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OkCupid, America’s largest free online dating site, has announced it has closed $6 million in Series A funding. The funding, provided by angel investors, will be used for continued development of new features for OkCupid’s free online dating services, and expansion of its service into key geographical markets worldwide.

OkCupid is the fastest growing free, online dating site in the United States with more than two million monthly unique users and 500,000 active users. Launched in 2004, OkCupid members take entertaining personality quizzes and answer compatibility questions to create their own customized matching algorithm. OkCupid’s proprietary matching system uses these answers and advanced mathematical algorithms to recommend compatible users. To date, more than 150 million matching questions have been answered by OkCupid users, and more than 100,000 new member accounts are created every month.

“Our growth validates our unique approach to online dating and the idea that online dating should replicate how people interact ‘offline’,” said OkCupid CEO and Co-founder Sam Yagan. “When we founded OkCupid, we knew that users would want a dating web site that provided a much better matching and community experience – without a subscription fee. This round of funding and the continued growth of our user base worldwide is proof that our approach to matching and community-building works.”

Yagan previously led two immensely popular consumer internet products, with varying levels of corporate success: SparkNotes, the online alternative to Cliffs Notes that was bought by Barnes & Noble in 2001, and eDonkey, the peer-to-peer file-sharing application that shut down under pressure from the RIAA.

Congrats to Sam Yagan and the team! This deal further erodes the notion that cost is the primary filter for many online daters interested in serious as opposed to casual dating.

This is great news for free dating sites, clearly putting additional pressure on pay sites, which will be hard-pressed to differentiate their offering from free sites once the marketing dollars and ensuing media coverage starts kicking in.

Read more at GigaOM.

Finance, free+dating, okcupid

Userplane, the premier communication platform for online communities and a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, today announced that PlentyofFish, the world’s top free dating site, has joined Userplane’s new ad revenue-sharing program. Userplane made the announcement at iDate 2007, the business conference for the online dating industry.

Userplane recently created a new advertising program for sites that pay usage-based licensing fees - typically, large dating and social networking communities. For these sites, Userplane now enables text-based ads within its private-label chat and IM tools. It then splits any resulting revenue with participating sites.

PlentyofFish, an early adopter of the ad-supported business model, immediately signed up. The free dating site has more than 1 million daily visitors and is ranked by Hitwise as a top five dating service in the United States. Since 2004, its members have used Userplane Webmessenger(TM) to initiate, on average, more than 100,000 IM sessions and exchange millions of text and audio/video messages per day.

You are Reading Online Dating Insider, the premier and largest dating industry blog, which gets nowhere near the revenue or pageviews of Userplane, AOL or PlentyOfFish and is beholden to no large lumbering corporations.

Read the press release.

partnerships, plentyoffish, userplane

The feedback from iDate has started coming in. If you attended, we all want to hear your thoughts, make sure to add them in the comments or email me anonymously via the contact form. Make sure to send along positive stories/experiences. Deals done, new connections, money raised? If you presented, send me a copy and I’ll make available to those of us who couldn’t make the show.

Overall, the conference displayed a lack of thought leadership for the people looking for guidance and advice.
No one seemed to address issues and strategy “to save online dating.”
The vibe was vendors selling wares to dating sites.
Many in attendance were people starting dating sites. Why would Yahoo/Match/Eharmony want to meet with them?
The key players were there covertly, covering badges as usual.
Eharmony attendee was called the Mystery Man.
Match not there.
14 exhibitors, half of last year’s number, looked sparse compared to previous years, space too large?
Yahoo’s Susan Mernit avoided questions, said social networking is not competition.
Only 10% of attendees were social networking. Several vendors disppinted in the lack of social networking company presence.
Lack of new voices adding value to the conversations. Same old industry recaps.
Mikes Jones gave what people are saying was the best presentation, highlight of show.
Cocktail party at 8:30 pm, not 5:30. People exhausted by that time.
Paul Falzone of Together/Right One in the catbird seat this year.
Vintacom looked deflated.
It appears that Jlove not doing well. Can anyone back this up or refute it?

Here’s what the Miami Herald had to say about the show.

While I would have liked to see everyone in Miami, this is how I spent my weekend.

Dating Events, idate