WhiteLabelDating.com (WLD) is an online dating platform provider. The company currently has 3,243 partners worldwide in countries including the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and all European regions.
Headquartered in Windsor, England, the company also has offices in Miami, US and Sydney, Australia. In 2009, it announced annual revenue in excess £25 million.
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History
WhiteLabelDating.com (WLD) was started in 2003 by Ross Williams, founder and managing director of web design agency Rawnet. WLD was started as a means to maximise revenue from online dating by applying the 'white label' concept to dating platforms.
This enabled the company to provide dating software, membership database, payment processing, customer support, hosting infrastructure and tax processing to partners looking to set up dating sites.
The membership database is segmented according to personal details (age, sex, geographical location, etc.) and interests (sexual preference, music tastes, religion, hobbies, etc.) and then shared amongst all the partner sites in the network. This means that a member who joins on a "general" dating site will appear in the search results of all sites in the same category. The same approach works for other facets such as Over 50s, Casual and Gay dating. There are also some unusual terms on some websites where they claim they can irrevocably use any information that you have provided to them. There seems to be no opt-out as to how far this data is shared between related sister companies.
Early on, Williams was joined by Steve Pammenter, a recruitment consultancy owner who helped set up Global Personals Limited in order to fund and launch WhiteLabelDating.com. In 2009 WLD announced annual turnover of £25 million, hired Darren Damiano from Match.com as financial director and secured a further 2000 plus partners.
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Timeline
- 2003: Global Personals Limited launched Singles365.com, a flagship dating site to help populate the shared membership database, using the WhiteLabelDating.com platform.
- 2004: WLD began trading as its own entity in September 2004
- 2005: After 12 months of building up a membership database, WLD began attracting a number of partners who wanted to start building their own dating sites.
- 2007: WLD secured a number of exclusive relationships to provide the WLD platform to major publishers including Bauer (formerly EMAP), IPC, Dennis Publishing and a number of niche publishers in the UK.
- 2008: WLD was short-listed for the 'One to Watch' award and won the 'Financial Director of the Year Award' at the Fast Growth Business Awards. WLD currently runs 1,004 partner sites and generates an annual turnover of £5,303,000. WLD received an honourable mention in the 'Tenon Entrepreneurial Spirit' category of the National Business Awards.
- 2009: WLD continues to exceed partner expectations on revenue and conversion, and signs on a further 186 partners including CosmoDating, Men's Health and Borders.
- 2011: Global Personals have come under fire from various consumer group and lobbyists for their involvement in XXX Adult Dating sites and the use of fake or misleading profiles or bots and on the 1st November 2012 were investigated by a Channel 4 Television News investigation program titled "Fools for love: how an internet dating firm duped clients" exposing how the firm uses fake profiles to lure paying customers.
- In August 2013 Global Personals came under further fire from the BBC Panorama documentary titled Tainted Love - Secrets of the Dating Game in which ex-employees give evidence of Global Personals suspected misleading acts to entice members into paying subscriptions.
Partners
WLD provides the online dating platform for numerous partners around the world including:
- Savagehearts (owned by Dennis Publishing)
- CosmoDating (owned by NatMags)
- FHM Dates (owned by Bauer Media)
In 2009, the company announced partner payouts of over £20million./ These included brands and individuals who created their own dating site as an alternative revenue stream.
Awards
WLD has won a number of dating awards including:
- IDATE Best Online Dating Software Provider (2010, 2011, 2012).
- DELOITTE Fastest Growing Online Dating Business In Europe / EMEA (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013).
- DELOITTE Fastest Growing Online Dating Business In The UK (2010, 2011).
- Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 (2010, 2011, 2012).
- European Media Momentum Top 50 (2011, 2012, 2013).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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