Flirtomatic, which styles itself as a cross-platform flirting service, has completed trials of a range of value-added services (VAS), designed to stimulate revenues across its member network. 
The four-week trial has demonstrated a particularly strong uptake from mobile users – two times greater than online. With an average of 5 per user being spent over the test period, Flirtomatic says that VAS is now set to become a permanent feature across its network. 
The introduction of VAS has demonstrated a clear appetite for users to pay for additional features relevant to the Flirtomatic experience says CEO Mark Curtis. The strong uptake on mobile highlights the sticky nature of the medium and its close fit with a service such as Flirtomatic. VAS opens up an extremely powerful advertising medium to brands, with sponsorship of relevant gifts and features enabling intimate engagement with consumers as they communicate with each other.
Curtis adds that Flirtomatic is currently in discussions with a number of brands to develop tailored sponsorship opportunities.
As part of the new service, members are now given the option to purchase credits to reveal who has rated their profile highly or bid to have their profile displayed on the opening screen. Members can also purchase virtual gifts, to give to friends on the network, with Flirtomatic testing a range of gifts to-date – ranging from a virtual massage to champagne, chocolate or flowers. 
Flirtomatic launched last year as the first cross-platform flirting network and has quickly built a user base of over 350,000 registered users. The free service, enabling members to connect and meet by matching profiles, drives extremely high usage levels, with an overall of 78m page views per month across both WAP and Web.