General News

The Grindr iPhone App which allows gay men to locate one another has had phenomenal success. Grindr was launched in March of 2009 and is widely used at clubs and parties to allow like minded men to hook-up with each other. The app uses the GPS located in the phone to determine how close people are to each other. More than 700,000 men from 162 countries are using this App with the United States and the United Kingdom being the most popular countries. Everyday Grindr is downloaded over 2,000 times. A Blackberry Grindr version was also just launched in June, which is sure to increase Grindr's popularity.

A straight version of Grindr is in the works now with plans to release it by the end of this year. Soon heterosexuals will be able to figure out who in this room would appeal to them. Joel Simkhai, the creator of Grindr, says they get a lot more request from straight women than men men for this type of Grindr based app.

For more on the story read The Observer.

Match.com was featured on The Early Show recently along with 25 couples who met on Match.com. The video contains some footage of behind the scenes from the show along with the actual segment that aired.



The host Dave Price (The Early Show weatherman) mentioned 2 interesting online dating statistics. The first one was that 1 in 6 marriages (I am assuming in the United States) are the result of the couples meeting through online dating. The second stat Dave told us was that 25 percent of people currently in a relationship, met online through a dating site.

For more on this dating site, you can read our Match.com review.

CatholicMatch.com has acquired the 4 year old dating site TraditionalSingleCatholics.com. This is Catholic Matches third acquisition since 2007 when they acquired CatholicDaters.com and SingleCatholics.com (in 2008). Members of TraditionalSingleCatholics.com now get to experience a much larger, more active, and sophisticated dating site. CatholicMatch.com by our estimates is the largest dating site designed strictly for Catholic singles.

For more on the story, read the press release. To find out further details about the dating site, you can check out our review of CatholicMatch.com.

Early last month we learned that Easydate planned to list on AIM. Well, the company which launched in 2005 and brought us the UK dating site Cupid.com (see [story: Cupid.com-Reviews Cupid Review]), listed 3 days ago on London's junior stock market and raised about £9.8 million. It cost Easydate about £1 million to list and they expect yearly maintenance fees to be around £100,000.

William Dobbie (CEO) held a 49% stake in Easydate while Maxym Polyakov (COO) held 41% when it was privately owned. Now Mr Dobbie and Mr Polyakov will own 32.45% and 27.17% respectively. Shares opened at 60p which gave Easydate a market capitalisation of about £45 million. Currently the stock sits at 68.50p.

In 2009 Easydate earned just over £9.6 million giving them a before tax revenue of £2 million. Sales next year are expected to be double to £19 million. Each month Easydate is adding 200,000 new members. They employ a staff of 140 people with most working on the technical side of the business and online marketing in the Ukraine.

For more on this story, read the Telegraph.

The Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has launched an investigation into an online dating site. While this is a Canadian probe it does not mean it is a Canadian owned and operated dating site, it could be a dating site that offers services in Canada. This is the first time the Privacy Commissioner has investigated a dating service, but they have investigated social networking sites before. Facebook was investigated last year (see Story) and was found to be in violation of Canadian privacy laws.

The unnamed dating site is being investigated on how it handles members profile information once the membership has been deactivated. This was the same reason Facebook was under investigation. A complaint filed 6 months ago prompted the investigation of the dating site. The privacy issue was not resolved through mediation with the company and the Privacy's Commissioners office, so an official investigation was started. More news about this case will be released soon.

eHarmony has teamed up with 80's band REO Speedwagon and launched a contest that allows couples who found each other on eHarmony to showcase their love by submitting a video of them singing one of REO Speedwagon's songs. Submitted videos will be voted on by the general public to determine the best one. There will be a prize package for 10 of REO Speedwagon's concert dates on their "Love on the Run" tour which the winners will receive a pair of tickets for the show and dinner backstage served by members of REO Speedwagon.

When contestants submit their video (on the eHarmony Youtube channel) you need to tag the video for the concert date you wish to attend. Videos can be sung or lip-synched and eHarmony encourages you to be as creative as possible (as long as it is rated PG).

For more on the contest including the full terms and what concert dates the contest is for, read the Official eHarmony Blog and for more details on this dating site you can read our eHarmony.com review.