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Zoosk Raises $6 Million in Third Round of Funding Led by Canaan Partners

Zoosk, the world’s largest social dating community, today announced it has raised an additional $6 million. Existing investor Canaan Partners led the round. This third round of funding will be used to further accelerate Zoosk’s market share growth worldwide, grow its team, and for continued product innovation.

The additional funding follows Zoosk’s rapid growth during the past six months, from 16.5 million users in January to more than 30 million in June 2009. During this time, Zoosk’s revenues have grown tremendously and now surpass those reported by multiple publicly traded online dating companies in the U.S. Zoosk generates revenue from subscriptions, the sale of “Zoosk coins” that can be used to purchase virtual gifts, and advertising.

Zoosk is the top-ranked lifestyle application on Facebook. Users can join Zoosk by adding the Zoosk application through Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, and MySpace, or by signing up at Zoosk.com. Zoosk is the only social dating community that allows users to seamlessly connect across multiple networks, meaning a Facebook user can interact with a MySpace or Hi5 user, for example.

“We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Canaan Partners,” said Alex Mehr, co founder and co-CEO of Zoosk. “This new round of financing enables us to aggressively expand our marketing efforts to introduce social dating to singles everywhere. We will also focus on continued innovation of our platform to make the social dating experience even more fun.”

Zoosk recently introduced the ability for its users to link their Last.fm and Netflix accounts to their Zoosk Date Cards, making it possible for singles to easily share their latest movie and music picks with potential dates. Built using the Last.fm and Netflix APIs, the integration of music and movie updates to Zoosk Date Cards gives Zoosk’s more than 30 million users more opportunities to naturally meet potential dates.

“Zoosk is redefining the online dating experience for millions of singles, and it is presenting a real challenge to traditional online dating companies,” said Deepak Kamra, General Partner at Canaan Partners. “Our team has helped many companies in the online dating and social web markets, such as Match.com, break through to new levels of growth. With its current momentum, we believe Zoosk is positioned to become one of the largest online dating companies in the world. We continue to be impressed with Zoosk’s success and are excited to participate in its next stage of growth.”

To support its expanded efforts, Zoosk is recruiting for multiple positions. For more information, visit http://www.zoosk.com/careers.

About Canaan Partners

Canaan Partners invests in visionary entrepreneurs and provides them the networks, insights and operational guidance required to build high-performance technology and healthcare companies. For 20 years, they have taken an active and committed role in the companies in which they invest, and have completed more than 72 mergers and acquisitions and 53 IPOs. With $3 billion under management and a worldwide footprint, the firm’s technology team is committed to catalyzing the growth of innovative companies in the digital media, communications & mobility, enterprise and clean tech industries. Among its successes are Acme Packet, Amicus Therapeutics, Cerexa Inc., CommerceOne, DexCom Inc., DoubleClick, Intralinks, Match.com, SuccessFactors and WebLoyalty. Other Canaan investments include Active Networks, AdvancedBioHealing, BharatMatrimony, BiPar Sciences, Blurb, Chimerix, Inc., N-trig, Prime Sense, ReVision Optics, Inc., Transoma Medical, Inc, Tremor Media and Xirrus. Canaan has offices in California, Connecticut, India and Israel. For more information visit  http://www.canaan.com.

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