It seems that nowadays everyone is calling themself an entrepreneur - there’s not really anything wrong with that, but it does make it difficult sometimes to describe those who really stand out.

On the way to the Future of Web Apps Conference this morning I bumped into a guy called Dave Bracetty.

Dave is a student who sold advertising space on a t-shirt so he could attend the conference.

You can read about Dave’s story at his blog:

http://blog.davidbracetty.com/

It’s great to have the opportunity for encounters like this. Although Dave’s still in schooling, he’s obviously going to be going places in a few years. He’s also a damn fine photographer.

(and it looks like he’s also a fellow runner, although I wouldn’t like to try to keep up with him!!)

As you’ll see on our jobs page we’re recruiting heavily at the moment - we’ll be posting more jobs soon so if you’re interested in working with us but don’t see an appropriate position send us your CV anyway as we’re always on the lookout for good people.

I’m over in Miami for the next few days with two of our developers attending the Future of Web Apps conference - if you see us please do introduce yourselves, we’re very keen to meet designers and developers who love working on cool, cutting-edge projects and would like to be involved in our next generation of applications.

We’ve got some great opportunities for the right people - check out our Jobs page for more information on these roles:

Web Application Guru

£50-60k Plus £10k Bonus Plus Benefits.

Over the last four years we’ve developed WhiteLabelDating.com to be the best dating application around. You’ll make it better.

Technical Operations Manager

£35-45k Plus Benefits.

Initially
a hands-on role, you’ll be expected to help implement new features for
our partners as well as looking after the day to day operation of our
application.

Senior Web Developer

£25-45k Plus Benefits.

You’ll
be responsible for requirements gathering, working with our customer
service, partner and product development teams to create awesome web
applications using the latest technology.

Ruby on Rails Wonderkid

£25-45k Plus Benefits.

Our
developers have a passion for creating highly usable and accessible web
applications. You’ll be working on applications for online dating sites
and social networking.

PR and Marketing Executive

£22-28k Plus Benefits.

We’re
looking for a recent graduate to join our team in the role of PR and
Marketing Executive. You’ll be working closely with our Marketing
Director and PR agency to co-ordinate all marketing and PR activity.

We’re testing a new tool to help improve conversions - we’ll be trialling on http://www.singles365.com over the next two weeks to see how conversions improve and if it works we’ll then roll it onto partner sites.

To see the live agent tool in action, go to the registration page of Singles365.com to sign up, then close your browser.

The same tool is also used to increase conversion of basic to full members - if members stop on the payment page the live agent will help them.

There’s a good report over at:

http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2008/02/europe-online-d.html

reporting that online dating income in Europe is worth over 393 million Euros in 2008, not bad at all!!

On Wednesday I’ll be heading off with a couple of our developers to attend:

http://futureofwebapps.com/2008/miami/

It’s three days of hard work (okay, 1 day of semi-hard work, 1 day of listening and 1 day of partying on the beach).

It’s a great event where we’re learn more about social networking design - we’re also hoping to meet a few developers who might want to join our team here in Windsor.

Let us know if you’ll be attending - we look forward to meeting you there!!

Wow, what a week it’s been!!

Since our exposure on Valentine’s Day we’ve seen a surge of use on both Singles365.com and partner websites.

We’re just performing some major updates to our server infrastructure - this is going to slow things down a bit for the next few hours but the servers will be back running smoothly again by 5pm GMT.

We’ll post again once the server upgrade has been completed.

UPDATE, 6pm - we’ve now completed the server upgrades which will begin to improve the situation shortly. We’ll also be adding more servers to our infrastructure in the next few weeks to give us more breathing space for large peaks in the future!!

We were very pleased to see Dateline.co.uk featured on BBC Breakfast news yesterday.

The legendary Declan Curry was doing a feature about online dating and featured Dateline on the programme - congratulations Dateline!!

One of our partner managers Gary Taylor was features on the front page of today’s Telegraph newspaper job section.

Gary was interviewed by the Telegraph after helping to clinch a 12-month contract with Bounty.com worth approximately £500,000.

Well done Gary!!

The link below gives the full article and a photograph of the rather lovely (and eligible) Gary:

View image

It was very nice to be asked to appear on BBC Breakfast on Valentines Day for their business briefing - a great achievement by our PR team Braben and it would have been great to attend.

However, it was a little bit too soon for me - I haven’t had the media training yet and it would have been a bit of a baptism of fire.

Fortunately Eddy Ankrett, the highly experienced chairman of our partner Dateline stepped in and we were fortunate to get some coverage at peak time with the Dateline logo on view with both Match.com and DatingDirect.com.