“The Business of Online Dating” SNAP CEO Featured on CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange
SNAP President and CEO, Cliff Lerner, spoke with CNBC’s Jackie DeAngelis on Worldwide Exchange on Valentine’s Day, sharing his thoughts on SNAP’s roadmap for AreYouInterested.com and disruptive technologies in the online dating industry.
This Valentine’s Day, we asked our male and female AreYouInterested.com fans to share their thoughts on dating and mating on the national day of love. Over 500 singles on the AreYouInterested.com Facebook Fan Page responded over the course of several days and interesting insights included:
• About 1/3 of singles surveyed expect to end up in bed on Valentine’s Day — 38 percent of men, and 25 percent of women;
• 33 percent have checked their ex’s Facebook status to see if they had plans for the holiday;
• Singles are not deterred by blind dates — 74 percent believe a first date on Valentine’s Day is a good idea;
• 58 percent believe the man should pay for dinner on Valentine’s Day;
• 43 percent of singles could envision using a mobile dating app to find a date; an
• Nearly 67 percent said they would end a rocky relationship before Valentine’s Day.
To read more, please visit http://media.snap-interactive.com/polls-and-surveys
“Before Zynga, There was SNAP.” SNAP Featured on TheStreet.com
SNAP President and CEO, Cliff Lerner, recently sat down with TheStreet.com, following the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell as part of the launch of the Only In The Alley calendar.
When we built the first version of AreYouInterested.com for the iPhone back in the spring of 2009, we wanted to build an application that allowed our users to chat, flirt, meet and connect with other singles anytime, and anywhere. By the start of 2011, we were excited to get 240,000 downloads. Now, in the past year, we’re proud to announce that more than 2.2 million people have now downloaded the AreYouInterested.com app on their iPhones!
To accommodate our growing number of users, today we are releasing version 3.8.2 to the App Store. Everyone at SNAP has been really heads down and focused on turning out bug fixes to accommodate our increases in scale while continuing to work on some ‘surprise’ projects that you’ll find out about soon enough.
Several improvements in version 3.8.2 include:
AreYouInterested.com is available for download in the iTunes App Store. Feel free to share your comments on our Facebook fan page at https://www.facebook.com/AreYouInterested.
Enjoy the build!
During a Summit Series cruise this summer, we got together with our friends at Hotlist and thought, “What if we gathered together a bunch of NYC-based tech entrepreneurs and had them pose for a calendar?” Fast forward six months, and the “Only In The Alley” 2012 calendar was born.
The idea, sparked by our CEO Cliff Lerner and Hotlist’s Chris Mirabile, was to showcase some of New York City’s hottest tech startups in the hopes of drawing attention to the breadth of talent and promise the east coast has, compared to Silicon Valley. We also wanted to foster a strong tech community and presence, something often overlooked for traditional industries in the city.
The tech community loved the idea. Mashable and Betabeat wrote about it and the launch party last Friday attracted over 500 people, including VC’s, media, entrepreneurs and techies.
“The City of New York is proud of the promising tech startups and entrepreneurs who are helping to make NYC the leading digital city in the world,” said Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer of NYC. Mashable’s Adam Ostrow also contributed to the calendar saying, “While Silicon Valley will always be a home to remarkable technological innovation and progress, Silicon Alley has emerged as a truly unique place to create companies as diverse as the people who call it home.”
You can view photos from the calendar here, featuring all of the 2012 startup companies.
Additionally, we are thrilled to share that SNAP, Hotlist and executives from a half dozen of the other startups featured in the calendar will be ringing the NASDAQ opening bell on Wednesday, Dec. 28 at 9:30 a.m. EST.
We extend our gratitude for your support and wish you all a very Happy New Year!
I am delighted to share with you that this week, SNAP Interactive was featured on the FRONT PAGE of the Facebook Developer News site located at https://developers.facebook.com/news/. The Facebook Developer News team linked to Eric Eldon’s TechCrunch article from Nov 29th, which noted the significant mobile traffic increases we’ve seen on our AreYouInterested.com social dating brand, following the launch of Facebook Platform Apps on mobile in October. In just one day, we saw a 30 percent increase of daily logins and since that time, we’ve experienced a 70 percent sustained increase in mobile usage of our AreYouInterested.com iPhone app. What’s more, the rush of traffic has allowed AreYouInterested.com to achieve the Top 5 Grossing Application in the category of Free Social Networking in the U.S.*
We’re extremely pleased to be recognized by Facebook. As a developer since the early days of Facebook Platform in 2007, we recognize the value of adapting quickly to these types of opportunities and being able to experience overnight gains of this magnitude simply underscores that point. To read more, I welcome you to visit our blog post here.
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-Cliff Lerner, President & CEO
*All figures contained herein are current as of December 8, 2011
Cross platform development? Native vs. HTML5? Unified deployment?
These are the questions on every big company’s mind as they craft their mobile development strategy. You see, there are multiple platforms for mobile apps, and there is minimal overlap between your codebases if you write natively for each platform. If there were a way to write code once and have it deploy to all of your mobile platforms (iOS, Android, etc.), you would theoretically multiply your efficiency by several times! An HTML5 based web app (a la Facebook’s mobile app) could do the trick, but those apps are potentially less responsive than a native application. Also, HTML5 apps have shaky integration with some native phone components, like the GPU, accelerometer, and camera.
So, it’s a tricky decision. Should you make an HTML5 app and enjoy the land of rapid deployment on cross platform applications, or should you stay native and avoid a potentially unresponsive app experience? That’s the biggest question in mobile development. Right?
WRONG! Facebook just turned everything on its head. Here’s what happened.
