Online Dating Insider

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Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don’t miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating [...]

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Spark Networks earnings call is scheduled for 1:30PM PST today.
Call Title: Spark Networks Q1 ‘08 Financial Results Toll-Free (United States): +1 800-355-4959 International: +1 416-695-9719 In addition, the Company will host a webcast of the call which will be accessible in the Investor Relations section of the Company’s website at: http://www.spark.net/investor.htm.
A replay will begin approximately [...]

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Revenue
Q1 2008 90.5, Q1 2007 82.4, Growth 10%
Operating Income Before AmortizationQ1 2008 10.1, Q1 2007 8.4, Growth 21%
Operating IncomeQ1 2008 7.1, Q1 2007 8.2, Growth -13%
Revenue growth was driven by an 8% and 12% increase in international subscribers and revenue per subscriber, respectively, and 6% growth in revenue per subscriber domestically where subscribers declined slightly. [...]

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Dating site owners, time to polish up that P&L statement and start buying massive amounts of traffic. Judging by this job posting, eHarmony is gearing up for a buying spree. Good timing, I’m doing due diligence on a number of dating properties at the moment, I wonder what the parameters are for an eHarmony acquisition?
Why [...]

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Question for matchmakers — what kind of insurance do you carry to protect your business? Is there a specific insurer that is matchmaker and/or dating site friendly, who understands the specific risks you face? Also, what type of corporate structure have you implemented? LLC, S or C corp? This could be a great example of [...]

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Recently I had a great lunch with Brad Canavan at Iovation. I had to meet with a guy who’s email signature is “The Wizard of Odds.” Reading the Iovation newsletter, I see its now public knowledge that Iovation has completed a $15 Million Investment round. Capital came from SAP Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm [...]

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Update: Kara Swisher has more on the numbers.
AOL has announced this morning that they have acquired social networking service Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo has 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, TX. Bebo is the third-largest social networking service in the U.S. behind MySpace and Facebook. For [...]

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Penthouse Media Group, the troubled adult media company, plans to file for a $250 million IPO, the company has announced. It says it plans to file the S-1 in Q2 of this year. Penthouse acquired Various Inc. for $500 million in December 2007.
Penthouse attempted an IPO in 19993, and recently filed for bankruptcy protection. They [...]

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Two important deals being announced in Massachusetts today.
Web analytics firm Compete was acquired, and Mzinga has acquired Prospero. Prospero’s community platform powers some of the largest social nets around. The combined company will become a market leader in the enterprise community space, with 1 billion pages served per month across 14,000 communities.
TechCrunch says via Jeremiah [...]

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Lot’s going on today. First up, the iovation iDate wrapup webinar at 2PM EST, the Spark Networks investor call at 4:30PM EST, followed by the Matchmaking Institute Cupid system demo, at 5PM EST.

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