and advise founders of idating startups.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY – Apr 19 – Amanda Cook at Crown took North American rights for a rumored seven figures to a nonfiction title called Dataclysm by Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OkCupid.com. The book will be "a witty, provocative, visually fascinating look at how 'big data' is transforming our understanding of race, politics, age, beauty, sex, humor, even history, and ushering in a new era in the study of human nature." Rudder graduated from Harvard in 1998 and was one of the first employees at SparkNotes. With the same friends that created SparkNotes—Chris Coyne, Sam Yagan and Max Krohn—Rudder went on to launch OkCupid, which sold to IAC, in 2011. At OkCupid Rudder oversees the popular blog OKTrends. For the blog, Rudder mines the Web site’s mathematical data and offers amusing takes on the numbers.
OPW – Apr 18 – The infidelity service AshleyMadison.com has finalized a deal to acquire Ohhtel.com, the South American infidelity dating site. The financial terms of this acquisition were not disclosed. As part of this transition, Ohhtel.com is shutting down its online dating service and instead changing its product offering to Live Sex shows and Erotic video chat.
See all posts on AshleyMadison
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
GIGAOM – Apr 18 – You can’t mention Badoo, which claims to be the world’s fourth-largest social network, without mentioning sex. But that’s not a characterization that anyone at the company, including notoriously reclusive founder and CEO Andrey Andreev, is happy with. They see the service they’ve built as a sort of virtual nightclub, where people can go to make friends or simply talk to other interesting people.The company already boasts 130M users, but if it wants to carry on growing it needs to eradicate the scent of sleaze — particularly in America. To get there, the company is focusing on Hispanic market. Badoo already has 8M registered users in the U.S., up 77% in the last six months, and a disproportionate amount of its users are Spanish-speaking. Right now, 22% of registered users in America use Spanish as their primary language. Given that 10% of Americans are native Spanish speakers, that’s a considerable skew.
by Bobbie Johnson
See full article at GigaOm
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
POF BLOG – Messages Exchanged by POF users have grown 67% since Jan 1st to 100M last week. Pageviews are 2 Billion per week, putting POF over 100 Billion Pageviews a Year.
The full article was originally published at POF blog, but is no longer available.
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – Apr 18 -The poll of 1,899 people found that 72% of respondents used both online dating sites and social networks while 19% used social networks alone to find a partner. Just 9% said they solely used dating sites. People mainly preferred social networks because they believe them to be safer and enabled them to meet people through mutual friends. This trend has led to social networks based dating services such as Fancy My Friend in Australia and Zoosk in which others help to hook up those searching for romance. The poll was conducted by myvouchercodes.co.uk.
TECH CRUNCH – Apr 18 - Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB) has just launched in NYC. After signing in through Facebook, CMB will match users with one person every day at noon. This person isn’t just some rando, but a friend of a friend. Users have two options: like or pass. If they pass, it’s over. If they click like they will be immediately connected through a text message sent from a private company phone line. Once they’re connected, CMB will hook them up with free gifts from dating spots in NYC for their first date. The company has plans to roll the service out in four other cities by the end of the year.
PR WEB – Apr 18 – The year was 1976, America was celebrating the bicentennial, gas was only 59c, the first Apple computer was created and the modern day matchmaker was born. On February 14, 1976, Great Expectations opened their doors for the first time. The idea for video dating came about when founder, Jeffery Ullman, was at a dinner party and ran into an old college friend. She was telling him some of her recent blind-date horror stories. Great Expectations started out as a small family business and has now grown into a multimarket dating service. In the late 90s they created GE Online, a private website accessible only to GE members to view profiles, watch video interviews, and make their selections.
JUNCTION31 – Apr 17 – Drawing Down the Moon dating agency launches GroupOut singles events. Events such as wine tasting, group walks, cooking classes, adventure days and more will now be available to all of Drawing Down the Moon’s 1,000+ members seeking to meet like-minded people. GroupOut is a value-add service that gives Dating Site Partners the ability to offer single events. GroupOut was launched in January 2012 and has seen immediate adoption with MySingleFriend and now Drawing Down the Moon.