Flirtomatic, the world’s number one flirting company, today announced that it has raised $9 million in Series C funding from Nauta Capital and existing investors Doughty Hanson, Seraphim Capital and Chairman Avi Azulai.

Flirtomatic will use the new funds to further its growth across Europe and the US, expanding its co-marketing efforts with partners that include: AT&T, MetroPCS, Virgin Mobile, T-Mobile and the recent distribution deal with a multi-national operator, launching Flirtomatic across an initial eight countries, under a single payment and billing system.

This year, Flirtomatic, which has more than 2.5 million users in the US and UK, also launched its iPhone, iPod Touch and Android apps and this summer is making its service available via a Blackberry application and on Nokia’s Ovi Store.

“Flirtomatic’s success is built upon ground-breaking monetisation techniques, coupled with a multi-channel distribution strategy. This new investment will allow us to accelerate development in international markets, to continue to drive innovation and build on our position as one of the most viewed mobile sites according to the GSMA and comScore,” said Flirtomatic CEO and co-founder Mark Curtis.

“Flirtomatic is the international market leader with a proven team, best of breed monetisation, and high-profile distribution partners. The fundamentals are compelling and we are excited to be a part of the company’s extensive expansion,” added Javier Rubio, General Partner at Nauta Capital.

“We have been with the company since the early days and are delighted to be an ongoing part of its impressive success. Flirtomatic has really figured out how to attract and engage mobile consumers,” commented Ivan Farneti, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.

About Nauta Capital

Nauta Capital is an international venture capital firm with offices in Barcelona and Boston. Nauta manages 3 funds with a total of $230 million under management. Nauta invests between $0.7M and $8M in companies in the Technology and Telecommunications sectors. Nauta’s target companies for investment are in their very early stage of development (Seed Capital) and until more advanced stages of development (series A and series B financing rounds). Nauta has three main investment practices: Wireless/Mobility; Enterprise Software/Security; and ecommerce/Internet related businesses. The geographic scope for its investments covers Western Europe and the US. Nauta launched its new fund Nauta III in July 2009, with a size of $150M.

Wow – we won the Best Social Media Award at the Meffy’s (http://www.meffys.com/) last night, for the third year running.

Since picking up the award in 2009, Flirtomatic has launched its iPhone and Android applications, placed in the top 10 most visited mobile sites in the UK according to data from GSMA and comScore, revamped its website, implemented further integration with Facebook, used its members to help predict the outcome of the British General Election, sold over a million virtual gifts and done a whole lot more behind the scenes.

The Meffy judges of the Social Media Award were looking for a company that has achieved success using innovative revenue models and relevant technology to create a genuinely immersive experience on mobile. The GSMA and comScore census level stats from February, might have helped Flirtomatic’s case with the judges, as Flirtomatic placed in the top 10 most visited mobile sites in the UK (http://www.gsmworld.com/newsroom/press-releases/2010/4614.htm). The data also showed Flirtomatic had the highest user engagement by time and by pages, beating the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft to the top spot.

Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic commented: “To win this award for the third year in a row is an absolute honour and surprise. It’s something we never expected. We’ve got a fantastic team at Flirtomatic, who truly care about giving our users the best experience possible.”

Mark continued: “After this unexpected award win, rest assured we won’t be putting our feet up. We’re continuing our push in to new territories and aiming to bring the mobile experience of Flirtomatic to millions more people across the globe”.

Following this success, we are launching an Android application, allowing users to take all of 20 seconds to set up a profile and start chatting to people. Along with Android, Flirtomatic will also shortly be available  on the Ovi Store.

We have  also integrated a “Like” button into profiles across the web service and smartphones, integrating with Facebook, which means that its 2m users can “Like” their favourite profiles and publish them on their Facebook profile. Flirtomatic is already integrated with Facebook Connect.

Over the last two years people have become increasingly familiar with mobile applications and we’re seeing rapidly rising volumes of users coming through app stores. With this in mind it makes sense for us to be as widely available as possible and by launching applications across the major different platforms, along with being available on the web, we’re doing just that……

Final results showed (correctly) that a hung parliament was on the way. But sadly for the Lib Dems there it diverged from the real result as Nick Clegg scored 34.4% of the snogs/votes, with Cameron second on 33.9% and a less kissable Gordon Brown trailing in their wake.

It captured attention on Twitter and quite a few other places: Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Industry Review ,
TechCrunch, Mobile Marketing Magazine, Gomo News, The Digital Election.

Maybe we discovered the electoral system of the future?

Among some very good insights on mobile search, they list the Top 20 search terms on the UK mobile web in 2009 – they’ve excluded two “adult” terms.

Flirtomatic is number 15, but if you de-dupe (ie count Facebook and Facebook.com) we end up at Number 10 by search intent. Hey – whether it’s 10 or 15 this is a good result.

This is the full list……

1. Facebook 2. Google 3. Bebo 4. Youtube 5. www.facebook.com 6. Ebay
7. Ebuddy 8. Facebook.com 9. Hotmail 10. MSN 11. Yahoo 12. Lottery 13. You Tube 14. Face Book 15. Flirtomatic 16. Free Games 17. Yahoo Mail 18. Plenty of Fish 19. Google.com 20. twitter

Wall Street Post cite us as an example of a new breed of mobile social networks

MSearchGroove has an interview for the launch of the 2010 Netsize Guide with Mark Curtis

Mobile Entertainment covers our latest recruits

Mobile Commerce Daily reports our partnership with AT&T