PRESS RELEASE – Dec 5 – Mektoube.fr, a dating site dedicated to the Muslim and Maghreb community in France, won "Website of the Year 2013" and " Best Dating website of the year" in France. The Website of the Year award is France’s most important people’s choice award. The "Most Popular Dating Website" is Adopteunmec.com.
Category: All Acquisitions
mDating App Tingle.com Is For Sale
OPW – Dec 3 – Tingle comes with a great domain and a decent seed userbase. Its a 'leading-edge mobile-only realtime dating app' featuring text/voice, per-message/per-call billing, prepaid credit-based business model. It was soft-launched Feb 2012 to North America and recently made available globally and serves 100K DAU.
UPDATE (Dec 16, 2014): Tingle is no longer for sale.
Live Nation Buys Meexo
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 28 – Live music giant Live Nation has acquired Meexo, a mobile startup. The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Meexo's two co-founders will take on new roles at Live Nation Labs. Romain David will lead mobile product and Dav Yaginuma mobile engineering. Meexo had already turned its attention away from the dating app, and after talking to investors David and Yaginuma decided to look at their options, including Exitround.
by Anthony Ha
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Great Insights On Manhunt’s Acquisition Of Jack’d
OPW – Nov 25 – I talked with the Chairman of Manhunt to find out more about Manhunt's acquisition of Jack'd, announced last week. Here's the summary of insights Jonathan Crutchley was kind enough to share.
Jack'd was started in early 2010 by Yosuke Matsuda, a young Japanese engineering student who was working on his master's degree at Cornell University. Yosuke programmed Jack'd from his dorm room while at school and launched it with the Apple and Google stores as a hobby. Yosuke now works for a company in Seattle, Washington. He decided to sell Jack'd to Online Buddies, Inc. when his hobby (Jack'd) made overwhelming demands on his time. He was the sole employee of Jack'd, and he just didn't have time to run the app as well as keep up with the demands of his daytime job.
- As far as financials and numbers go, Jack'd is a very new product. Its best days are ahead.
- Manhunt signed the acquisition deal about 6 months ago, when Jack'd had over 2 million active accounts and about 1 million daily unique users.
- ~Half of Jack'd daily users are in Mainland China, and those numbers are growing fast.
- Jack'd was bought for its traffic rather than its revenue.
See all posts on Manhunt
See all posts on Online Buddies
See all posts on Jack'd
Spark Networks Major Shareholder Acquires $790K In Stock
WKRB – Nov 26 – Spark Networks major shareholder Osmium Partners, bought 145K shares of Spark Networks stock. The stock was purchased at ~$5.45 per share, for a total transaction of $790K.
by Jim Brewer
The full article was originally published at WKRB, but is no longer available.
UPDATE: Osmium Partners LLC reported a 15.1% stake in the company and requested that its principal John Lewis be immediately appointed to the Board of Directors.
See all posts on Spark Networks
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Deutsche Telekom Sells 70% Of Scout24
GVA.BE – Nov 21 – Deutsche Telekom sells a stake of 70% in its Internet subsidiary Scout24 to U.S. investment company Hellman & Friedman for ~1.5 billion Eur in cash. Scout24 operates sites such as AutoScout24, FinanceScout24, JobScout24, TravelScout24 and FriendScout24, one of the biggest German dating sites.
See all posts on FriendScout24
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Online Buddies Acquires Gay Dating App Jack’d
PR NEWSWIRE – Nov 13 – Online Buddies, the company behind Manhunt.net, acquired Jack'd, a location based gay dating app. Jack'd, Manhunt, and the Manhunt Daily blog receive a combined 2M unique visits daily, making Online Buddies the largest gay dating company. Jack'd launched in 2010 and since then 5M men have installed the app.
See full article at PR Newswire
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Privacy Concerns Nix Sale Of TRUE
WSJ – Oct 23 – POF has pulled the plug on its offer to buy True.com for $700K after Texas’s attorney general warned that the sale would expose millions of singles to privacy risks.
by Jacob Gershman
See full article at WSJ
See all posts on True.com
See all posts on POF.com
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
POF On Verge Of Acquiring TRUE
COURTHOUSE NEWS – Oct 22 – True Beginnings filed for Chapter 11 protection in Texas last year, and POF.com agreed to a $700K asset-purchase agreement. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has objected to the asset sale due to privacy concerns. "True does not sell members' information to third parties without your permission," the website claims. But True.com's policy goes on to say that member personal information would be considered a transferable asset in the event the website was acquired or its assets sold.
by David Lee
See full article at Courthouse News
See all posts on True.com
See all posts on POF.com
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Acquaintable Is Now A Part Of LikeBright
OPW – Oct 22 – LikeBright, a dating sites that connects friends of friends, is acquiring another social dating site Acquaintable. Joel Rodriguez, Co-founder and CEO of Acquaintable, will be joining LikeBright as an advisor.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.