Spark Networks

I found that missing press release I mentioned in a previous post about the new Spark.com dating site (see Story).

A quick read through doesn't really reveal any additional information. It does confirm what we assumed in the previous post that Spark is made up of the members from AmericanSingles.com and Date.ca. Spark Networks hope that the new clean and easy to navigate interface of Spark.com will give it a more global appeal. The release also mentions the new features of Spark.com (when compared to the old dating sites). These features are the free Color Code Personality Test, the Keyword Search and the "Who's Searching for You?" feature. While these features are new at Spark, they can be found on another Spark Networks brand of dating sites called Mingle Match.

To find out more about this dating site and the new features listed here, you can check out our review of Spark.com.

I received a bit of surprise this morning when I read the following email from a reader:

Hello....

I was wanting to join AmericanSingles.com but cannot get to the site no matter how I try......

through your website or any other way. I keep getting sent to the Spark.com dating site.

It is like they have high jacked their website address. Can you tell me what is going on?

Thank You

First of all, don't worry the AmericanSingles.com domain did not get high jacked. It looks like a number of the Spark Network dating sites, including AmericanSingles.com and Date.ca, got rebranded and combined into a new dating site called Spark.com.

Zoosk let us know a few holiday trends that they experience on their Facebook Dating Application last year. The busiest week for online dating activity was the week before Christmas. The second was the first week of January. Christmas Eve was the busiest day of the year for Zoosk. Throughout the year, on average Mondays are the most popular day to visit a dating site.

In a recent online survey conducted by Zoosk, 63 percent of Zoosk members are looking for long-term relationship. 33 percent of respondents are just looking for a holiday party date and 4 percent will not date this holiday as they find it too stressful. 19 percent of men from this survey also stated that they would invite a women on a first date to their office holiday party, while with women, only 10 percent said they would do this. In total, 39 percent of singles would prefer at least 3 dates before considering taking someone to their office party.

For more on this subject, read the Zoosk press release. To find out more about Facebook dating, check out our review of Zoosk.

In late October Zoosk was celebrating 40 million members (see Story) and had already received $10.5 million in funding over the last year or so. On December 3rd they announced that they had secured an additional $30 Million in Series D Funding. This round of funding was led by the oldest venture capital firm in the United States, Bessemer Venture Partners. David Cowan, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners will be joining Zoosk's Board of Directors as part of the deal.

Zoosk was launched 2 years ago in December of 2007 by Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr (who are now the co-CEOs). They plan to use the additional dollars to continue to build and expand the dating service. Money will also be spent on both online and offline marketing campaigns to increase Zoosk's exposure. Plus, there are rumors of expanding Zoosk to new platforms on the mobile front, including an iPhone App.

For more on the story you can read the press release. To find out more about this social dating community, read our review of Zoosk.

On November 5th, 2009 Spark Networks reported their third quarter results which ended on September 30, 2009. For Q3, 2009 Spark Networks revenue was $11.1 million. This is a 21 percent decrease from Q3, 2008 of $14 million and a 2 percent decrease from last quarter. For the first 9 months of this year total revenue is now at $34.3 million which is a 22 percent decrease from last year of $44.1 million.

The Jewish Networks saw revenue fall to $7.1 million for Q3. For the same quarter last year, revenue was 16 percent more at $8.4 million. Some good news is to be found though, for the first time in a few quarters, the Jewish Networks had an increase of subscribers to 86,051. This is a decrease of 6 percent from Q3, 2008 but a 4 percent increase from the prior quarter.

The Other Affinity Networks (MingleMatch) saw a decrease of 9% in revenue to $3.2 million when compared to last year. This is 3 percent less than the last quarter. Subscriber wise for the third quarter, there was 66,786. This is virtually identical to Q3 in 2008 and a 2 percent increase from last quarter.

What services are included in the mobile dating market? Basically anything designed to be accessed by a cell phone for the purposes of finding and communicating with a date. This includes mobile phone applications (think iPhone Apps), mobile internet services (accessible via the phones web browser) and text based services (Twitter like).

The global mobile dating market appears to have a bright future indeed. In 2007 the industry was worth $330 million already (Juniper Research). By 2008 it had jumped over 60% to $550 million and by 2013 it is expected to double to $1.3 billion.

In part what is driving this industry are the capabilities of the phones themselves. As more people get GPS enabled smart phones and as the dating software become more sophisticated, yet easier to use for the user, more people are willing to try out these services. Still, mobile phone dating is more about instant gratification. It is considered a tech-savvy young adults tool, who is not looking for so much a long term relationship, but a casual fling or hook-up. This is why most dating profiles on a mobile dating service contains only a few questions since it is designed primarily to get the user to be able to search for matches as soon as possible.

Here is a list of a few dating applications usable on your phone:

• DateCheck - For background checks. You can search criminal records and if they own property, etc...
• Skout - An iPhone app that uses the iPhones GPS to offer a real-time location based service for online daters.
• Radaroo - A Twitter app for meeting singles.
• Zoosk - A dating site which integrates with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The free dating site OkCupid is also planning to launch a free iPhone dating app in the near future which will offer a location based service. Sam Yagan, CEO of OkCupid.com says that the main challenges is to create a big enough user base in which to work from and to try to get people to the same place and at the same time.

For more on this story, read Chicago Now. For dating sites which offer services for your phone (web based and applications), check out our Mobile Phone Dating category. Our Zoosk review can be found here.