Anastasia International
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Type of site
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Online dating service |
|---|---|
| Founded | March 1993 |
| Founder(s) |
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| Services | E-mail correspondence, video chat, live chat |
| Employees | 250-500 |
| Slogan(s) | "Love Knows No Boundaries" |
| Website | www |
| Registration | Yes |
| Users | 4 million |
| Launched | January 21, 1997 |
| Current status | Active |
AnastasiaDate is an international online dating service website that primarily connects men from North America to women from Eastern Europe. The company was founded in 1993 by a Russian-American couple. In March 2013, AnastasiaDate was ranked as the 29th most popular dating service website in the world.
AnastasiaDate was founded in 1993 by a Russian-American couple, Elena and David Besuden. David met Elena in 1992 through an introduction service and the couple married that same year. The brand AnastasiaDate was named after the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, who was seen as role model for young Russian women.
In the early 1990s when the company first launched, it used catalogs to introduce men to Russian women. The company launched its first website in January 1997 and expanded its business in more cities throughout Russia and the Ukraine. By 2003, it experienced global growth beyond northern Asia.
Following the growth of AnastasiaDate, the company spun off three websites during 2007, each connecting western men with women from different areas of the world: AmoLatina, AsianBeauties, and AfricaBeauties.
AnastasiaDate was featured in the Canadian documentary film Love Translated in 2010.
In 2011, AnastasiaDate was sold by Anastasia International to a private investor. AnastasiaDate, along with each of the three spin-off websites, became independently operated. The company and its sister sites are now owned by Social Discovery Ventures.
Fortune reported that the company earned $110 million in 2012. The website's traffic also grew by 220% in 2012.
In 2013, the company hired Mark Brooks, whom Anne VanderMey described in Fortune as "a prominent online dating industry consultant", as its Chief Strategy Officer. In the Fortune interview, Brooks said that his goal was to improve the reputation of AnastasiaDate and the international online dating industry as a whole, saying that the industry is "on the cusp of respectability".
In 2013, AnastasiaDate launched its first mobile app on iTunes and Google Play for Apple Inc. and Android devices. The company alleged in a US Federal Court in New York complaint that EM Online had created two websites, anastasiadatefraud.com and ruadventures.com, to broadcast fabricated, negative testimonials, but the complaint was dismissed.
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