Milestones

Last month we reported this story, Rumor - FriendFinder purchased for $1 Billion?. Well it turns out that most of the rumor is true according to the New York Times. The FriendFinder Network was sold but for $500 million. There are over 25 sites in the FriendFinder Network with about a total of 1.2 million paying subscribers out of 260 million members. The projected profits of the network is estimated to be $340 million this year.

Some more of the popular sites in the FriendFinder Network includes their first site created, FriendFinder.com and Passion.com geared towards adults.

I received an email from Relationship.com. They are changing their name to ChristianMingle.com to make it easier for people to realize what type of single Relationship.com is trying to attract.

For the last year or so Relationships.com has been the most visited Christian dating site according to Hitwise. Hitwise is a company that keeps track of how many people visit web sites and then ranks them accordingly.

I guess this means I'll have to update my review of Relationship.com to reflect the new name change. I should have another look at this dating site anyways since it's been a while and I like to review each site at least once every 6 months.

Lavalife released a Press Release yesterday, regarding their 20th Anniversary. Way back in 1987 Lavalife got its start as a company called Teleclassifieds started by 5 young Toronto based entrepreneurs. I didn't realize that Lavalife had been around for so long (mind you in other forms) but I must send out a congrats to these fellow Canadians. It says something about the service Lavalife offers and their ability to stay in the top ten of dating sites for a better part of 20 years.

For more information regarding Lavalife read our review.

Spark Networks, owners of AmericanSingles.com, Date.ca and JDate.com have released their 2006 4th quarter financials. There is some interesting numbers here for singles thinking about joining one of these dating sites. For the year end (Dec 31, 2006) American Singles had 80,519 paying subscribers and JDate had 74,775 paying subscribers. All of Sparks business ventures combined had a total of 217,276 paying subscribers, an increase of 10% when compared to last year. Of course none of these numbers include the members who use the site with a free membership.

I was surprised by JDate's numbers, they must be the largest Dating Site for Jewish singles out there.

Spark Networks also had another milestone on February 14th, 2007. It was their one year anniversary of its AMEX Listing. Look for them under the ticker "LOV". For more information on Spark Networks financial results check out this page.

Happy Anniversary to Date.com. They turned 10 last Wednesday and have much to be proud of. Since their launch 10 years ago Date.com has had over 10 million members join their dating service. Over the years they have been constantly in the fore front with new innovations to make online dating easier, more fun and successful for singles.

Date.com is one of the oldest and largest dating site on the internet today. Read our review here or check out their press release on the anniversary.