WLD – May 10 – Global Personals acquires Smooch, the 7th largest dating site in UK (Experian Hitwise), alongside its parent company WooWise. The acquisition also includes Mancentral.com, which will help Global Personals grow its gay dating division. Martin Bysh and Marcus Hamilton will remain as advisors to the business. The financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
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SB WIRE – May 7 – eLove Matchmaking is opening offices in Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary and has acquired Real Connections, with its offices in Calgary and Edmonton. Professional matchmakers do the recruiting, marketing and interviewing for their members to ensure their privacy and safety. eLove conducts a mandatory background check for the safety of each single they match.
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.
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PR WEB – Apr 13 – Caerus AG, the owner of Dating Factory has acquired Datech, better known for its private label platform World Dating Partners. Both companies have offerings in multiple languages and dating niches. The two companies will continue to be operated separately. DatingFactory.com was established in 2009 and provides private label dating platform. DatingFactory.com operates in 15 languages, 40 niches, and has a global data base of millions. World Dating Partners, established in 2001, is a global private label dating platform available in multiple languages.
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HERALD SCOTLAND – Mar 9 – Bill Dobbie and Max Polyakov, founders of Cupid, have each netted £10.8M after selling a total of 12M shares. The sale, equivalent to 14.8% of the company, comes just days after Cupid revealed that Mr Polyakov, its business development director, has quit to launch a social gaming business in the US. Mr Dobbie and Mr Polyakov each sold 6M shares at 180p each. The buyers were institutional investors. Following the disposals Mr Dobbie retains 13.8M shares, some 17% of the company, while Mr Polyakov has 12.6M, or 15.5%.
OPW – Feb 8 – WebDev Ltd, the Internet company behind the largest Irish dating site http://www.anotherfriend.com has acquired the Irish dating site, http://www.maybefriends.com from the Saon Group for an undisclosed sum. AnotherFriend.com currently has ~60% market share of the Irish Online Dating market, with over 12.8M page impressions and 290K unique visitors monthly.
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INVESTOR.COM – Dec 8 - The company's acquisition in May of Europe's Meetic.com, and its purchase of a 20% stake in China's Zhenai in September, are the latest confirmations that IAC and Diller covet online dating. For Meetic, IAC spent 15 Eur ($21), a share to boost its ownership to 80% from 27%. The shares, traded on the Euronext Paris exchange, were valued at 13.50 at the time, so IAC paid a 56% premium. IAC's dating sites are among its most profitable assets, says Needham & Co. analyst Kerry Rice. In the Q3, IAC reported that its online dating revenue rose 25% to $132.3M.
by Kevin Shalvey
The full article was originally published at Investor.com, but is no longer available.
PR WEB – Nov 3 - Woo Media, the live interactive video network, with web properties including WooMe.com, Shufflepeople.com, and Monsterchat.com, has announced its sale to Zoosk, the world’s largest social dating site. WooMe’s 10M users will soon be able to engage directly with Zoosk’s user base of over 100M users. In addition, all properties owned and operated by Woo Media will also be merged into Zoosk. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
The full article was originally published at PR Web, but is no longer available.
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ECONOMIC TIMES – Oct 12 – Yahoo has sold its stake in the company that owns the online matchmaking portal bharatmatrimony.com, valuing it at $190M. BharatMatrimony, which makes its money through subscriptions, competes with shaadi.com, jeevansathi.com and simplymarry.com, which is owned by the Times Group.
MASHABLE – Oct 11 - Facebook has acquired two-year-old social question-and-answer startup Friend.ly for an undisclosed sum. The Friend.ly team will join Facebook and focus on new products for the social network, while the Friend.ly site will continue to operate as a separate service. Friend.ly, a service similar to Formspring, raised $5.5M in Series A funding.
by Jennifer Van Grove
See full article at Mashable
Mark Brooks: Friend.ly was founded by Harvard and Stanford educated Ed Baker. It's a discovery engine to help people learn more about their current friends. A 'lite' idating app, of sorts. (Full Disclosure: Friend.ly was advised by the Courtland Brooks team)