OPW - Jan 25 - The 2012 iDate Awards took place at The Royal Palm Beach in Miami. We are proud to announce the following award winners.

- Lifetime Achievement Award 
   Gary Kremen  

- Best Dating Site
   OKCupid 

- Best Up and Coming Dating Site
   HowAboutWe.com

MIAMI HERALD - Jan 25 - Three Florida schools, including Florida International University, have had so many students join a sugar-daddy dating site that they’ve been included in the site’s ‘Top 20’ universities of 2011. For the women on Seeking Arrangement.com, what they’re seeking is often dollar-specific: as much as $10K a month, or more, to date a certain well-heeled man. College students make up about 40% of the Sugar Babies on SeekingArrangement.com. 10 to 20 escorts are removed daily.

by Michael Vasquez
See full article at Miami Herald

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PRESS RELEASE - Jan 20 - Here is a list of the Internet’s biggest Google AdSense publishers. The information was compiled based on an audit by US Department of Labor and The Official Bureau of Labor Statistics.

1. Markus Frind : PlentyOfFish.com : $300K per month
2. Kevin Rose: Digg.com : $250K
3. Jeremy Schoemaker : $140K
4. Jason Calacanis : Weblogs, Inc. : $120K
5. Mahmood Somani a Technology Entrepreneur from Vancouver, Canada quickly climbing to Top Adsense Earner really fast, and runs multiple classified websites sites earning him approximately $185,000.00 monthly.
6. David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard : FreeWebLayouts.net- $100K
7. Tim Carter : AskTheBuilder.com : $30K
8. Joel Comm : e-book : $24K
9. Shawn Hogan : DigitalPoint.com : $10K

This list only comprises of people who are earning from Adsense.

See full article at Free Press Release

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PINK NEWS - Jan 23 - The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a hacker had listed sensitive profile information online, allowing Grindr users to be impersonated. Grindr said last week only a small number of Australian users had been affected by the hacker’s site, but it would be taking urgent measures to protect security. Address and credit card information was not hacked.

by Stephen Gray
See full article at Pink News

See all posts on Grindr

STOPTHEACLU - Jan 23 - Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is only true in countries that put a high value on religion. The researchers got their data from eDarling, a European dating site that is affiliated with eHarmony. Like eHarmony, eDarling uses a long questionnaire to match clients with potential dates. It includes a question about how important your personal religious beliefs are and questions that get at social self-esteem and how psychologically well-adjusted people are.

See full article at StopTheAclu

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PRESS RELEASE - Jan 22 - After 18 months of intensive development the Smooch White Label system (SWL) was launched by WooWise. The White Label system offers three different models:

• Subscription
• Free
• Freemium

WooWise CEO Martin Bysh is speaking about supplementing subscription income with other services at iDate Miami.

See full article at WooWise blog

See all posts on Smooch

WHITELABELDATING – Jan 20 – Award-winning WhiteLabelDating.com announced today that is has reached 10M members. Since launching in 2003, White Label Dating has offered a platform for any brand or individual to power their own online dating site, providing the software, payment processing, hosting, etc. while the site owner need only provide their brand, design and marketing. Operations Director Matthew Pitt comments that “with 10 million members, we have someone for everyone” across their numerous sites. There are more sites available now than ever before, many sites are tailored to specific interests, religions, hobbies, and more.

See full article at WhiteLabelDating

See all posts on WhiteLabelDating.com

PR WEB – Jan 19 – Online dating site Lovestruck.com announced its new profile verification service, being offered for free to its UK, Hong Kong and Singapore members. The process will allow Lovestruck to cross-check a member’s profile against various public Social IDs, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Members who successfully pass their verification will receive a "Verified" badge on their profile in addition to Social ID badges showing which networks have been used to verify their identity. Managing Director Brett Harding believes verification will lead to a "more open level of communication with potential matches" and thus provide more and better dates.

