Social dating company Zoosk has acquired Woo Media, the company behind sites like WooMe.com, Shufflepeople.com and Monsterchat.com, for an undisclosed sum.

You may remember WooMe from when I called the company, which was a finalist in our TechCrunch40 conference, out as lowly scammers (I signed up as a horse and turned out to be phenomenally popular among young super models).

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but all signs point to a firesale. WooMe claims 10 million users, but having experienced first-hand how they lure in non-suspecting ‘members’ I can’t imagine even a small percentage of them being active on the site. The site was also abruptly shut down, apparently. According to a press statement, all Woo Media properties will be ‘merged into Zoosk’.

Woo Media was founded in 2007 and launched WooMe.com, at the inaugural TechCrunch40 event.

The company was backed by Atomico (founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis), Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners, Klaus Hommels and Oliver Jung.

A friend just said I should sign up for WooMe with a picture of a horse instead of my own handsome face, just to see what happens next. Wow.

I know there’s a lot of fierce competition in the online dating industry, but I’ve rarely seen a site with tactics as aggressive as WooMe’s, which I should point out was a TechCrunch40 finalist back in 2007 (albeit with a slightly different positioning than today).

Since I’ve signed up for the site, again with a horse as my picture and in the middle of the night in the United States, I’ve been receiving a ton of unsolicited emails, direct messages, pop-ups, live chat sessions and alleged visits to my obviously fake profile by hot women.

And I only signed up about 15 minutes ago.

Now all I need to do to see who visited my profile or sent me all these private messages, is sign up to become a VIP WooMe member ($24.99 per month).

Ok, it may be a hefty sum, but I would love to virtually meet all these American babes that are trying to get a date with a (granted, beautiful) horse in the middle of the night. Plus I’ll gain privileged access to 10 million members according to WooMe. Yeah, but no.

It’s crystal clear that WooMe targets anyone who signs up for the site with automated messages from women (WooMe staffers for all I know), within minutes. And there’s not a single thing you can do on the site that doesn’t lead to the payment page, where the company tries to lure you into registering for $9.99 per month (if you sign up for 6 months, and pay the whole amount upfront). It’s classic bait-and-switch, from the horrible kind.

I’ve never used online dating sites, so maybe all of them employ such aggressive tactics, but tough luck for WooMe that my friend thought I should see how a TechCrunch40 finalist behaves. My advice: stay far, far away from this site.

Shady as the company might be, it has attracted a slew of high-profile investors, who’ve pumped about $20 million into the company. Let’s see: all three of Europe’s finest venture capitalists, Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital Partners and Atomico Ventures have backed the company, together with leading angel investors Klaus Hommels and Oliver Jung.

And then there’s the experienced management team, which includes CEO Stephen Stokols (previously BT’s SVP of Strategy and Business Development) and VP of Marketing Steven Sesar (who previously led business development efforts for Shopzilla).

All should be ashamed for pulling stunts like this.

Update: Stokols got in touch with me to ‘clarify’ things. He says I make inaccurate accusations, and that WooMe does not send messages from “fake” users. I would thus like to apologize to Georgia, Jenny, Anna, Jen, Britanny, Ann, Siriorn, Adriana, Sarah, Angie, Bri, Erica, Lana, Olly, Michele, Otu, Dream, Miracle, Catherine and Elizabeth (I kid you not) for claiming they’re not real women just waiting for new horses to make their appearance on the site.

Seriously, Stokols told me new users appear on top of people page results, which is why they get disproportionate attention after they just signed up. The only problem for him is that I’m talking seconds, not minutes after I registered. There was a message waiting for me by the time I signed up, which I had to pay for to read. There’s no way someone could have contacted me that quickly – even I weren’t such a pretty horse.

Update 2 (from the Hacker News comment section):

WooMe, the site that throws users into 60-second one-on-one online video sessions to form new relationships, is launching a new public version of the site that should appeal to the voyeur in all of us. The site will now allow users to post recordings of their brief dating sessions to the public in a portion of the site dubbed “WooMe TV”.

