Category: Outlets – Business Insider

MeetMoi Has Quietly Reached 3 Million Users

Posted on October 24, 2012

Meetmoi logo newBUSINESS INSIDER – Oct 24 - MeetMoi is a location-based dating app that started in 2007. Today, the company has finally crossed three million users. MeetMoi has also a big app update coming today with iPhone 5 compatibility and Facebook Connect. The following is an interview with Alex Harrington, MeetMoi's CEO:

Q: What would you say the success rate of finding someone, connecting, and going on a date is?
A: Every introduction we make is a live connection. Our response rate is currently at 70%.

Q: eHarmony CEO, Dr. Neil Warren, commented that, "a lot of other dating services aren't research based," dubbing them online bars, how do you feel about this?
A: It is a place where people can mingle and meet each other in a low-pressure. I'm ok with the term online bar.

Q: Are people using MeetMoi to date, hook up, or find relationships?
A: People use MeetMoi for any reason but by in large its for dating.

Q: What do you do to protect users privacy?
A: We never share a user's location with any other user or any third party under any circumstances. Users permission us to use their location data to find location based relevant matches, but we don't place them on a map and we don't disclose their exact location.

by Kevin Smith
See full article at Business Insider

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OKCupid CEO Shares The Social Media Strategy

Posted on September 28, 2012

Okcupid sam yagan 2012BUSINESS INSIDER – Sep 27 – OkCupid has become incredibly popular in recent years. The tipping point was in 2009, when a strong social media strategy helped it gain traction, says CEO and Co-Founder Sam Yagan. One of the best ways to grow a business is to expand the possible user base. OkCupid tries to reach a broad audience with its blog by choosing interesting topics and great graphs that provide information as well as entertainment. OkCupid only has 18,083 Twitter followers and 12,860 Facebook page likes, which is nothing compared to how many people comment on its blog. Social media is just one piece of the puzzle. “There’s a rule of thumb in marketing that you have to have seven ad impressions before someone actually takes an action," says Yagan. "It’s reading an article on Facebook; it’s hearing the story on the news; it’s hearing from one of your friends who’s using OkCupid."

by Carolyn Cutrone
See full article at Business Insider

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Brandon Wade Is Fighting PayPal For Ditching Him

Posted on August 31, 2012

Brandon-Wade11BUSINESS INSIDER – Aug 31 – Brandon Wade runs an online dating empire including whatsyourprice.com, in which singles "bid" on first dates, and SeekingArrangement.com aimed at "sugar daddies." He recently sued PayPal, claiming it got rid of him because it deemed these businesses too "sexual" and even implied his websites promoted prostitution. Paypal is handling payments for Ashley Madison, a much more lucrative customer. So far, Wade has won a small victory in his case against PayPal. The judge in charge of the case rejected a motion to dismiss the suit before a trial.

by Erin Fuchs
See full article at Business Insider

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A Woman Sued “Two Of Us” For Matching Her With A Criminal

Posted on June 21, 2012

Twoofus logoBUSINESS INSIDER – June 21 – A woman wants her money back after paying $7,000 to a matchmaking service that allegedly matched her to a guy with an outstanding criminal warrant. Jeanne McCarthy claims 'Two Of Us,' promised her one or two quality matches every two weeks but instead gave her two in the span of five months. One of those matches allegedly had three drunk driving convictions and an outstanding criminal warrant in Arizona.

by Alex Mikoulianitch
The full article was originally published at Business Insider, but is no longer available.

Irena Brooks: Back in 2010, Jodi Meyer, Director of Two of Us, said that its 10K members are screened with a criminal background check, as well as investigated for histories with drugs, alcohol, violence and severe financial difficulties.

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IvyDate Raised $1.5 Million

Posted on June 5, 2012

Ivydate logo new June 12BUSINESS INSIDER – June 1 – Beri Meric and Phillipp Triebel, cofounders of IvyDate, raised $1.5M in funding from a bunch of angel investors, including some un-named investors that have put money into Spotify, Uber, and Facebook. IvyDate is an exclusive online dating club with an admissions committee that decides who can and who can't be part of the community. 30K people have so far been given the nod.

by Marcus Moretti
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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Skout Is About To Take Over The World

Posted on May 14, 2012

Skout logoBUSINESS INSIDER – May 13 – Christian Wiklund, CEO of Skout, wants to build a global network on the scale of Facebook and Twitter. Skout is adding 40k – 50K new users on the app every day. Dating and flirting only comprises ~20%t of Skout's use cases. Most use it to just meet new friends.

Q: What are you focusing on now?
CW: To build a global network for meeting new people.

Q: Things weren't always doing this well though. 
A: It's really in the past year that we've really taken off. A year ago we were signing up 100K per month. Now it's 40-50k users per day.

Q: What are you using the money you've raised for?
A: I don't want to take one market by market, I want to push everything as quick as possible. We need more engineers, iOS developers and back-end developers.

Q: A big focus now seems to be dating. Will that change?
A: Our lates survey found 80% were now using it for finding new friends, 20% for dating. It's a place people go to socialize. Will there be flirting? Yes. Will there be friendships made? Yes.

Q: What's are the goals for this year?
A: Keep pushing the product forward.

Q: Do you still expect to make money if you shift the focus away from dating?
A: Skout is free. We charge for extras such as seeing who checked you out. My bet is that it's still gonna work.

by Matt Lynley
See full article at Business Insider

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A Young Woman Scored $1,200/Month In Dinners Using Match.com

Posted on November 30, 2011

Shadow-womanBUSINESS INSIDER – Nov 30 - McGonagall started eating out five nights a week using a rotation of different guys she met through Match.com. McGonagall went from easily spending $500 a month on dinners alone to having someone else dole out an average of $60-plus per night.

By Madeleine Scinto
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Online Dating Is The Future Of Your Business

Posted on November 3, 2011

BUSINESS INSIDER – Nov 2 – David Teten gave a talk as part of TEDx Silicon Valley on "Online Dating is the Future of Your Business". In his talk he discussed how some of the successful online dating startups are models for new businesses. He mentioned dating sites such as TRUE.com, BeautifulPeople, HowAboutWe, Ignighter, InterracialSingles and AshleyMadison.

by David Teten
See full article at Business Insider

Brandon Wade Talks About ‘Sugar Daddy’ Dating

Posted on October 21, 2011

Seeking arrangement logoBUSINESS INSIDER – Oct 20 - According to Brandon Wade, CEO and founder of SeekingArrangement.com, all relationships are monetary exchanges in some respect. His website, a matchmaking service for "Sugar Daddies," makes those exchanges a little more transparent. Unlike most dating websites, where men outnumber women, the Sugar Babies on SeekingArrangement outnumber Sugar Daddies 10 to 1. The average age of a Sugar Baby is 25 and the average age of a Sugar Daddy is 36. There are also a handful of Sugar Mommies and Male Babies on the site, which just hit 1M members.

by Meredith Galante
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Former YouTube Mobile Exec Launches a Dating Site For Couples

Posted on August 12, 2011

Theicebreak logo BUSINESS INSIDER – Aug 10 - More than 60M U.S. Facebook users say they're married or in a relationship. San Francisco startup TheIceBreak, launched today after several months of beta testing. The IceBreak offers games and other tools for couples to learn more about each other and their relationship. The site is free now, and Android and iPhone apps are coming soon, but TheIceBreak eventually hopes to make money by sending users to affiliate sites — for instance, to buy anniversary presents.

by Matt Rosoff
See full article at SF Chronicle