Xtraordinary Hosting’s London Bandwidth Powers Flirtomatic’s 1.2 Million Flirts.

(SANEPR.com) May 11, 2009 -- London, UK, May 05 2009 -- Flirting is such a universal behaviour that it’s not surprising that http://www.Flirtomatic.com, Europe's leading online & mobile flirting service, has taken off big-time.

In just six months during 2008 membership rocketed from 225,000 to 1 million, boosted by the launch of the service in Germany (www.flirtomatic.de). Now standing at 1.2 million users (end of February 2009), the free of charge dual access via mobile phone or online service is proving irresistible (data charges may apply to mobile users).

Flirtomatic allows registered members to access a whole new world of flirting possibilities. Members must be over 18 to access their choice of ‘flirtable’ people: people that can be selected on the basis of their sex, age, preferences, interests, location, photos and other information members choose to make available in their profiles.

55% of Flirtomatic users are between 18 and 25 years and the average user visits Flirtomatic eight times a day. 550 thousand users access the site online and 650 thousand users access via mobile internet.

Operated by London-based Handmade Mobile Entertainment Ltd, the company has won 4 major awards in the last year for Flirtomatic, including a prestigious MEFFY (Mobile Entertainment Awards) for the best online community. They also topped the Media Technology 100 as the hottest private media company in Europe.

Flirtomatic uses the full range of social media communications channels to provide a beguiling wealth of contact possibilities with plenty of interesting interactive content. That includes a wall of fame and the “most snogged” ratings. Members can chat with other users, send rapid messages with graphics and photos, and buy small virtual presents for each other. There’s also a host of user-generated content on the subtleties and not-so-subtle matters of 21st century flirting and dating.

Hailed as “a real UK mobile 2.0 pioneer” by the influential technology blog, techcrunch.com, the throughput demands of running a real-time interactive service requires serious Internet infrastructure to maintain an excellent user experience.

With their previous datacentre provider running out of rack-space and power for additional servers, Flirtomatic took the opportunity to upgrade their hosting supplier. James Stockton, Finance Director said, “We were determined to find a solution that could handle future scalability in terms of datacentre space, power and connectivity. It was important we find providers that were capable of offering a reliable and resilient service with multiple top tier internet network connections in London. After a rigorous selection process we selected the combination of Interxion for datacentre space and Xtraordinary Hosting (http://www.xtrahost.co.uk) for scalable bandwidth in London. Both providers have excellent reputations for in-built resilience and reliability.”

Resilience and reliability are the cornerstones of everything that Xtraordinary Hosting offers because the company was founded eight years ago by Andrew Ogilvie, a serial internet entrepreneur, in response to his experience of poor hosting service. With an actuarial background, Ogilvie has the forensic attention to detail that underpins truly excellent customer-focused services. Xtraordinary Hosting was named deliberately as a challenge to live up to.

Based in top quality secure data centres in London and Edinburgh, Xtraordinary has access to high levels of diverse London bandwidth plus fully redundant carrier grade all-Cisco network technology to deliver low network latency and reliability of packet throughput for this kind of online service.

Xtraordinary Hosting provides Flirtomatic with a highly reliable multi-homed Internet service. The high capacity Internet bandwidth for Flirtomatic’s hosting facility is managed by the Xtraordinary team led by CTO, Ivan Groenewald based in the company’s London Network Operations Centre, on-site overlooking the Interxion datacentre.

While online flirts may be blissfully unaware of the technology behind the site, their activities are only possible because Xtraordinary provides direct diverse connections handled between five tier-1 internet networks. Extensive dual gigabit peering on LINX (London Internet Exchange) provides very high service resilience with auto failover for increased resilience, not to mention uninterrupted flirtation possibilities.

Maintaining total control of the network equipment and internet routing behind the scenes may not be the most glamorous or interesting part of flirting, nor should that background effort ever become obvious. But it is the rigorous attention to technical detail that ensures Xtraordinary Hosting supports the Flirtomatic service 24/7. Backed by a responsive engineering team, they ensure that all that flirting goes on effortlessly.

Who ever said that “the path of true love never runs smoothly” obviously hadn’t heard of Xtraordinary Hosting and Flirtomatic!
ENDS

For further information, interviews, photos or comment from Scottish entrepreneur Andrew Ogilvie, (actuary-turned-pioneering Internet travel guru-turned-Internet technology innovator), CEO of Xtraordinary Hosting, please contact: Penny Haywood at PHPR Ltd on Tel: +44131 669 5190 (Edinburgh, UK), Mobile +447850 657 714 or email: penny (AT) phpr.co.uk
For Flirtomatic, contact: Isabel Fox, IF Communications - izzyfox@googlemail.com

Re: Xtraordinary Hosting
Founded in 2001 by internet entrepreneur, Andrew Ogilvie, after experiencing less than Xtraordinary web hosting services. Ogilvie’s founding aims - to provide an Xtraordinary hosting service in 5 key areas:
1.quality support,
2.security,
3.speed,
4.reliability
5.innovation.

Today, Xtraordinary Hosting have an eight-year track record of delivering a fast and reliable service on both Linux and Microsoft servers running on Xtraordinary Hosting’s own self-healing network.

All supported by dedicated technicians recruited from leading universities with ongoing training and coaching to deliver not only responsive systems, but also excellent customer support.

All housed in state-of-the-art data centres in both London and Edinburgh for second-to-none security.

All together: a dependable partner providing peace of mind for business clients across the UK.

Xtraordinary Hosting is an innovator in delivering eco-friendly hosting, using virtualisation to extract the maximum performance from the minimum power and equipment.

Clients include Internet savvy smaller businesses plus not-for-profit organisations, through to the complex hosting and management of high volume sites for large ecommerce companies, blue chip PLCs and local government.

Contact:
Penny Haywood
PHPR Ltd
Edinburgh, UK
+44131 669 5190
penny@phpr.co.uk
http://www.phpr.co.uk