Hello, and welcome to Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup. I’m Mark Brooks, and here are the latest headlines from around the industry.
Despite the poor economy, online dating has continued to thrive. This includes related white label businesses. Ross Williams, founder of White Label Dating, even told Britain’s Real Business magazine that the recession “doubled my business.”
Williams in the interview said White Label Dating’s turnover doubled to 25 million pounds in 2009 and that he is expecting an additional 100 percent growth this year.
In the past five months, White Label Dating has unveiled 186 new dating sites, including ones for Borders, Cosmo and Men's Health. With these new launches, White Label Dating now runs more than 2,571 sites worldwide -- 1,138 of which are in the U.K.
Dating Factory, a new option for white label dating solutions, has also seen success. In a statement exclusively to Online Personals Watch, Dating Factory CEO Tanya Fathers, formerly of World Dating Partners, said:
“The DatingFactory.com project was launched during the recession mainly because we identified the online dating market as the one of the most recession-proof areas on the Internet. Our revenue in October has grown. One of the recipes for success for DatingFactory.com is to focus on high profit non-English countries as well as traditional U.K., USA, and Far East markets. This gives our partners opportunities to diversify their efforts to create an even more stableRe income during this time of recession.”
Who else is on the upswing during the recession? The mobile dating market is doing ok. Worldwide, it has grown from $330 million in 2007 to $550 million in 2008. Juniper Research predicts revenue will double to $1.3 billion by 2013.
A new mobile plug-in for Apple products is now available from Mamba, Russia’s largest dating service. Mamba.App gives users access to all the basic Mamba services, including search, IM and profile updating. Mamba has over 11 million members, with 80,000 online at any one time.
Moving on, let's have a look at an interesting magazine study of women and online dating. According to new polls from Self Magazine, online dating is currently most popular with middle-aged women.
68% of women over 51 use dating sites, as compared to just 29% of 18-25 year old women. And around 50% of women ages 26-50 use dating sites.
When it comes to looking for sex buddies online, middle-aged women are again leading the pack. 27% of women over 51 are using the Web to initiate intimate encounters, as compared to 12% of 18-25 year olds. 18% of women 26-35, and 21% of females 36 to 50.
Also of note, more than 30% of women aged 26 to 50 have flirted with a stranger online while in a relationship, according to the survey. OnlineBootyCall, Fling and other hookup websites tend to outperform many mainstream online dating sites in terms of the amount of traffic they receive. Last May, Match.com had 5 million unique visitors, while AdultFriendFinder had nearly 24 million and Fling 18 million.
Speaking of intimate encounters, Ashley Madison, a site that helps facilitate extramarital affairs, is beginning to attract more gay and bi-curious members. Of Ashley Madison’s 4.7 million members, more than 143,000 are looking for same-sex encounters. Two-thirds are women seeking women. The remainder are men looking for men.
Finally, there’s still time to submit your nominations for the first annual iDate awards. Categories include best dating site, best software provider, best matchmaker and best affiliate program. The awards will be held on January 28 during the Internet Dating Conference in Miami. To submit your nominations, please visit www.idate2010.com. The nominations and voting, I should note, are heavily weighted towards Internet Dating Executive Alliance members. So, if you're an executive at an internet dating company, please, we're counting on you taking a minute to nominate companies, and vote.
This edition of Online Personal Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by Viximo. Viximo, helping the internet dating industry to get their virtual gifting and virtual currency offerings right first time, profitably.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. Tune in again next week as we bring you the latest and greatest from the world of online dating. No ads, no fluff, just raw news and CEO interviews. I’m Mark Brooks. Thank you.
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