Hi everyone,

I hope you are well! It has been a few weeks since I last posted on here and thought I would give an update on some of our latest developments!

The last month will have been a very busy one at WAYN HQ having launched a new venture (WAYNDating.com) which saw already nearly 6,000 singles joining and we have only put the site live 2 weeks ago so this is definitely a great start! If you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, please do so here: www.wayndating.com

WAYN is still growing with thousands of  you joining us each day and Jan and February will have seen a record of over 27 million visits to WAYN.com – an astonishing number! Our latest release went live last week with our new ‘Intentions Broadcasting’ project, allowing users to share what they would love to do and meet other WAYN users who share the same interests. We are going to keep on refining the offering in the next few weeks so please watch this space! We are also about to announce our new Iphone Application which is about to go live imminently, another exciting time for us and the community

Finally, I thought I would also share you with that we have recently brought on a new Partner to our VIP Club:  Icon Ibiza. Icon Ibiza is offering WAYN VIP’s tailor-made solutions to suit your every Ibiza holiday need. Whether you’re interested in finding the perfect sunset villa or getting VIP access to Pacha, Icon Ibiza can help.

VIP members will receive:

• Up to 50% off on Villas and access to the best hotels
• Bookings at exclusive restaurants and beach resorts/clubs
• Guest list entry / VIP access to the island’s top club nights
• Concessions on Booking VIP tables
• Concessions on Party Entry for guests
• Concessions on limos, hummers and luxury airport pick-up

To celebrate the new partnership, they will give one lucky VIP member the opportunity to experience the stylish and on the go lifestyle of Ibiza – the ultimate Ibiza experience for you and a friend…

The Icon Ibiza VIP Treatment Experience will include:

- Two flights from Europe to Ibiza,
- VIP airport pick up,
- Five nights hotel (four star Hotel Garbi),
- Lunch at Nassau and Sands,
- Sunset dinner at Café Mambo,
- Club entry at Space, Pacha and Amnesia

We hope you will enjoy the benefits and for more information on Icon Ibiza, please visit their profile here: www.wayn.com/profiles/iconibiza

Many thanks and safe travels!

Jerome

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Hey folks,

I mentioned our our last blog post that we have a new service coming out that may surprise some of you, well that service in question is WAYN Dating (www.wayndating.com) and the service went live at 12pm GMT in the following countries:

US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Poland

We announced the launch earlier this week to our members in these countries and have been hosting a countdown ever since, with the first 5000 members that join being offered guaranteed free membership for the first 12 months, and the following 45,000 that join guaranteed free membership for the first 3 months, whilst we introduce more tweaks to the service.

The premise of the site is to provide match-making based on doing what you love with someone you’d love to do it with. We recently surveyed over 8,000 of our members and found that the large majority of them said that what attracted them most of others was sharing similar interests and lifestyle’s whilst at the same time, acknowledging that opposites attract and that people are interested in meeting people that are from different countries or nationalities also. As a result, we have decided to launch a dating service with a difference, where you can share your interests and passions with others and meet like-minded people, without having to go through all those complex psychometric tests to find your perfect match, as in actual fact, it’s more fun to meet people that are not quite the same as you.

WAYN users can create an account very easily by simply using WAYN Connect, which will import your personal details as well as any activity interests that you have already added on WAYN. That way, you can search for other people that match your preferences on WAYN Dating who share in the same interests as you.

Your preferences are highlighted on the homepage, as well as new members who have joined and who are on your Hotlist. It is very easy to add people to your Hotlist, which lets those you find of interest know that you like them. You can also find out when those you have added to your Hotlist are online, so that you can chat to them whilst they are around.

To find out more, go to www.wayndating.com and check out our live BETA. It takes a few seconds to register your account and a few minutes to build your profile. We’d love to hear what you think? A full press release is available below:

WAYN (Where Are You Now?) launches WAYN Dating in time for St. Valentine’s Day

WAYN – the world’s largest travel and lifestyle focused social networking community with over 15.4 million members globally, has surprised many by announcing that they will be launching a Dating service called WAYN Dating, which is due to go live at 12pm GMT on St Valentine’s Day.

WAYN Dating (http://wayndating.com) aims to match-make people from around the world based on what they love to do. Peter Ward, co-Founder and co-CEO of WAYN remarks: “This very much in line with WAYN’s new vision. WAYN is all about helping people realise their dreams, by meeting cool people to do fun stuff with, so it was a natural progression for us to consider launching a dating service that is tailored to helping singletons do what they love with someone they would love to do it with.”

WAYN Dating will be revealed at a pre-screening this Friday at a glamorous party in London’s only rooftop Private Members Club – the Kensington Roof Gardens in Kensington, which will be attended by some well known celebrities both old and new. Peter Ward and Jerome Touze, the two co-founders of WAYN and WAYN Dating, will be at the event to make a special announcement and mingle with a select group of friends from the tech and media industry as well as WAYN members from around the world.

