“We have quickly become the dominant player in the social dating space and we plan to continue to rapidly expand our user base across even more social networks,” stated Shayan Zadeh, a co-CEO at Zoosk and former program manager at Microsoft. “We allow people to seamlessly connect across multiple social networks, for example a Facebook user can interact with a MySpace user, and this ability has given us unprecedented access to today’s young, single professionals. Our new funds will allow us to expand our network of subscribers and add even more new features that will make the social dating experience even more fun and less painful.”

Zoosk, a dating social network based in San Francisco, Calif. has raised $4.1 million in it’s second round of funding recently.  The $4.1 round of funding was led by Canaan Partners.  ATA Ventures also participated in this round.  Zoosk is built around application widgets that help users connect based on interests and preferences.

The company was started in 2007 and receives roughly 400,000 daily uniques, 1 million messages sent per day, and 3 million dating profiles on Zoosk network.

Zoosk has plenty of competition.  The funding new comes shortly after WooMe, a video dating social network raised $12.5 million.  Match.com has also created an application of their own called Little Black Blackbook: Are You Interested?  On Facebook alone, there are over 1,745 Dating Applications.  So clearly a dating application is not unique.  Fortunately for Zoosk, they have the user numbers to back up the quality of their app.

Information Source:
[1] Zoosk Press Release via PR Web

PicksPal is a website where users predict the winners of sporting events and win free prizes by doing so.  Essentially it is a fantasy football, baseball, basketball, and other sports website.  Except in this case, users have an incentive to participate here rather than other websites.

The company is based in Mountain View, Calif.  PicksPal was founded by Tom Jessiman, a former CBS SportsLine.com, Sports.com, and Ziff-Davis senior executive.  Since the company started in September 2005, they have raised $9 million.  The first round of investment at $2 million was provided by Canaan Partners.  The second round was $4 million and was provided by Canaan Partners and Bay Partners.  And the most recent funding at $3 million was provided by Canaan Partners and Bay Partners once again.

As this is the generation where the post World War II baby boomers are passing habits on to Generation X and Generation Y, more people are tuning into sports and want to compete with their peers.  There is a lot of room to grow in this market and with this new round of funding, PicksPal should redesign their web site as a first step to cater to the Web 2.0 enthusiasts.