HERALD SCOTLAND – May 23 – Cupid posted a pre-tax loss of £8M for 2013 after a profit of £9.2m in 2012. Former CEO Bill Dobbie took home £199K for his 11 months CEO tenure in 2013, compared to £596K in 2012. His replacement, Phil Gripton received a salary of £18,750, benefits of £1,300 and a £50,000 bonus, totaling just over £70,000 in compensation for December 2013.
Month: May 2014
Millionaire Match Launches In Australia
PR WEB – May 22 - Millionaire Match has launched in Australia with a focus on security and anti-scammer measures. The company has 2M users and 5,000 millionaire profiles are being registered daily.
Public Companies, Mark Brooks Presentation
OPW – May 23 – Match.com posted 2013 revenues of ~$800M and profits of $220M, including Meetic. Spark Networks projected 2013 revenues were ~$70M, with ~$13M in loss due to high marketing expenses. Jiayuan.com will earn an estimated $80M in 2013 revenues, with projected growth to $300M in 2015.
For additional companies and details, please view the video below.
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Market Overview, Mark Brooks Presentation
OPW – May 22 – The online dating market continues to evolve as more users transition to mobile apps, causing a shift in the dating site rankings. According to Pew Research, the opinions of online dating have improved and the stigma continues to fade. Pew also reports that one third of online daters have paid to use an online dating site or app, which coincides with growth in paying members on publicly traded dating sites.
The complete market overview is available in the video below.
iHookup Social Reports Q1 Financials
MARKETWIRED – May 21 - iHookup Social has released its Q1 '14 financial report. Monthly revenue grew at an annual rate of 25%, downloads grew 124% month over month, and registered users totaled ~138K. The company posted $911K net loss for Q1. According to CEO Robert Rositano Jr., the company will continue to focus on user acquisition, with a current goal of 250K.
The full article was originally published at Ein News, but is no longer available.
Dattch Founder Discusses Start-up Experience
Sex Workers Popping Up On Tinder
CBC – May 21 – Sex worker profiles have been showing up on Tinder in violation of the app's ToS. Despite recent sitings, Tinder says it isn't experiencing a rise in such profiles, and admins delete any violating profiles. 850M profile ratings and 10M matches are made on the app each day.
by Adam Carter
See full article at CBC
Match Group Interview With CEO Sam Yagan
OPW INTERVIEW – May 21 –
In the latest CEO Interview, Mark Brooks and Match Group CEO, Sam Yagan, discuss:
- Acquisitions
- Opportunities in Matchmaking
- The Couples Market
- Mobile Trends
- Android vs. iOS
- Wearable Computing
Please click here for a complete transcript of the interview.
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Sway Used Deceptive Practices To Gain Users
FORBES – May 20 – Sway appears to have used data from CarbonHire/GeniusHire, which mines sites like Github, Facebook, & LinkedIn for contact info, to send deceptive spam in an attempt to get new users. CarbonHire's database password had recently been compromised. Once installed, Sway crawls contact info on the phone and sends out more invites. The app continues to send notifications even after it's deleted. Sway and CarbonHire have failed to respond to these revelations.
Couples Market Is Heating Up
VENTURE BEAT – May 20 – According to numbers provided by Couple, Avocado, Between and You&Me, the couples market is poised to grow. Between has seen 7.45M downloads, primarily in South Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan. Couple has 2.5M downloads, and Avocado has 2M. HowAboutWe's You&Me has 143K downloads less than 3 weeks after launch, and is backed by HAW's 3M userbase. You&Me currently leads in daily downloads. The potential market for couples apps is just as large as WhatsApp's 500M users.