The big news this week was that New York-based OKCupid sold to Match.com for $50 million. Hi-fives all around.
New York is the new hotbed of the online dating industry. For a while it was Canada, then Miami, but these days its all about the Big Apple.
This week I spent some time on the phone with eFlirt Expert Laurie Davis. At the same time Ross Felix at Dating Revolutions Facebook’d me and then I received a tweet from a stealth NY dating startup. Laurie is featured in Entrepreneur Magazine this month, great to see her getting the recognition she deserves.
Sherri Langburt at SingleEdition and a few others were at the New York screening of When Strangers Click, which premiers on HBO on Valentine’s Day. If you run a dating site you need to be working with Sherri. She is totally plugged into singles lifestyle events, ad networks, content creation and syndication, all the dating bloggers and a lot more.
Laurie told me about a Meetup in New York City this week called eAmore2011: Next Gen Functionality in Online Dating.
Speaker list was impressive:
- MeetMoi – location-based mobile dating with apps for Android and iPhone; received $1.5M in Series A funding in 2007; demo’ed at NYTM before; http://www.meetmoi.com
- HowAboutWe – online dating revolving around proposing/accepting specific dates; received $3.1M in Series A funding in 2010; also demo’ed at NYTM before;http://www.howaboutwe.com
- Cheek’d – dating straddling offline/online convergence via “you’ve been cheek’d” cards; http://www.cheekd.com
- WeekendDating – speed dating & singles events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in NYC area; activity-based speed dating (e.g. rock climbing, dancing, cooking, wine tasting, museum, etc); http://www.weekenddating.com
- Kipici – online dating service powered by AcuMatch matchmaking engine based on the latest ontology-based, human semantics (Web 3.0) technology; http://www.kipici.com
Lots of dating startups and entrepreneurs in the New York area, perhaps its time for another Online Dating Insider meetup.