Facebook added a portal to your Facebook applications on their mobile app. They have made it EASIER to access a mobile version of an application you would normally visit on Facebook itself. Can you think of an application that you use on Facebook? Well, check out Facebook on your phone. You should see a link to the MOBILE version of that app right in the Facebook application.
That means you, the application developer, now have direct access to Facebook’s millions of active mobile users. This is a marketing dream! Maybe you could have gotten 2x the traffic by figuring out your technology pipeline and deploying across multiple platforms. Now, literally overnight, Facebook has enabled a tremendous amount of traffic just by using Facebook’s mobile engagement channels.
Don’t believe it? This graph tells the tale. [Click to Enlarge]
This graph represents our traffic in the AreYouInterested.com iPhone application around the time of Facebook’s new mobile release. As you can see, our iPhone app exploded. AreYouInterested.com was already a top 10 grossing social networking app in the U.S. Now it is in the top 5. Our mobile website logins exploded as well. Mobile logins (across iPhone and mobile web) now represent 10 percent of our daily traffic, with average daily logins on the AreYouInterested.com iPhone app up 70 percent and average daily logins on the AreYouInterested.com mobile website up 50 percent since the launch of Facebook Platform Apps on Mobile.
The clock is ticking. Forget the tremendous opportunity offered by cracking cross-platform development—there is now a bigger elephant in the room. Your mobile strategy needs to take a step back and think about how it will compete. Every large Facebook developer can create an instant presence on all mobile platforms. That last sentence bears repeating: EVERY LARGE FACEBOOK DEVELOPER CAN CREATE AN INSTANT PRESENCE ON ALL MOBILE PLATFORMS! All they have to do is make a mobile version of their application. Are you ready for that?
We are. We are SNAP Interactive, an app developer based in New York City. We saw the impact of these changes the day they went live. We made an Android app in response. We have a long term strategy that will unify our products across Facebook and our mobile platforms.
And we have over 54 million installed users on Facebook.
-The SNAP Interactive Team
What are the top 10 cities for online dating? What about the most active cities for mobile dating? And, of those cities, which ones do you think have the HOTTEST singles? By combining data from AreYouInterested.com, our popular social dating app, with a user survey of over 500 singles on our AreYouInterested.com Facebook fan page, we’ve uncovered the hottest and most active cities across the country. You may be surprised to learn that your soul mate lives closer than you previously thought!
While New York tops the list for online dating AND attractive singles (anyone else have a New York state of mind?), a number of survey respondents believe Los Angeles has the hottest singles – no surprises there. But be wary, as Los Angeles natives play hard to get, ranking fourth in the list of top cities for online dating and sixth for mobile dating. Maybe the gender ratio of men to women is finally catching up with the City of Angels?
The Deep South makes a big splash, with Dallas and Houston placing high on our lists. While No. 8 on the list for online dating, survey respondents ranked Dallas third for best looking singles and Houston came in SECOND for online dating. Thanks to a large population of hip 20-something residents, tons of live-music joints and all-night dance clubs, Dallas and Houston offer the perfect opportunity to meet that special someone. What’s more, both Texas cities are highly active when it comes to mobile dating, indicating singles have an even greater chance of finding love - either at home on their laptop or out and about on their smartphone.
Love abounds in the windy city. Chicago came in THIRD for online dating! Not only that, Chicago singles are mobile (No. 2), and cute (No. 4 hottest singles). Best grab your phone and trek over to the City by the Lake!
Below are the Top 10 cities for online dating in the U.S. according to *AreYouInterested.com:
And here are the Top 10 cities for mobile dating in the U.S. according to *AreYouInterested.com:
*Based on visits per month
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Sorry, Philadelphia and Seattle.
Now that online dating has reached a tipping point, where nearly one in three who use the Internet have visited an online dating site, it’s never been easier to find a potential partner with similar interests, all with the help of a simple algorithm. Today, the search for love has jumped from the computer screen to mobile devices, increasing opportunities for singles to meet, chat, flirt and possibly fall in love with someone else nearby. No longer are singles relegated to their laptops — as demonstrated by the AreYouInterested.com® mobile dating infographic below.
The infographic pulls data from the more than 50,000 AreYouInterested.com singles who use the mobile dating app every day, currently ranked in the App Store as a top 5 grossing iPhone social networking app in the U.S. Some of the more notable findings include:
For more, see the infographic below. And to get in on the action, be sure to visit the iTunes App Store and download AreYouInterested.com today!
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SNAP Interactive, Inc. is a premier social and mobile application developer headquartered in New York City. We’re publicly traded, fast growing and laser-focused on trying to create the best social and mobile applications on the planet.
Our flagship product is AreYouInterested.com®, one of the largest dating apps on the social Web. We’re currently a top 40 application on Facebook*, with 7 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs)* and over 50 million installs worldwide. Additionally, we are currently the No. 5 Top Grossing iPhone application in U.S. Social Networking**, and in the top 150 for Top Grossing iPhone applications overall**.
SNAP Interactive has been a publicly traded company since AreYouInterested.com launched. For four years, we’ve developed hit applications with rapid iteration, extensive data analysis, an in-depth understanding of our user base, and a strong emphasis on core business fundamentals. In January 2011, we raised $8.5 million in capital from institutional investors. Our goal is to aggressively invest those funds to bring cutting-edge technology to the everyday user.
Our applications are growing, and our team is focused. We plan to use this blog to bring you the latest in company news, product enhancements, trends / user survey data and other thoughts on the online dating, social discovery and app development space. Subscribe via RSS (check the sidebar on the right), and make sure to tune in to our updates.
Until next time!
SNAP Interactive
*These figures from AppData as of October 25, 2011
**These figures from the iTunes App Store as of October 25, 2011
