USA TODAY – July 18 – Casual, easy and non-threatening — the simple beauty of SMS. For dating, it has given rise to new ways of flirting and even defining exactly what's going on between two people. Hearing someone's voice on the phone is still a key element for a relationship, yet people are increasingly more likely to rely on the relative "safety" of a text for initial contacts. An Independent research firm conducted a survey in May for ChristianMingle.com and JDate.com. One third of singles agree it's less intimidating to ask for a date via SMS, the survey found. One in four say an hour is the longest acceptable response time to a text. According to Nielsen, 764 SMS per person were sent/received each month in the USA in 2012, compared with 165 mobile calls per month.
Category: ChristianMingle
ChristianMingle And JDate Debut New Mobile Apps
MARKETWIRED – June 9 – ChristianMingle.com and JDate.com have released two new mobile apps: ChristianMingle's Quick View app and JDate's JPix app. Both apps are available for Android and Apple devices. "Mobile logins ChristianMingle and JDate grew by ~60% in Q1", said Greg Liberman, CEO of Spark Networks, the company that owns and operates both ChristianMingle and JDate.
The full article was originally published at Spark Networks website, but is no longer available.
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Stock Market: Spark Networks Could Be The Next Netflix
BENZIGA – May 10 – 9 months ago Netflix traded for $55 a share. Over the last 7 months, Netflix quadrupled in value and is now trading at ~$217 a share. Who will be the next Netflix? It could be Spark Networks, which owns and operates JDate and Christian Mingle. It only has $170M market cap. JDate been around for over a decade and has had a 90% or higher contribution margin for the last 11 years running, but it hasn't grown. It is the very definition of a beautiful cash cow. Christian Mingle is aimed at the market of Christians in the United States, which is 30 times larger than the Jewish market. It is now substantially larger than JDate. It is not yet profitable because they take all of their cash flow and plow that back into growth. Last quarter, revenues grew 45% YOY. IAC is the most logical buyer for Spark, and it would be a tiny bite-sized acquisition.
by Louis Bedigian
See full article at Benzinga
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More Religious Singles Are Searching For Love Online
by Cindy Huang
The full article was originally published at PBS, but is no longer available.
ChristianMingle Saw 89% YOY Increase In Paid Members
BUSINESSWEEK – Feb 28 – The $30M advertising and marketing push had made ChristianMingle an unexpectedly popular dating site with 8M registered users, 154K paying subscribers at $19.99 a month. That’s almost double the 84K paying subscribers of SparkNetwork’s groundbreaking Jewish singles site, JDate. SparkNetworks.com was founded in 1997. JDate grew rapidly by word of mouth. ChristianMingle was launched in 2004 and remained small until 2010, when Spark consulted with local ministers and prominent Christian leaders about how best to serve their constituents. As a result, the company founded an advisory council of church leaders and hired ChristianMingle spokeswoman Ashley Reccord, a pastor’s daughter, to help conduct outreach. Then the company launched Believe.com, which features Christian editorials, and redesigned the site into something more devout-seeming than JDate. Spark reported the number of ChristianMingle paid subscribers grew 89% for the Q4 of 2012 vs. the period a year earlier. There are other suitors in the market for Christian romance; eHarmony and ChristianCafe.com.
by Logan Hill
See full article at BusinessWeek
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State Of Dating In America
VCSTAR – Feb 9 – The 2013 State of Dating in America report was sponsored by ChristianMingle and JDate. Among the findings: 91% of Jews and 84% of Christians would live together before marrying a partner. ~75% of Christians and Jews were looking for a partner who shared their religious faith. The survey showed 87% of singles think online dating is a good way to meet people. 62 % of those 18 to 24 would be disappointed if they never married compared to 16% of those 55 to 59.
by Kim Lamb Gregory
The full article was originally published at VCStar, but is no longer available.
ChristianMingle.com Growth
WASHINGTON POST – Jan 10 – ChristianMingle is owned by the same company, Spark Networks, that owns JDate, the wildly successful Jewish dating service. Indeed, JDate has been the engine behind ChristianMingle’s “God” campaign this year. Spark has plowed revenue generated by the older, more established JDate into promoting the Christian site. ChristianMingle is now the biggest of Spark’s 28 dating sites, each for a specific subset of singles. The company says ChristianMingle is the nation’s leading Christian-based dating site, with ~8M registered members. Spark Networks' Christian dating division had revenue of $22.9M during the first nine months of 2012, an increase of 111% over the same period the year before. (Its Jewish division had revenue of $19.4M, down 5%). Spark poured ~$30M into marketing and advertising for the division, more than double the year before. Overall, Spark lost $4.45M over the first three quarters of 2012 after a loss of $503K during the same period of 2011. ChristianCafe, which says it is the only Christian-owned dating site among the major players, has a marketing tie-in with Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian group founded by author and radio preacher James Dobson. Focus on the Family once had ties with eHarmony.com and its founder, Neil Clark Warren, but eHarmony has moved away from a Christian-centric approach in a bid for a broader market.
by Paul Farhi
See full article at Washington Post
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Google’s Most Searched Singles Sites Of 2012
HUFFINGTON POST – Dec 14 - Google Zeitgeist — the search engine's annual online presentation of the year's top "trending" and "most searched" terms — includes a list of the top 10 most searched dating sites.
- PlentyofFish
- Match.com
- OkCupid
- eHarmony
- DateHookup
- Zoosk
- ChristianMingle
- AdultFriendFinder
- JDate
- Singlesnet
by Christina Huffington
See full article at Huffington Post
Spark Networks Sued For False And Deceptive Spam Emails
MARKETWIRE – Oct 17 – Spam recipients filed a class action lawsuit against ChristianMingle and BlackSingles for violations of California's anti-spam law. According to the complaint, Spark Networks is liable for advertising in unlawful spams sent by its third-party marketing affiliates that violated Business & Professions Code Section 17529.5. Some of the emails for ChristianMingle and BlackSingles listed a woman's name as the sender, while others used generic from names like "Christian Dating," "Christian Dating Partner," or "Christian Singles" that misrepresent the advertiser. Many of the spam emails were sent using domain names that made it difficult to determine their origin. Other domain names were registered to fake companies or individuals with bogus addresses. The statute allows $1,000 per spam plus attorneys' fees for prevailing recipients.
The full article was originally published at MarketWatch, but is no longer available.
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Spiritual Profile Crucial To Many Seeking Romance
HUFFINGTON POST – Feb 14 – For some people a potential mate’s religious profile is the most important of all. “God has a match for you," claims a Christian dating site called Christian Mingle. Shaadi.com, a site for the South Asian community, breaks it down even further — first between Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and others, and then among caste and background. Statistics seem to support this, with interfaith marriages having a slightly higher rate of ending in divorce. "It's about a baseline of comfort," explained one gay Jewish man who used J-Date in his search for a partner.
See full article at Huffington Post
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