See full article at PR Web

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TNW – Jan 19 – Founded in April 2011, I-um is an online dating service that has seen incredible success in the last seven months. Because it’s still popular practice in Korean culture to feel pressured into getting married as one gets older, young people are often set up on blind dates by family and friends instead of meeting singles on their own. I-um is primarily aimed at students and adults aged 20-39 and introduces users to one new person each day. If the interest is mutual, contact details are exchanged so they can begin talking. Since January 2011, users have increased from 40,000 to 190,000, a 375% increase. The site has also seen a revenue boost of 87%, and some 20 couples have already been married as a result of meeting through I-um.

by Andy TeBay
See full article at The Next Web

PR WEB – Jan 19 – Chatroulette online dating site Flavor Connect is celebrating its second birthday after launching in January 2010, and has grown to be the hotspot for young singles looking to hook up. Site founder and company President Khaled Ridgeway attributes the sites candy theme as the key ingredient to their success and growth. Members can easily identify potential matches as Vanilla for fidelity, Chocolate for fantasy, and Strawberry for fling, and their Chatroulette “taste test room” gives members the opportunity both engage in and pass on conversation with other members quickly and easily. Flavor Connect’s site recently went through an appearance upgrade, now offering a cleaner, smoother interface and integration with its “Sweet Talk” weblog that offers dating and relationship advice.

See full article at PR Web

GIGAOM – Jan 18 – The popular blog network Eater.com has teamed up with the online matchmaking service HowAboutWe to launch “Eater Dating”, bringing foodies together for dynamic first dates. HowAboutWe has a simple solution to online dating – instead of choosing your date based on a profile, they allow you to choose your date based on their brief description of a first date event they would like to do. For Eater Dating, they allow you to choose your date based on foodie-centric dates, such as “Sit outside and eat oysters at the Ferry Building”. Both individual sites have gained traction amongst the urban professional crowd, and Eater Dating will allow this group to kill two birds with one stone: meeting someone new for a first date while trying out a new restaurant or bar you’ve been dying to check out anyway.

by Colleen Taylor
See full article at GigaOm

See all posts on HowAboutWe

NEWSMAKER.COM.AU - Jan 18 – Launched by two Australian sisters in February 2011, LoveTradies.com is dedicated to tradies and servicepersons, and those who love them. ‘Tradie’ is an Australian slang term referring to a skilled tradesperson, including electricians, construction workers, tillers, plumbers, and carpenters. According to a recent survey, women are driven by instinct to find a partner who is strong and protective, valuing their family and career above all else, which has led to a shift towards blue collar workers as more desirable partners. LoveTradies.com is now available in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK.

See full article at Newsmaker.com.au

JUNCTION 31 – Jan 18 – UK start-up GroupOut has introduced a white label service targeting singles in the UK dating industry that provides highly focused group outings for members of websites who offer the service. The idea was formed by some of the group’s founding team who felt uncomfortable meeting their dates for the first time in one-on-one environments, and preferred something involving more activities and events that allowed them to mingle more casually with a larger group of people. The service is already receiving great traction and feedback from singles, and GroupOut is in discussion with US and other overseas partners to bring this revenue share model to their doors.

See full article at Junction

WEBWIRE – Jan 18 – Ticonderoga Ventures, Inc. will be holding a virtual convention and business networking event on Thursday, January 19, 2012 from 10:00am EST to 2:00pm EST at http://www.iDateVirtual.com. The one day free event will include many of those attending and exhibiting at the Internet Dating Conference in Miami from January 23-30, 2012. The virtual conference will provide a business networking opportunity as dynamic forms of networking will allow industry senior executives to meet online, introduce themselves, and plan meetings before meeting in Miami. Online registration is open and there is no fee to register or attend the virtual event.

See full article at Webwire

OPW - Jan 17 - Ignighter, the group dating site, has recently changed its name to StepOut. Ignighter first started in New York in 2008 but became very popular in India so the company decided to rebrand the site for the Indian market and launch its operations in Mumbai, India. Ignighter raised $1.8M two weeks ago.

See all posts on StepOut

PENN OLSEN - Jan 17 - China dating app U+ (Youja.cn) has secured $3m USD series A funding from VC funds at UMC Capital, The9 and World Trend Ventures. The funds will be used to improve service speed and grow membership further. U+ was set up by serial entrepreneurs who previously founded business social network Wealink.com and Mobile Software developer Vogins.

by Willis Wee
See full article at Penn Olsen

Mark Brooks: One to watch. Youja has a strong founder pedigree and is inspired by the best of the mobile dating apps in the West. Especially Skout, Flirtomatic and Badoo.

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.