Hello, and welcome to Online Personals Watch’s Weekly News Roundup. I’m Mark Brooks, and here are the latest headlines from around the industry.
This edition of the weekly news roundup is sponsored by the Internet Dating Executive Alliance.
Online dating giant PlentyofFish.com is continuing to grow rapidly. The site reported that they have passed 105 million monthly logins just this month, with an average of up to 380,000 emails an hour sent between users. The latest Comscore numbers show that PlentyofFish is bigger than all of Match.com and Meetic properties combined worldwide.
Speaking of Match.com, the website recently signed an agreement to acquire Singlesnet. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. However, Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com said "while Singlesnet’s traffic is currently in decline, we believe we can reverse that trend, increase the site’s profitability, and improve the overall user experience. Adrian Ong, who joined Match.com from Soulmates Technology, after the company was acquired, will be assuming the responsibility for Singlesnet.
Singlesnet’s traffic is down from over 7 million uniques a month in January of 2009 to 4.5 million a month in January of 2010. Singlesnet has also been rogue-ish in its marketing tactics in the past, so it’s good that Match.com is taking the website under its wing. Perhaps they can polish the site up and make it less of an embarrassment to the internet dating theme.
Moving on, online dating is booming in Germany. According to Nielsen, 7.5 Million German Internet users visited at least one dating site in January of 2010. Parship, Elitepartner, and Friendscout24 accounted for 16.4% of the overall active Internet users in Germany. Friendscout24 spent 39.8M Eur in advertising last year, and acquired 1.1m unique users in January of this year, followed by ElitePartner with 893,000 uniques, and FlirtCafe with 809,000 uniques.
Hot off the press, Smartdate.com has just raised 2.2 million Euros which is the largest seed round we’ve heard of in a while. The sites uses Facebook connect to connect with user profiles, and is headed by industry veteran Fabrice le Parc who previously worked with be2. He launched be2 in France, and Benelux, and worked on a French and a US reality dating show in the past.
While business is booming in Germany, dating site scams are on the rise in Australia. Australians reported losses of ~$70M to fraud and swindling to the consumer watchdog last year. However, real losses could in fact be much higher. Scams linked to dating sites were up by 30%. More than 12,000 people lost between 1 to $10,000. Two Australians actually lost more than $10M.
A new virtual dating service known as Weopia.com just recently launched. The service is intended to over shadow the bad rap of the awkward first date. Singles won’t have to click on Weopia to find a date, they just have to send in their avatars to Weopia to partake in a virtual date, which should help determine their compatibility levels.
Now for hookups and breakups!
LavaLife is being shopped by its owner, online marketer, Vertrue. Vertrue paid $113.9M initially to acquire Lavalife in 2004. Vertrue itself was actually bought out by private equity firms, One Equity Partners, Brencourt Investors, and Rho Ventures for $855M in 2007. Lavalife’s web properties have supposedlly been on the block for about four months.
HerWay.com partnered up with Honesty Online to allow members to share authenticated identity info with other members. The partnership should make it safer for singles on HerWay.com to meet each other in person.
Herway.com isn’t alone in its attempts to protect women. Maryland’s Legislation is trying to pass a Bill that might require men of Maryland who date, or otherwise communicate with foreign women to visit their local police department. If the bill is passed, it would require online dating sites to obtain a copy of police records and fingerprints for men who are citizens of Maryland, and disclose the records to female clients. Violation of the Bill could lead to a misdemeanor. Conviction could result in a fine not exceeding $12,000, or imprisonment not exceeding 1 year, if not both.
Last but not least, Harvard Professor, Michael Norton will be speaking at the Los Angeles Internet Dating conference in June. Norton is known for works such as The Counterfeit Self and The IKEA Effect. His work has been published in a number of leading academic journals, and several media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall street Journal, and the Washington Post. Norton’s presentation at the conference will discuss the advantages of virtual dating in the world of online dating.
This edition of Online Personals Watch’s Weekly News Roundup has been sponsored by the Internet Dating Executive Alliance who are helping the internet dating industry grow and prosper.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. To check out our interview with Alex Mehr, CEO of Zoosk, head over to OPW1.com. Next up, an interview with the CEO of Weopia.com. 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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