Are you prepared for the bonfire of the already hot Personals Internet Space

Hot or Not acquired for $20 million

Early today morning, Techcrunch reported the acquisition of Hot or Not for a reported sum of $20 million allegedly by people related to Avid Life Media. ‘Hot or Not’ was founded by James Hong and Jim Young in October 2000. Hot or Not never raised outside funding.

James Hong confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but did not disclosed the price. ‘Hot or Not’ makes money from advertising, virtual flowers and a premium fee when users want to connect. Their annual revenue is estimated to be around $5 million, with $2 million in profit.

Founder James Hong was interviewed by VentureBeat on the sale of Hot or Not.

Hong said that he will be more free and people can expect to see him in cafes a lot more often.

All my life, my parents have called me lazy – and they’re right. 24 Hour Fitness, not The Sports Club/LA, this isn’t going to change who I am.

WooMe gets $3 million more funds

Few days back, there were reports of WooMe receiving another $3 million funding. The round was led by Mangrove Capital and included previous investor Atomico and a few others as well. WooMe is an online speed dating site in the line of SpeedDate.com.

There are a few things that are nearly guaranteed revenue generators on the Web and obviously online dating is one of them so I am not surprised to see WooMe attracting money like online daters.

Live Speed Dating Valentine’s Day Special

Well, unless you’re someone who know about an app I’m involved with, it will be surprising why I should be talking about Personals here on my blog! Here is a quickie –

Well before Mixercast.com happened to the Oinam Team, we’ve almost completed an awesome Speed Dating Application built on top of ActionScript 2.0, Flash Communication Server (yes, the first version – well before the new Flash Media Server) and ColdFusion, complete with our in-house Load Balancer for multiple FCS (it works flawlessly even today, though I would love to lay my hands on Adobe’s Flash Media Interactive Server 3).

I’ve been resurrecting Live Speed Dating (LSD) for quite sometime after it got a booster shot and I was able to botox our application a bit. We’re doing a very soft re-launch this coming Valentine, 2008. Join us and enjoy the app if you’re free on that day. For now, let’s keep the talks on the booster shots to Live Speed Dating for another topic.

It sure looks like the already HOT Personals space on the Internet is becoming more and more hot. Are you prepared to be part of the bonfire?

Note: On a totally different note, I heard of Mac’s download Manager – Speed Download releasing its 5th version. I have version 4.x with me and I got another one from the MacHeist II Bundle. If you’re on a Mac and want my copy of Speed Download, comment below and ONE lucky person will get the license.

UPDATES

2008 Feb 13:

James Hong wrote on his blog that he wasn’t going to make a big deal about the acquisition, preferring to go gently into that good night.

Mike actually got the exact size of the deal wrong, but he was correct that the deal closed on February 8. Where Mike Arrington gets his information I will never know! Private investors that bought us out intend to hire up and grow the HOTorNOT brand, basically to do all the things that Jim and I dreamed of doing, but never managed to organize and do! We would love to see HOTorNOT grow to epic proportion, and we are confident that it is in better hands with these guys!