6.8 million South Africans were using the internet at the end of 2010 and this figure jumped by 25% to 8.5 million by the end of last year! Their predicted figure for total Internet use by the end of 2012 is more than 10m, but the most revealing fact was that 7.9 million South Africans accessed the internet via their cellphones and 2.48 million did not have access to computers!

The majority of users (90%) that do access the internet through computers, laptops, and tablet computers also used their cellphones.

Arthur Goldstuck, the World Wide Worx managing director revealed, “Penetration is now approaching 20%, and for the first time we can see the mass market embracing digital tools on their phones”

“This has huge implications for media and social networks. It means that, in the coming years, all services offered online will also have to be offered on cellphones.” said Justin Zehmke, executive producer of howzit MSN.

The good thing for users is that data costs should be driven down and capacity increased due to the uptake of internet usage growth driven by smartphone.

We’re please to announce that the mobile version of Find Me South African Dates is now live, which gives smartphone users a much better experience than by trying to access the full site on their phone. The site is optimised for use on many different types of phone, especially iPhone, Android and Blackberry handsets!

This has been caused by the complete failure by our domain registrar to renew the domain!! The situation has been corrected and the site should be back by Monday is back online now!

Very sorry about that, but the situation was completely out of our control.

You can try it yourself. Visit Find Me Dates on your mobile phone to see a mobile site in action.

According to Google, mobile dating queries are growing 123% year on year as the public also choose to use mobile devices to access the web as well as desktop applications, so our development team have been working on ‘project mobile’ for the since May 2011, making sure our offering is first class.

Mobile platform features

- New members can register without pre-sign up from a desktop site

- A multi-button dashboard allows members to access a variety of sections and undertake many key actions including Messages, Winks, Who’s Viewed Me and Favourites

- The dynamic member profile view enables you to see the commonly viewed information about a member, with display optimisations depending on how complete the profile is

- Local member search - using the mobile device’s built in geo-location (GPS) information

- Advanced search functionality - equal to that of the search capability available to desktop browser users

- The ability to upgrade to full membership to get the best experience from the mobile site. Basic members will be prompted to upgrade when attempting to send or read messages

- Accepts all common debit / credit card types from both VISA and MasterCard, plus Premium SMS and PayPal

Compatibility

To ensure the best possible experience for the greatest proportion of users, this mobile platform has been designed to work best with iPhone, Android and Blackberry, along with a huge array of other popular mobile devices.

Sites we have switched on mobile optimisation for are:

• Find Me Dates
• Find Me Adult Dates
• Find Me American Dates
• Find Me Australian Dates
• Australian Adult Match
• Find Me Canadian Dates
• Find Me Cougar Women
• Find Me Gay Dates
• Find Me Irish Dates
• Find Me New Zealand Dates
• Find Me South African Dates

Our other sites will be will be “mobilised” next week

At Find Me Dates we’ve been busy working on a number of things designed to improve your online dating experiences over the Easter weekend and beyond!

We’ve just had a homepage re-launch: sprucing up the page and making it easier to use, so we encourage you to take a look and see what you think. The new page is a lot more visual, showing an increased number of member profiles to encourage member interaction and time spent online.

Tomorrow (Friday 6th April) will be an Easter free read – with free messaging from 18:00-22:00. This will be on 06/04/2012 at local time on all networks and in all countries. You should receive a “Free Read Alert” in the morning.

Saturday 7th April brings a special Easter offer of 40% off any subscription!

We often see a spike in members on a Sunday and this could possibly apply all the way from Good Friday through to Bank Holiday Monday, so take advantage of the free read, the 40% off offer and see if you can find your perfect partner this Easter!

Here are just a few of the many new features on our sites:

See Who’s Online Right Now!

The first thing you’ll notice about our new look is it’s full of single girls/guys who are online right now and ready to receive your messages!

You can also see their key information and all their pics without even clicking on their profile, making it a lot easier for you to browse through and pick out whoever you are attracted to!

Search From The Homepage!

As soon as you login to one of our sites you can search for your ideal man/woman right from the homepage using our new search widget.

Search by age, location, distance from you, whether they’re online and even if they have a photo, to make sure you get the right results every time.

Close Encounters!

Our new encounters widget sits on the homepage and will give you access to all of our latest men/women. All you need to ask yourself is ‘do I want to meet him/her?’

If it’s a ‘yes’ then you’re one step closer to getting them on a date!

If you choose no, don’t sweat! We’ll keep identifying people until you find one that’s right for you!

Why don’t you login now to one of our sites and check out the changes for yourself? Try out some of the new features and see if you can find that perfect partner!

One key area they want to explore is older women dating younger men, so if you are a member of Find Me Cougar Women, or any other cougar dating site, who might be interested in taking part, please let us know via info@findmedates.co.uk.

What they are looking to produce will run along the following lines:

If you’ve had a relationship with a younger man Channel 4 would love to hear from you. How did it change you? Did it boost your confidence? Why do you think the dynamic of an older woman and younger man works so well? We don’t want to sensationalise this issue but rather have an honest discussion about a growing phenomenon.

The programme will be made by North One Television – a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award winning production company – based in London. They specialise in intelligent, innovative and compelling documentaries and factual entertainment programmes and are part of the All3Media Group, the UK’s leading TV production group.

They would like to talk to anyone interested in the project but you don’t have to make any commitment, so get in touch if you’d like to know more.

If you’re a ‘Yummy Mummy‘ and fancy winning a £100 SpaFinder voucher all you need to do is update your Find Me Dates profile / upload a photo to encourage and increase the number of winks received.

This is going to all women with children on our site, who have logged in within the last 6 months. The mum with the most winks since the profile page update will win.

An email informing men of the Yummy Mummy competition will be sent, asking them to vote by winking at their favourite mum. The email also features a selection of ‘Yummy Mummys’ as picked by the team. This will go to all men on our site, logged in within the last 6 months.

Good luck to you yummy mummies

Mobile dating is coming!

According to Google, mobile dating queries are growing 123% year on year as the public also choose to use mobile devices to access the web as well as desktop applications and we have found that 16% of our traffic is already accessed through handheld devices, even without a dedicated mobile platform.

Due to the growing demand for this service, our in-house development team have been working on ‘project mobile’ for the last six months, making sure our offering is first class.

Mobile platform features

- New members can register without pre-sign up from a desktop site

- A multi-button dashboard allows members to access a variety of sections and undertake many key actions including Messages, Winks, Who’s Viewed Me and Favourites

- The dynamic member profile view enables you to see the commonly viewed information about a member, with display optimisations depending on how complete the profile is

- Local member search - using the mobile device’s built in geo-location (GPS) information

- Advanced search functionality - equal to that of the search capability available to desktop browser users

- The ability to upgrade to full membership to get the best experience from the mobile site. Basic members will be prompted to upgrade when attempting to send or read messages

- Accepts all common debit / credit card types from both VISA and MasterCard, plus Premium SMS and PayPal

Compatibility

To ensure the best possible experience for the greatest proportion of users, this mobile platform has been designed to work best with iPhone, Android and Blackberry, but will also work on a huge array of other popular mobile devices.

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Contact For Free

The ‘Contact For Free’ Bolt-on allows members to be messaged by both full and basic members and is illustrated by an envelope icon on their profile page. This costs £7.49 a month.

Reply For Free

Confident in the knowledge that a well crafted private message can guarantee a response, a basic member can respond back if they receive a message from a full member with the ‘Reply For Free’ Bolt-on (increasing their chances of a response). This is shown by a special button in the message’s title, encouraging the member to get back in touch for free. This Bolt on costs £4.99 a month.