Online Dating Insider » skout

Skout to Launch first Apple iPad Dating Application

David Evans — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:17:03 +0000

Christian Wiklund at Skout said they are launching a version of Skout (500,000 members) for the Apple iPad.

The new SKOUT.COM iPad app will not only show you singles nearby who are active and ready to chat, it will also boast a new concept: The HotMap. The Map will display a live overview of where most singles are currently active in your area. If members are searching for men between 25-30, the map will show the highest concentration of the results on the map.

I love heatmaps. It would be great to see density data for dating sites so singles could see which dating sites are the most popular in their area. No big dating site except maybe OKCupid will do this but one can dream.

I’ve received a number of news releases about location-based dating services this week. I have interviews with several companies this week, more to come. Press Release.

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Skout Offers White Label Mobile Dating Service

David Evans — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:03:15 +0000

Christian at skout.com emailed with some big news.

Get your own mobile dating service: Skout will white label its’ solution to enable anyone to run their own mobile dating service. The structure is simple;

1) You provide logo and colors,
2) Skout provides your branded solution (destination site, mobile web, iPhone App, and news letter),
3) Skout provides the user base,
4) You drive traffic to the site/App
5) You rev share with Skout on every subscription you can sell.

This solution is great for companies that have solid traffic but a hard time to monetize the user base. CPM/CPC rates are going down drastically, and Skout can provide an alternative source of income by the partner driving traffic and converting people to subscribers of the branded dating service. It’s almost like Ning for Mobile Dating. We will initially bring in a few big brands (TBA soon), and then let smaller actors on as well. We could create a Techcrunch Singles for you, for instance.

Traction: Skout is seeing 2000-3000 users per day signing up with no ad spend. There are currently 80,000 logins per day on average (15,000 uniques). Total number of mobile chat messages in Skout’s network is 300,000 per day, and growing rapidly. According to Pinch our iPhone users spend ~50 minutes per day on average flirting and finding love. This metric is consistent with their internal stats engine.

They have changed the concept of “friends” to “hotlist”. “Friends” adhered to the facebook paradigm, with friend requests being sent out. The new “hotlist” adheres to the twitter paradigm, where you simply follow singles you find interesting. Future revisions of Skout will include FB Connect and will also be deployed as a FB App. Subscriptions being launched in the next few weeks.

A new website is up at skout.com.

This is all great news for mobile dating. One issue I have become acutely aware of is that Skout needs to do a better job with filtering the fakers on the site. A too-stringent boot policy could hurt growth, too wide a net and the site risks getting overrun and turning into MySpace. Skout is going to have to watch who’s on the site and what they’re up to closely.

If you want to add mobile dating to your website, talk to Skout, tell them I sent you.

Skout wins DEMOgod award at DEMO 09

David Evans — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:03:04 +0000

Congrats to Skout, which walked off with the DEMOgod award at DEMO 09. Skout announced they will be running their mobile location-based dating service on flatscreen jukeboxes at thousands of bars and clubs across the US. Big props to Christian, Reg, Patrick and the rest of the Skout crew, awesome job!

Skout Presenting at Demo Today at 2:30PM PST

David Evans — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:44:34 +0000

Just got off the phone with Redg at Skout. Skout is presenting at Demo this afternoon, around 2:30pm PST. Demo is a launchpad for emerging technology, similar to TechCrunch 50.

Skout is bringing location-based dating to 10,000 social venues across the US. A special version of Skout will be running on 42″ touch-screens which people can use to send hard virtual goods in the form of music downloads, as well as the usual flirting and communicating.

Skout Out aggregates people nearby’s profiles and content. You can dedicate songs to people.

System also creates account on Skout, nice for adding new users easily.

Partnerships with online dating sites will be announced shortly.

Here’s the video. I shrunk it down to fit here, click video to make full screen.

Holy cow that is cool. Anyone remember back in the day when diners had phones in the booths and you could call other people in the same location? This is like that, on steroids.

The Skout iphone app launched recently and the system powered the in-conference messaging system at iDate in January.

This Tech Crunch post, Thanks To Skout, You Can Now Flirt Online Even When You Go Outside, explains Skout Out in more detail.

P.S. If you like Omnidate, check out Hangout’s demo video., which I found browsing TC50 for dating-related companies.

Don’t miss Skout at Demo at 2:30PM PST.

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Skout Launches iPhone Application

David Evans — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:43:42 +0000

Skout is a mobile, real-time, location-based dating service that lets members chat with, share photos, and find dates with other singles in their vicinity. The Skout iPhone application has finally been approved by the App store. I’d like to review the site while connected with someone, maybe you. I’m Dave Evans in Boston, find me at Skout and let’s put the app through its paces.