The co-founders are staying tight-lipped about the new service in the meantime, which will aim to provide users worldwide with a successful matchmaking facility based on timing, place and desired activity; something that is already hinted on the WAYN Dating countdown page (http://wayndating.com)

Jerome Touze shared: “WAYN Dating will initially launch as a live BETA, with many unique and exciting features coming to the site in the near future. We’re aiming to create an aspirational service that builds on the core values of what WAYN is all about, but in a dating context. It should be a lot of fun!”

A recent Valentine’s survey conducted by the social network shows that from a sample of over 8,000 WAYN members (55% of which were single), 45% regarded shared interests and friendship as the most important criteria when looking for a partner. Also, almost half of those polled (46%) claimed that companionship, sharing similar interests and lifestyle were the most important considerations when looking for a relationship. Those without a sense of humor were seen as the biggest turn offs.

Ends

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WAYN has always been about bringing together like-minded people who love to travel, have fun, and meet new people. Well, from a personal perspective, Jerome and myself couldn’t have had a better experience in doing just that than the EPIC ICE Weekender that took place on the last weekend of January this year. ICE is the 4th installment of such an event. Whether it stands for Internet Conclave of Entrepeneurs or simply represents a bit of the cold stuff is not what’s important. What is though is the fun and adventure that we have just experienced with around 50 other entrepreneurs and like-minded people, in Argentiere / Chamonix, France for a weekend. In the true spirit of entrepreneurship, it was an event organized by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs and their like-minded friends, and was the quintessential example of what travelling should all be about – doing what you love with people that you would love to do it with.

Back at WAYN base camp, we’ve been thinking long and hard about where to best take the future direction of WAYN, and one of the characteristics that really strikes a chord with us is the fact that it is not so much where you go that makes all the difference, but what you do and more importantly who you do it with. Where you are or where you plan to be clearly does have an impact, and us here at WAYN believe strongly that it is our duty to showcase some of the most amazing places in the world to visit and inspire you to travel to, but in reality, almost all the places around the world have something special to offer, but if you don’t know what to do when you get there or who to do it with, you are likely to have a fraction of the fun.

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to experience travelling outside of your typical packaged holiday experience will know, that half the fun is in meeting new people along the way and experiencing things with them that you never expected, but in the end, made the trip what it is. Had I been in Chamonix on my own, with no ski’s, it would have been like dying of hunger and having a beautifully cooked meal sitting in front of me, whilst tied up in chains with no-one around to get me out. How many of us have stayed in lovely 4 or 5 star hotels, only to find that we have had a much better time, staying in a backpackers, purely because you meet fun people in the same boat who equally want to explore and do fun stuff in the location you’re in. Don’t get me wrong – I would rather sleep in a comfortable king sized bed in a luxury hotel, but if it meant being on my own with nothing to do – I know what I would prefer.

Anyway, I think you catch my drift! Sometime’s it’s hard for people who haven’t ventured beyond the confines of their package holiday experience, or even travelled at all, to realize what they are missing. Most people who haven’t, have this perception that travelling on your own or even roughing it a little, is brave and they couldn’t think of anything worse, as they would miss all their home creature comforts and would be scared of not being able to cope out of the country – on their own. Well guess what – ICE may have been a group of 50 people, but each and every one of those 50 people came on their own, and made friends either on the trip, or in most cases on previous ICE trips. You have to start somewhere, and what better place to start than on WAYN, where you can not only find the people, places and activities around you or where you plan to go; Meet the people to do fun stuff with, and ultimately, share experiences, memories and realize your dreams with others.

With 15 million + members all looking to meet people from around the world, WAYN is like that virtual bar where everyone there is keen to make new friends, rather than give you a dirty look and question your motives for talking to them. I challenge you to find a more friendly, humble and diverse bunch of people on any other social network. WAYN is not perfect, and we have a lot of things that we are working on to improve the service for all our global members, and there’s a lot more we can do to attract others who may have been on WAYN in the past and / or moved on to Facebook and beyond, or even those who never even heard of WAYN. But for those of you who have ventured into WAYN’s world, and experienced this magic that I am referring to – please do your bit to share the love with your other friends and get them involved.

I hope all of you get to experience what you love to do (whether it be skiing, surfing, sailing whilst abroad, or even stamp collecting, cooking or watching movies, whilst at home) – with people you’d love to do it with. Go on… Branch out. It will be one of the best things that you will ever do.Trust me

Stay tuned for an update on what’s coming very soon to WAYN and a completely new initiative that we are launching that may take some of you by surprise! I will update you in a following post!

To see the highlights of this trip, check out the following video, which is dedicated to Rob Williams, a true entrepreneur who will remain in our thoughts forever and act as an inspiration for us all:

ICE’10 from Simon Prockter on Vimeo.

All the best,

Pete

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