THE MOTLEY FOOL – Mar 8 – The shares of Cupid climbed 3p to 120p during early trading this morning after CEO Bill Dobbie revealed he had invested £1M in his firm. This week, Cupid's 2012 results showed sales up 51% to £81M.
by Maynard Patton
See full article at The Motley Fool
HERALD SCOTLAND – Mar 6 – Cupid has ordered a confidence-building independent audit of its member database. The move comes a month after the airing of claims that customers were lured into paying subscriptions to Cupid sites after receiving messages from users who disappeared when they signed up. Cupid will also seek an independent audit of its customers' experiences.
by Tim Sharp
See full article at Herald Scotland
REUTERS – Mar 5 – Cupid Plc's profits rose 31%. Cupid Plc reported pretax profit of 9.2M pounds ($13.9M), compared to 7M in 2011. Cupid said it wooed 1.78M new subscribers to its websites last year, with particularly strong growth in France and the U.S. Revenues for 2012 increased by 51% to 80.9M pounds. Cupid's share price slid ~28% in February, the biggest monthly fall since the company was floated on London's junior AIM market in June 2010. Last month, the BBC published a report featuring claims from members who said that they suspected that fake communications had been used to encourage them to buy subscriptions. Cupid denied the claims and said that it only acted "in a legal and appropriate manner".
MY NEWSWEEK – Feb 28 – Meetic has signed an agreement for the acquisition of SprayDate, Swedish dating site owned by Keynote Media Group. SprayDate started 12 years ago and was the Swedish pioneer of online dating. The cost of the acquisition has not been disclosed. Philippe Chainieux, Meetic's CEO said in a statement: "The acquisition will consolidate Meetic Group's leading position in Sweden, where online dating service will be continued through the Match.com brand.
The full article was originally published at MyNewsDesk, but is no longer available.
See all posts on Meetic
See all posts on Match.com
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
BBC.CO.UK – Feb 24 – Customers of Cupid plc have voiced concerns that they may have been lured into paying subscriptions by potential dates who did not exist. Men who signed up to a number of sites owned by Cupid plc said that flirty messages they received as free members rapidly tailed off when they became paid-up subscribers. Cupid plc said it did created staff profiles, but only for "the express purpose of monitoring the site for quality assurance and moderation purposes". It categorically denied the company sent communications in order to tempt free members to pay subscriptions.
01AMOUR – Feb 24 – Meetic, the leading dating sites in France, is organizing local offline events called "Meetic Soirées". Meetic sends invitation to selected members who are allowed to invite up to three single friends. Usually 80-120 people meet in a local cocktail bar. Since the launch ~16,000 singles attended 50 Soirées that were held in 39 cities.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK – Feb 10 – Industry action aims to stop agencies setting up fake profiles and targeting vulnerable people. Last year a study by the universities of Leicester and Westminster, working with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, estimated that 200K people had been victims of online dating fraud. Representatives of the market leaders, including match.com and eHarmony, have met the Association of British Introduction Agencies to discuss developing an industry code of conduct to reassure customers and guarantee standards of behaviour. Agencies have been prompted to demonstrate their honesty after revelations that some had set up "fake profiles" and employed staff to flirt with people to encourage them to continue their subscriptions. The UK online dating industry generated £169M in 2011, ahead of Germany with £164M and France with £99M.
by Conal Urquhart
See full article at Guardian.co.uk
EXPRESS.CO.UK – Jan 23 – Lovestruck.com is growing 40% a year with a £2.5M turnover. Lovestruck specialises in geo-targeting, matching busy singles who work, live or are close by to each other. Personal details given by prospective members are cross-checked with social networking sites allowing verification that people are who they say they are. Once past the screening, Lovestruck’s in-house algorithm matches on hard data, such as interests, age and location. A third party behavioural analytics system also kicks in analysing interactions such as winks, favourites and messages.
by Maisha Frost
See full article at Express.co.uk
GAYSTARNEWS – Jan 7 – Just days after closing its radio station, Gaydar pulls out of the nightlife business. Profile and Lo Profile, in the heart of the British capital’s gay district on Wardour Street, will shut today (7 January). They said that was so they could focus on their core digital dating brands – Gaydar and Gaydar Girls.
01AMOUR – Dec 28 – Meetic now offers its members to attend weekly parties that are being held in ~30 cities in France in clubs or hotel bars. Meetic has also developed an algorithm to predict the best matches and is going to send each member 6 daily matches.