FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Portland, Oregon (September 02, 2014) - Most people do not realize that the Online Dating Industry generates over 2 billion dollar in global annual revenues with average expenses to users coming in at $154.00 annually. However, with all that money changing hands, mostly from single consumers to online dating companies; one has to ask where does it all go? …And how effectively is it all spent?

How much good comes of this new national online dating addiction we all seem to have? Considering that the relationship business is a business that is so central to the lives of so many people and considering that dating is really about caring for people, it does after all, seem like a reasonable question to be asking.

What is social entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurship is merely the innovative and resourceful pursuit of opportunities with the primary strategic intent to achieve a particular improvement in social or environmental conditions.

However, all of these questions are exactly what makes for an interesting story when it comes to a new start-up called, ‘Friends Date Network’. Friends Date Network is a online dating company-to-be that is currently in the process of starting a series of online dating sites powered by and focused around social entrepreneurship. On their current GoFundMe Fundraising page FriendsDateNetwork is challenging the status quo by asking people to ask themselves, “What percentage of revenues are the big dating sites giving back to the singles in order to make their REAL environments and communities better off?”

The obvious answer is that traditional dating sites, those that you pay to be a member of are just that – traditional old economy capitalist businesses. While they do in many cases contribute to charities when they want, there is no central element of their traditional business model that seeks to make positive social changes as a focal point to their business operations.

About Friends Date Network.
FriendsDateNetwork is the brainchild of Ron Lee, a single 30-something and recent MBA graduate from Portland, Oregon. His idea goes something like this: What if instead of charging consumers for online dating services there was a 100% free dating site that made revenues via advertising, operating essentially on the same model as Facebook but what if dating sites made it their central goal to generate money for social impact projects? FriendsDateNetwork has yet to officially finalize their business structure but this what they have set out to create by having it in their business plans that an actual set percentage of revenues that will go towards social impact projects each quarter.

FriendsDateNetwork will offer 78 online dating sites around the globe with 22 of those being country specific and 56 of these singles communities being geared around shared interests like travel, music, and the arts. According to Friends Date Network creator, “The pupose is to make a social impact by returning a major portion of revenues each and every month toward social issues”.

Over the last 6 months FriendsDateNetwork has used a substitute or proxy database for their brands which are not free to merely demonstrate that the business model is possible. Now they’ve moved to formalize the business, build their own free dating sites, and then take the concept mainstream. You can learn more about FriendsDateNetwork at http://www.friendsdatenetwork.com/ or go see how they current Fundraising project is going at their GoFundMe page. For more details visit http://www.gofundme.com/ichangedonlinedating

###