Dating Services

If you haven't heard of Skout yet, you probably will soon. The dating app has raised $22 million dollars and is poised to make a huge splash in 2012, but CEO Christian Wikilund doesn't plan to stop at dating. Skout is adding 40,000 to 50,000 new users on the app every single day and if Wikilund has his way, it will eventually become a global network on the scale of Facebook or Twitter.

In an interview with Business Insider, Wikilund described the history of Skout and his vision for the app's future. Skout got its start in 2007, before Facebook had a mobile product and location-based services were just starting to become popular. As a location-based mobile social network, Skout immediately stood out from its competitors. Skout was the first dating app for the iPhone at the time of its launch, and has since evolved into a more general service to meet new people and flirt.

"The mission for the company is to build a global network for meeting new people," Wikilund told Business Insider. "A year ago we had 30 million messages a month, last month we had 425 million messages. We were signing up a year ago 100,000 per month. Now we're signing up 40-50k users per day. Everything has been growing, basically due to a good product."

Skout's impressive growth has taken it through Hong Kong, New York, Japan, Berlin, LA, South Korea, and more. Wikilund attributes the success to Skout's ability to be whatever you want it to be. Looking to meet new friends? Skout can handle it. Looking to meet a lover? Skout can do it. Looking for long-term love? Skout can help with that, too. "Right now," said Wikilund, "50 percent of adults on a national level are single, but 80 percent of our users are single." Flirting is definitely on the Skout menu.

Using Skout is free for all basic functionality, but extra fun requires an extra fee. Users can pay to see who checked them out or to promote their profiles, but the vast majority of activities on the app come with a price tag of $0.

If all goes according to plan, 2012 will be a big year for Skout. The company plans to continue developing the product and spreading the word, and has plans to continue their growth on both the national and international stages. A major launch is also scheduled for this summer.

Earlier this month Lavalife announced new functionality for their instant messaging feature. Members can now turn off instant messaging for up to 10 minutes. This allows members to take a timeout from being hit with chat requests if they happen to be searching for profiles or composing a private email to another member. When you disable IM only the person you are currently communicating with or anyone in your hotlists may contact the member.

To find out more about this Canadian dating site you can read our Lavalife review.

Facebook dating sounds like an idea with a lot of potential, but so far no one has found the perfect way to capitalize on the social network's massive dating potential. Who wants their dating history plastered all over their Timeline? No one. A little privacy, please!

That's where theComplete.me comes in, a new dating service that promises "private Facebook dating" in which "nothing is shared with your friends and nothing is posted to your wall." Users have complete privacy control over who sees what and when, and can choose whether they prefer to lay all their cards on the table or remain anonymous. The mission of theComplete.me, says Founder and CEO Brian Bowman, is to "socialize online dating with real identities, comprehensive privacy controls and matching through shared interests and mutual friends."

Bowman has recruited key online dating industry executives to form a team that has caught the eyes of quite a few investors. theComplete.me recently announced a $1.2 million seed round which includes Intel Capital, PlentyOfFish, CrunchFund, and a string of prominent angel investors. The funding will be used to develop the service by supporting customer acquisition efforts, building key site features, launching a mobile version of the product, and expanding the startup's team.

Here's a glimpse at what's getting all those investors so excited...

• Users sign in using their Facebook identity.
• A profile is automatically created in 5-minutes from the data gathered from your social networks.
• Your profile data is organized as pinned frames - called "fraMEs" - that show categories such as "Liked" Facebook pages.
• fraMEs can be edited to go beyond pre-populated Facebook data.
• Potential matches are arranged as a row of thumbnails across the top of the screen.
• Matches are based on behavioral data like who you view, who people like you view, who you correspond with, and shared interests.
• After logging in, you can also connect you profile to LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Photobucket, Flickr, Foursquare, GoodReads, and Instagram for even more tailored matches.

And here's the real game-changer: users can provide the IDs to their profiles on other sites, like Match.com, eHarmony, and Zoosk. Clicking the "Dating Sites" link in the app will aggregate the results from all of the linked dating sites, giving you direct, free access to the users of those sites. Just message them through the app on Facebook, and you can avoid any fees charged by the original dating sites.

How's that for destroying the competition?

eHarmony in Canada is offering free communication this weekend. It starts today, Friday May 18th and runs straight until Monday May 21st, 2012. This weekend is also a long weekend for Canadians since Monday is the Victoria Day holiday. This is also the first holiday of the season which marks the beginning of summer for most Canadians.

As with other free communication weekends at eHarmony, all you need to do to participate is become a member. You can join for free and create a profile. Once this is complete you will receive your first matches and then be able to begin the communication process with your selections. No credit card is required. This promotion does not include viewing photos, Secure Call or Skip to Email.

For more about this popular North American dating service for singles looking to find a long-term relationship you can read our review of eHarmony.

Spark Networks just released their first quarter financial results for 2012. Their revenue of $14.6 million for the quarter is up 25 percent when compared to last year. Unfortunately they still had a net loss which was $1.7 million (due to marketing costs). Jewish Networks posted $6.6 million in revenue with for the first time the Christian Networks beating them by having almost $6.9 million in revenue.

The average paying subscriber as a whole was up 36 percent when compared to Q1 in 2010. Spark Networks in quarter 1, 2011 had 240,706 subscribers. Jewish Networks was down 6 percent with 86,433 subscribers and Christian Networks was up 163 percent with 124,158 subscribers. The Other Networks saw subscribers decline by 23 percent to 30,115.

For the full 2012 Q1 release visit the Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks Fourth Quarter 2011 Financials

It appears that online dating has become very popular in Brazil. There are currently 62 million singles living in Brazil and according to ComScore, 5.6 million of these singles visit online dating sites every month.

Plenty of Fish launched their dating service in Brazil last September and in 9 months they have grown to have about 80,000 Brazilian members logging in each day. This is a huge accomplishment and probably makes them the most popular dating site in Brazil. Since January of 2012 visits from Brazil to POF.com have increased by 64 percent.

To find out more about this dating site you can read our PlentyOfFish review.