Following each dating session, users will be asked if they’d like to post a recording of their chat to WooMe TV. If both parties agree, the video is posted to the public (everything is opt-in).

At first, the idea sounds a little bizarre. WooMe (and other online dating sites) are appealing because it’s so easy to escape a awkward introduction or an botched joke – just close the browser window and pretend that it never happened. Sharing these special moments with the public is probably the last thing some users will want to do .

But some of these chats can be pretty hilarious (in my own testing, I am often left cracking up after particularly awkward exchanges), and there should be a fair number of users brave enough to share their romantic adventures. Provided the site doesn’t get overrun with “fake dates” – users who are just trying to be silly just so their video will become popular – WooMe TV could provide a very funny (and perhaps even insightful) perspective of the dating world.

We should note that while WooMe seems best suited for online dating, it is also used to establish new, more platonic relationships. The site is a direct competitor to SpeedDate, a video dating site that has recently been caught using some deceptive tactics on Facebook to gain users.

Speed introductions site WooMe, which we reviewed two weeks ago while in the site was still in private beta here, has officially opened its doors to the public.

WooMe puts users in quick, 1-on-1 video conferencing sessions during which they can determine whether to pursue a relationship (romantic or otherwise) with the stranger on the other end. While the site is not explicitly marketed as a dating site, it competes quite directly with SpeedDate, which we have also reviewed.

WooMe – a website for “speed introductions” that presented at TechCrunch40 but is still in private beta – is giving out one thousand invitations to our readers (redeem yours here).

You would be excused for mistaking WooMe for a speed dating website like SpeedDate.com (covered here). WooMe users are put into one minute-long webcam sessions with one another to decide quickly whether or not they are compatible. After five subsequent sessions, you indicate which of the people “woo’d” you or not. If they were woo’d by you too, then you can choose to contact them for $1. This obviously lends itself to speed dating, and indeed 75% of the 30,000 total sessions conducted in private beta have been for dating purposes.

However, the company is insisting that the service has many non-romantic uses. You can leverage WooMe to find a travel partner or someone to babysit your kids (hopefully you’ll make that decision after more than a 1-minute long face-to-face). You can also just use it to find people with similar interests to you. Last night, WooMe hosted an event for UC Berkeley that got students together to meet over topics such as “I still love Cal football”.

CEO Stephen Stokols says that almost 7,500 people have mutually woo’d each other on the service so far. On Friday, WooMe will add the ability to tag the people you meet over webcam. These tags will stay in people’s profiles so new introductions come loaded with some basic information about a person.

You may not have come to TechCrunch looking for love, but we might be able to help you out anyway. SpeedDate, which launched as public beta in the last few days, brings the concept of speed dating to the web.

Rather than asking its users to fill out surveys describing their interests and personalities, SpeedDate gets right to it by throwing you into 3-minute long “dates” with potential matches. All you need to do ahead of time is enter the basics: your zip code, your gender, the gender of the person you are looking for, the age range of that person, and how far you are willing to travel for them.

The dates are conducted by webcam so you can hear and see your date. Curiously, you can also communicate through a chat box. When you’ve made a judgment about whether you like the person, just click “Yes” or “No” to indicate whether you want to follow up with the person after your first three minutes are up.

Since the service has yet to gain a substantial user base, SpeedDate has been organizing “events” in which users are encouraged to come online at the same time. The first one took place this past Thursday while the service was still in private beta. About 230 San Francisco Bay Area singles went on 1,100 dates. The next one is tonight at 8:00pm and doesn’t appear to be meant for a particular region. The company says it has received positive feedback about these events from both men and women.

SpeedDate demoed at the TechCrunch40 conference and will compete with soon-to-be-released WooMe, which presented on stage at TC40.

Last summer we wrote about thirteen Web 2.0 sites to find love.

FlowPlay

FlowPlay is a virtual world community built around browser-based casual games. Users play casual games as their own created anime-like avatar, earning virtual goods for their character including clothing, refrigerators and other virtual store items. The site wants to provide the option to play casual games or interact with people in the virtual world (or both).

