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Month: December 2016

The Internet Dating Conference Agenda :: My Top Three Picks!

Posted on December 22, 2016

Idate2017OPW – Dec 22 – iDate Miami is happening January 25-26. Are you going? The top people in the dating business will be there. Marc tells me there's a great representation from senior management this year. That's good. So here's my top picks from the agenda. Here's the sessions I'll definitely be sitting in on and taking notes on.

  1. Geoff Cook, the CEO of publicly traded company MeetMe is speaking first on the 25th. His company is doing well, and they bought the hallmark early mobile dating service Skout this year. Amazing. Got to see that.  They're going from strength to strength and their stock is way up. Doubled this year!
  2. The marketing director for Zoosk is giving us his thoughts on marketing to a relationship on mobile. Great!  Zoosk gets 20 million hits a month on their website, and way more on mobile. They're doing well again. Why?  How? What's next? Let's find out.
  3. I'm interviewing the CEO of Hinge. Justin McLeod is going to give us insights on mobile dating for the people looking for meaningful relationships. i.e., the other end of the market to Tinder. Does it work? How's he doing it? I'll also be visiting Justin's office in NYC the week prior. Watch OPW. I'll run a video review on OPW prior to my iDate interview with Justin. 

Also, Brandon Wade is speaking. He's talking about how he went from niche to mainstream. We're talking SeekingArrangement here. Highly controversial of course. What's inside this man's brain? What's he going to do next? I certainly will be listening in and asking some tough questions.

So there we have it, and here's the agenda in full. Hope to see you there. This will be the 41st iDate that I'm speaking at! Prices go up December 23rd so best to pick up your tix now, so you can write them off in this tax year.  ;-)

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.

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How Disney Fan Dave Tavres Started MouseMingle.com And Scored Massive Press Coverage

Posted on December 21, 2016

OPW INTERVIEW – Dec 21 – Dave Tavres is CEO of MouseMingle.com and describes how he started MouseMingle and got a massive amount of top press within a week of starting his Disney fan dating site. – Mark Brooks

See all posts on MouseMingle

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.

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Foreign Office Warns Gay Tourists About Dangers Of Grindr Abroad

Posted on December 21, 2016

Grindr logo new dec 13PINK NEWS – Dec 21 – The UK Foreign Office has updated its guidance for LGBT tourists to warn about the dangers of using Grindr abroad. It now warns: "If you intend to visit cruising areas or use a dating app, find out about the local situation and take sensible precautions if you meet someone." It has been alleged that police in Egypt were exploiting Grindr and other dating sites to hunt members of the gay community, as part of a crackdown on homosexuality. Grindr took the step of directly warning users to be cautious. Channel 4 documentary Hunted also documented anti-gay vigilantes in Russia using hook-up apps to lure gay men to flats, where they would be attacked or sexually assaulted.

by Nick Duffy
See full article at Pink News

See all posts on Grindr

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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Hornet Hires New General Managers For France, NY And Taipei

Posted on December 21, 2016

Hornet logo June 16PR NEWSWIRE – Dec 21 – Fabrice Le Parc has been named GM for France, Tim Greene for New York and Darien Chan for Taipei operations. Le Parc, Greene and Chan will lead business development and customer acquisition strategies for Hornet. Le Parc has worked as a web entrepreneur, having co-founded and sold various companies. He served as the MD for be2 before founding his own dating site, Smartdate. Greene and Chan are seasoned executives who have helped build businesses for numerous online properties through their combined experience in financial, marketing and technology services.

See full article at PR Newswire

See all posts on Hornet

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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One Hour Consultations Available

Posted on December 21, 2016

Mark Brooks dec 16OPW – Dec 21 – Mark Brooks is now available for initial one hour consultations if you'd like to get some insight and feedback on your Internet dating business thoughts and ideas. The booking form is here.

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.

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Online Personals Watch Is Now Mobile Friendly, Finally

Posted on December 21, 2016

OnlinePersonalWatch_croppedOPW – Dec 21 – We love Typepad for its simplicity and reliability (WordPress gets hacked too much), but one of the hang ups we had was getting it to work well on mobile. As of today, we're finally looking good on mobile. You can view the news on mobile at opw.news for short, or on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter, or why not subscribe via email for a daily or weekly update. See the right bar of OPW at any time for Subscription options.

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.

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Dating Startup Heartonnect Selected For Facebook’s FbStart Programme

Posted on December 21, 2016

Heartonnect logoTECH CIRCLE – Dec 21 – Dating app Heartonnect, operated by Trigbug, has been selected by Facebook for its FbStart programme. The programme helps early-stage mobile-focused startups to build and develop their apps. As part of FbStart, Heartonnect will receive credits worth $40k as well as services from Facebook and its ~30 partners such as AWS, Dropbox, Adobe and MailChimp to name a few. The startup differentiates itself from other dating apps by providing users the facility to directly make calls via VoIP to matches they have approved of. Users are verified through their Facebook profiles and OTP verification.

by Priya Prasad
See full article at Tech Circle

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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Shaadi.com Acquires Dating App Frivil

Posted on December 20, 2016

Frivil logoVCCIRCLE – Dec 20 – People Group, the owner of online matchmaking site Shaadi.com, has acquired Frivil, a dating app owned by Delhi-based Thrill Pte Ltd. for an undisclosed amount. In January 2015, People Group had acquired 25% stake in the company for $1M and in a related deal, Fropper, owned by People Group, was brought under Thrill. Frivil's product, intellectual property rights and brand will become part of People Group, however the dating app will continue to operate as a separate entity from Shaadi. Frivil's founders Josh Israel and Devin Serago will help to integrate the app into the new parent company, but will not be joining the firm.

by Priya Prasad
See full article at VCCircle

See all posts on Shaadi

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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Snap Interactive Reports Proforma Results For The Paltalk Merger

Posted on December 20, 2016

Snapinteractive logoACCESSWIRE – Dec 19 – Snap Interactive, an online video chat and dating provider, has filed the Company's Form 8-K/A related to its previously announced merger with Paltalk, presenting the pro forma combined financials of the post-combination company and the historical financial statements of Paltalk. Pro forma combined revenues for the nine months ended Sep 30, 2016 were $21.8M, as compared to pre-merger Snap for the comparable period of $7.8M. Combined Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA was ($868k) thousand and $33k, respectively, as compared to pre-merger Snap ($2,293k) and ($622k) thousand, respectively, demonstrating improved Adjusted EBITDA profitability.

See full article at Snap Interactive website

See all posts on Snap Interactive

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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Survey Finds That The Average Online Profile Picture Is 2 Years Old

Posted on December 20, 2016

Profiles picKNOWTECHIE – Dec 20 – A new survey conducted by www.bidvine.com asked 2k British social media and online dating users just how up-to-date their profile pictures were, with surprising results. Dating sites seemed to be the least up-to-date when it came to profile pictures, with POF users keeping the same profile picture for 3.2 years and Match.com users on average waiting 4 years to change their picture.

  1. Grindr – 2 weeks
  2. Tinder – 3 weeks
  3. WhatsApp – 2.5 months
  4. Facebook – 5 months
  5. Instagram – 6 months
  6. SnapChat – 8 months
  7. Twitter – 1.8 years
  8. LinkedIn – 2.1 years
  9. Plenty of Fish – 3.2 years
  10. Match.com – 4 years

11% of those polled admitted that the pictures used for their online profiles were taken more than 10 years ago.

by Chris Smith
See full article at KnowTechie

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

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