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Written on 29th January 2009
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Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Flirtomatic is a ridiculously popular mobile social network from the UK. That makes sense, as it’s all about sex. Seduce your desired guy or gal via the mobile phone. Currently, 1.3 million folks are concerned with this act of love.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release in September, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Taking that in account, it’s actually interesting to hear that the service will launch a mobile beta in the U.S. of A. CEO Mark Curtis commented in a press release: “It’s a difficult time in the market, but we’re optimistic that we can enter the US successfully. It will not be easy but if we can replicate some of the success we’ve had in the UK and Germany, generating revenues within six months, we will have taken a major step towards achieving our goals.”
I think the success of Flirtomatic tells us a lot about the future of mobile: it’s gonna be exciting. Sex always leads the way, so Facebook and national networks will follow. I for one, do most of my social networking via iPhone apps.
Written on 5th November 2008
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Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Here’s a mobile start-up that has been underestimating its target audience for a while. Flirtomatic, the UK’s leading mobile and online flirting service, has sent out a press release filled with words of surprise. It basically says: “hey, these customers actually are pretty smart”.
Flirtomatic has conducted a survey to gain some insight on the mobile usage of its users. 5,800 responded, 87% of them completed the ten questions. Here are some of the results that get CEO Mark Curtis excited, copy/pasted from the press release:
- 56% of respondents said that they use bookmarking in order to return to Flirtomatic, a figure much higher than initially expected.
- When asked ‘which best describes your internet connection at home?’ a whopping 84% of users stated they usually use their phone to connect to the Web.
- 38% of users have already invited their friends to join Flirtomatic and a further 57% are considering it
Flirtomatic passed the one million users mark in September. Now that we know a lot of those folks are pretty smart, the future for the London start-up looks brighter than ever.
Written on 26th September 2008
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Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Flirtomatic, the UK’s leading mobile social networking service announced that they’ve welcomed the millionth user this week. Not surprisingly, since the service cuts to the chase: it’s just about flirting. Most of those flirting users are British and more than half of them seduce folks via the mobile phone. Flirtomatic has just started to lure Germans into their flirting heaven.
The growth of Flirtomatic is rather spectacular. It had 225,000 registered users in February 2007, which means an almost 350% growth within an 18 month period. What’s even more interesting, is Flirtomatic’s impressive revenue growth. According to a press release, it has “skyrocketed” by 475%.
Make money with mobile
That’s fascinating, as at all the mobile conferences I’ve been, people have been complaining about a lack of revenue through mobile advertising et al. Maybe Flirtomatic is exaggerating and their revenue increased from 1 euro to nearly 500 euros. But I figured it would be worth it anyhow to ask Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis to share his thoughts on generating revenue via mobile sites.
Curtis: “Generating revenue on the mobile web is basically about either advertising or user payments. You can forget data revenue share with operators, especially with the – slowly growing – move to flat rate.”
Mobile advertising
Advertising? At MoMo Amsterdam, I heard Yme Bosma from Holland’s largest social networking service Hyves say that they would only think of advertising when they have millions of users. So how about that?
Curtis: “Advertising is bumpy but growing. It’s rather difficult to separate out the effect of the credit crunch on advertiser confidence from the inevitably inconsistent demand of a nascent marketplace. In other words, the revenue stream is good and getting better but is damn hard to predict.”
User revenues
So user revenues might be a more secure option? Curtis: “Luckily user revenues are easier to predict once you have some runway behind you, and are continuing to lift. It’s easy to see why: a long time ago operators put in place micro billing through handsets and users became accustomed to it through the first mobile content boom. There remains however a lot of suspicion following the dodgy subscription packages that many consumers were caught out by.” (more…)
flirtomatic, germany, Mark Curtis, mobile, mobile phone, social network, united kingdom, United States
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