Melbourne, Australia – 24 November 2010 – Club Intimate announced today it has won the 2010 Red Herring Asia Top 100 Tech Startup Award. Club Intimate was initially selected as a finalist for this award in October 2010. Following the presentation by Club Intimate’s Founder & CEO, Arshad Khan in Shanghai, Red Herring announced its Top 100 Asia Award in recognition of the leading private companies from Asia, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

“We are quite thrilled and proud of our accomplishment”, said Arshad Khan. “Winning of this ward was no easy task; Club Intimate was selected as a winner from hundreds of companies across Asia. Attending the event also gave me the opportunity to meet the brightest and smartest entrepreneurs from Asia”.

Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Asia to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Club Intimate embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Club Intimate should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Asia.

Melbourne, Australia – 25 October 2010 – Club Intimate announced today it has been selected as a Finalist for Red Herring’s top 100 Asia award, a prestigious list honouring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the Asia business region.

“This is an amazing milestone for us. We are quite exited and humbled by this experience”, said Arshad Khan, Founder & CEO of Club Intimate. “This achievement further reinforces our resolve to continue to innovate and become a leading social dating service in 2011 and beyond”.

People are passionate about the things they do and it’s often hard to find people with whom they can share those passions, Club Intimate’s interactive features bring people together into communities of shared interests.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds from across Asia. The nominees are evaluated on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries.

This unique assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the actual track record and standing of a company, which allows Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list an invaluable instrument for discovering and advocating the greatest business opportunities in the industry.

“This year was especially difficult,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “Despite the global economic situation, there were many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products that we had a difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Club Intimate shows great promise therefore deserves to be among the Finalists. Now we’re faced with the difficult task of selecting the Winners of the Top 100 Asia Award.

Finalists for the award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of companies in the mobile, security, Web 2.0, software, hardware, biotech, and clean tech industries sent in their submissions to qualify for the award.

The Finalists are invited to present their winning strategies at the Red Herring Asia forum in Shanghai, November 15-16, 2010. The Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony on November 16 at the event.

About Club Intimate
Club Intimate is a global social dating service that caters for people seeking serious or casual relationships or just looking to make some new friends. Club Intimate brings a fresh approach to online dating industry by combining traditional features with new interactive features of social networks providing better user experience.

Club Intimate currently operates localised websites in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.

About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available http://www.redherring.com.

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“Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!” This is how Ping.fm promotes its services on its front page of their website. So about ten days ago I decided to take up the offer and signed up. Anyone who uses services like Ping.fm or Hellotxt will understand the value of updating their social profiles on various different social networks and bookmarking services with one click. This is exactly the outcome I was hoping to achieve.

So on the day I signed up, I set-up my social profiles at Linkedin, Facebook and Plaxo with Ping.fm. Setting up these networks with Ping.fm was a breeze.  I also tested the service by sending one status update and a blog post. To send RSS feed of my blog, I first created an account with Twitterfeed to push the feed to Ping.fm. In turn, Ping.fm sends my feed to the social networks that I have linked. Everything has worked as it should and I was very pleased with the fifteen minutes I spent setting up these services.

To my surprise however, last week I could not login to my account at Ping.fm. Initially I thought that I may have forgotten password or may be using an incorrect email address to login. Well, this wasn’t the case, Ping.fm has either deleted or suspended my account and they have done this without sending me any notification. Needless to say I was pretty upset. One would understand if I were to abuse their services or didn’t comply with their terms of services then they would have all the rights to suspend my account but this is not the case. By the way, Ping.fm does not have any terms of service document on their website. One would think that a large service like this would tell their users how their services are meant to be used. This beats me!

Feeling upset and dejected, I decided to contact Ping.fm through their contact page and asked if they have suspended or deleted my account and if they could provide a reason for doing so. One week on and I am yet to receive a reply from them.

So all in all, my experience with Ping.fm has been very poor. Well if you ask me, I am not totally surprised of the service levels I have received. This is what happens when a couple of developers set-up a successful web service who has no experience in customer service or understanding the value of a having a customers’ charter. They are probably good programmers but have no idea how to service their clients. This is probably one of the reasons why there is no terms of service document found on their website.

For me, there is always Hellotxt.

Join Club Intimate today!

Eight months in the making, Club Intimate is planning the launch if it’s new website this week. This launch could happen as early as tomorrow depending upon if the engineering team gives the go ahead.

From design to development, a lot of hard work has gone in to this new site.  This new site will represent the aspirations of its loyal users, the engineering team and my friends, family and well wishers.

During the design of this new site, I have taken into account of two major components, users’ feedback and additional interactivity between users.  I need to dedicate another blog just to talk about the new features of Club Intimate. For now, please enjoy a sneak preview of the new site.

Welcome to the official blog of Club Intimate!

Our aim is to keep you abreast with Club Intimate news and updates together with online dating industry news, social web and technology in general.

Club Intimate was officially launched on 16 December 2006. Since then thousands of people from around the world have joined Club Intimate and have enjoyed the best social dating experience one can get.

So what is Club Intimate? Club Intimate is a global social dating service that caters for people seeking serious or casual relationships or just looking to make some new friends.

Club Intimate has set itself apart from other online dating services by combining traditional features of online dating with new, interactive social networking features that allow you to easily find people with common interests and get to know them. We’re building communities in which you can participate and socialise online.

Club Intimate has localised presence in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States. Local site for Canada is coming soon.

Club Intimate is 100% FREE to join and use!  Yes, that’s right; you don’t have to pay a membership fee.  All of Club Intimate’s features for finding and meeting the person of your dreams are completely free.  Advertising revenue maintains Club Intimate’s daily operations, expansions and future enhancements, so checking out the ads at Club Intimate directly benefits your online experience.

Join Club Intimate today!