RESPONSE SOURCE – Jan 21 – Jenni Regan, founder of Butterflysocial.co.uk, hopes that social dating will revolutionize the dating experience. Social dating is focused on small group events for singles catering to specific interests. This site, and others like it, aim to overcome the common obstacles of traditional dating and online dating. Regan said: “Internet dating can be so daunting and very hit and miss. Butterflysocial.co.uk is all about getting people out in small groups for relaxed and easy-going evening or afternoon events.” FULL ARTICLE @ RESPONSE SOURCE
Category: Social Dating
Badoo.com Reaches Top 10 Facebook Apps, Now Largest Facebook Dating App
SOURCEWIRE – Jan 17 – Badoo's meteoric rise to the top was fueled by an impressive 370% increase in users over the holiday season, gaining nearly 14 M users in less than 4 weeks. The 4 year old start-up based in Soho, London has surpassed Are YOU Interested? by SNAP Interactive, Pet Society by Electronics Arts and Quiz Planet by CrowdStar to claim the number 7 spot in Facebook Apps. The app is gaining 300,000 new users a day. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, Social Media Industry analysts are suggesting 28 million monthly users and a Top 5 Facebook App rating is in the company's near future. FULL ARTICLE @ SOURCEWIRE
SNAP Interactive Raises $8.5 Million
TECH CRUNCH – Jan 14 - SNAP Interactive, the publicly listed company behind social dating apps and services like AreYouInterested, is to raise $8.5M in a private placement transaction. Under the terms of the transaction, SNAP has agreed to sell ~4.25Mshares of its common stock to institutional investors at $2 per share and warrants to purchase up to ~2.125M additional shares of its common stock. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
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Badoo.com Chose Geolocation Technology From Digital Element
PR NEWSWIRE – Jan 11 – For the social dating network Badoo.com, location is an important element. Badoo runs a location-based social website service in ~200 countries around the world and needed a way to provide users with access to services focused on their locality and local language. To meet these location-based needs, the company turned to Digital Element, the leader in IP Intelligence and geolocation solutions. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE
Games, Dating And Marketplace Do Well On Facebook
INSIDE FACEBOOK – Jan 10 - CityVille is once again the leader of our weekly AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by monthly active users but several other apps also made significant gains. Dating app Badoo is doing better than ever with 2.6M new MAU. The Hot-or-Not style app has been battling with Are YOU Interested? for the top spot in its genre, but at this point, it appears to be breaking away. FULL ARTICLE @ INSIDE FACEBOOK
Mamboo’s UK Dating Site Sees Impressive Growth
PR LOG – Jan 6 – Two months after the launch of Mamboo in the UK, the service has grown to 117,000 registered users. Women outnumber men on the site, totaling 61,000. There are 56,000 men on the site. Mamboo is a free online dating site with free open search, instant messaging, and a mobile app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The network boasts over 10,000 white label partners with 7 million active users.
Over Two Million Singles Connect On Skout.com In 2010
PR WEB – Dec 30 – ~10K new users joined Skout each day in December 2010. According to Gary Kremen, Founder of Match.com, "Skout is perfectly positioned to disrupt the online dating market." Skout pioneered what is known as "gps dating", using the iPhone's unprecedented gps technology to help singles meet and flirt based on proximity. Skout launched in 2009. The average user spends ~40 minutes per day "Skouting", according to Skout's founder.
The full article was originally published at SF Gate, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Traditional dating sites have been slow to push out GPS offerings, leaving the door open for Skout to lead early adopters by the hand to their next generation social dating + geolocation based service.
Badoo’s Dating App Sees Big New Surge On Facebook
INSIDE FACEBOOK – Dec 24 – Badoo has been around for years, mostly as a slickly-designed dating social network, but it introduced a Facebook app version in Oct, and it’s recently been challenging many larger dating competitors. The app grew from 3.19M monthly active users and 365K daily active users a month ago to 10.8M MAU and 1.34M DAU today — making it the second-largest dating title by MAU and the largest by DAU on Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ INSIDE FACEBOOK
Facebook Not Yet A Mecca For Singles To Connect
WASHINGTON POST – Dec 5 - In theory, Facebook should be a mecca for singles looking to connect. Nick O'Neill, founder of All Facebook, a Web site that watches trends on the network, believes Facebook-based dating services are bound for the digital graveyard. Some of them will eventually become viable competitors to Match.com. The companies leading the way, he said, use Facebook to attract users while maintaining their privacy. Zoosk, for instance, lets people sign up for the service through Facebook and other networks. The company has attracted ~$40 million in venture capital and claims to have~50M registered users. AreYouInterested.com is adding ~50K users a day. FULL ARTICLE @ WASHINGTON POST
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Mamba Founder Created Mega Project On The West
OPW – Nov 26 – Andrew Andreev founded Mamba, the most popular dating site in Russia with ~4.5M members. In 2005, Mamba was sold for $20M to Finam, a financial investment group. Most of Russian internet startups just copy foreign models. Mamba was unique, notes Nikita Sherman, ex-president of the company. Together with rare internet games it created demand for SMS payments. Having bought “Mamba” in 2005, Finam CEO didn’t regret. In 2009 its profit reached 664M rubles ($21M) with EBITDA 48%. The number of users increased to 12M. In 2007 Finam sold 30% of Mamba for $18M to Mail.ru, which was a part of internet holding DST of Yuriy Milner. Though Mamba never made it to the international dating market, Andreev launched another dating site called Badoo.com in 2006. Today Badoo has ~80M users. "Badoo competes with Plentyoffish, the leading free dating site in Europe," says dating market analyst Mark Brooks. In 2007 Finam” bought 10% stake in Badoo which valued the company at $300M. According to conservative estimates, annual revenue should pass $200M this year. FULL ARTICLE @ OPW