The story
Flirtomatic was founded by Avi Azulai and Mark Curtis in 2005. Azulai, the company chairman, previously founded iTouch, the London Stock Exchange-listed mobile entertainment business sold for £180 million ($284 million) in June 2005. Mark Curtis, the former CEO, left the company in July 2011 when Neil Goldberg took over the CEO role.
Fjord created and developed the flirting theme, invented the service's name and was instrumental in the design of all digital interfaces. The company also developed such features as Flirtograms and Supersnogs. The service started as a Fjord concept when Nokia enlisted the company to propose five ideas for mobile, one of which became Flirtomatic. "When we described dating on the mobile and what it'd feel like, we talked about messaging, fun, humor, a light touch," Curtis said to WeLoveBusiness.co.uk. "Some bright spark piped up and said, 'We're describing flirting' to which the rest of us thought, 'Wow! There's an idea. How could we create an application that could make flirting as easy, fun and good as it possibly can be for mobile?' " Fjord took a lead role in securing funding to build and launch Flirtomatic, which is now independently run.
Flirtomatic's proprietary multimedia interaction platform was designed to provide a consumer entertainment proposition that stood between the popular social networking and online dating services. The company's emphasis on flirting has differentiated it from more traditional online dating sites geared toward matching users with one another.
Flirtomatic had 100,000 users in July 2006, with a Flirtomatic poll revealing that online flirting peaks daily at 4:30 p.m. "due to workers trying to waste that last hour before the end of their working day," according to MediaWeek. By November 2006, Flirtomatic had 185,000 registered users.
The following year, Flirtomatic adopted a "freemium" model, switching from subscriptions for mobile to mobile advertising revenues and premium services.
Flirtomatic reached 1 million users and had a 475 percent revenue increase in 2008. The company also expanded into Germany that year and into Australia in 2009.
In 2008, flirtomatic violated the British flirtbox trademark by naming its chat window "flirtbox". When flirtomatic tried to enter the German market and cooperated with the German broadcaster Prosieben, also the German flirtbox trademark was violated as the on-air trailers showed the flirtbox phrases on TV.
In Dec. 2009, Flirtomatic ranked 9th in mobile Internet use in the UK, at 55 million minutes for the month, according to GSMA Mobile Media Metrics. Flirtomatic sold 100,000 virtual gifts in the four weeks leading up to Christmas of that year, including 19,455 Christmas stockings.
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Flirtomatic launched an advertising-funded iPhone application in January 2010, which was made available for free via the Apple Inc. App Store. Later that year, Flirtomatic was made available on Android, BlackBerry and Ovi and integrated Facebook into its services. Flirtomatic also expanded into Spain and Italy.
In April 2010, Mobile Commerce, which delivers 25 percent of all mobile Internet searches from UK carrier portals, released a report that found that Flirtomatic was the 15th most commonly searched term on the UK mobile web in 2009.
During the 2010 election for UK prime minister, Flirtomatic posted mock profiles of the three main candidates and invited members to "snog" them. By May 5, 2010, 10,000 Flirtomatic users weighed in: 34.4 percent chose Liberal Democrat candidate Nick Clegg, 33.9 percent picked Conservative candidate David Cameron and 31.7 percent selected Labour candidate Gordon Brown.
Flirtomatic raised $18 million in overall funding by December 2010, with $10 million secured that year. Among the investors: Nauta Capital, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, Seraphim Capital, Oxford Capital Partners and company chairman Avi Azulai.
In 2011 Flirtomatic was re-designed as the original designs primarily targeted young people - but in order to generate revenue, especially older people were needed.
From Wikipedia’s article on Flirtomatic, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4