Animation virtual world product, anime style 2.5D visuals

strong privacy features to protect the kiddies

similar to Hobbo Hotel, Cyworld, Club Penguin, but with casual games emphasis.

Pitched a girls…well it appears to be, you can win dresses and stuff.

Unfortunately the time was used to show a demo video, not the best use of their time on stage. Will appeal to kids.

Metaplace

Areae’s Metaplace platform aims to revolutionize the virtual worlds space with a platform that will provide an open, easy-to-use interface which will allow users to create virtual worlds that can run anywhere. Metaplace-created virtual worlds will allow user to play games, socialize, create content and conduct commerce. Metaplace-created virtual worlds can be embedded into external sites, including Facebook, MySpace or a blog. Virtual worlds in the Metaplace network can be easily linked together.

Virtual world product, market still growing.

Virtual worlds are like AOL in 94, walled gardens etc, not a good thing according to them.

Has Facebook, MySpace widget, blog widgets, 30k embed.

Generic virtual world platform, can have Sim’s style games, shooters, even an Amazon store front.

Virtual world can also import XML: content, services etc can be imported.

Users can set up their own world from scratch, each world communicates with each other.

“virtual worlds for everyone”

Woome

WooMe brings speed dating online and extends it to let users meet new people live in speed sessions that are “fast, fun and free.” WooMe doesn’t require long forms or lengthy profile descriptions, users simply find a session that interests them and meet five people in five minutes. Users can also create their own session based on their interests and can invite people they want to get a know or friends.

Speed dating product.

Good presentation, talk to people quickly via webcam, both parties must agree to hookup

Zivity

Zivity offers a social networking platform focused on “sexy models and beautiful photography.” With a $10 subscription, members receive five votes that they can cast for models and photography they find appealing, with 80c out of every $1 vote cast being distributed to the model and photographer. There is no limit on the amount of money that a photographer or model can make; as long as a photo remains popular, models and photographers will share in ongoing royalties whilst retaining full ownership of the pictures.

Lots of warnings prior to this demo about it including porn…so far all we have is clothed model…false advertising perhaps?

User gen content makers aren’t making money, Zivity wants to change this…well at least for “sexy pics.”

Demo has PG rating…seriously, complete with the PG on the screen.

Ahhh…breasts. PG obviously different in the US to Australia

Kaltura

Kaltura is a collaborative Media startup that allows groups of users to do with video, audio, and animation what wiki platforms enable them to do with text. Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia. See our full post here.

Expert Panel: Caterina Fake likes Woome, Sarah Lacey hates it, says it’s not a stand alone company. Loic like Woome as well + likes Metaplace, says its trying to Second Life Facebook. Brad Garlinghouse likes the peoples choice Kaltura, hates Metaplace, says that the train has already left the platform, we already have Second Life.

Hammer likes Kaltura because he likes video, the creativity aspect is taking off.

Discussion about Zivity, Michael turns prudish and says there was too much nudity in the presentation. Sarah Lacey said the nudity was great and it was her favorite. Hammer thinks 16 year old girls will end up on the service, with a word demonstration..lots of laughter. Zivity says they are bound by laws about id, over 18 Hammer says haven’t they heard of fake id’s, gets a round of applause. Loic suggests there should be a merged service between Zivity and Woome.

Discussion about Zivity’s revenue distribution model, evlolves into a discussion as to whether it would be a challenge to Flickr. A: no, different market, but thinks the site will go really well, best model but Yahoo doesn’t endorse the content

Q to Metaplace: is this like Second Life? A: SL comparison isn’t valid, SL is not a generic platform

Sarah Lacey doesn’t like Flowplay, seems condescending to girls. Discussion about the model, Hammer suggests it’s a good model that will work well with 13 year old girls.

Q: Woome asked what will stop people holding up a card with their number on it via webcam, bypassing the revenue model A: If 10% game it, no problems, if 50% game it they’ll address it.

Q for Flowplay, are they developing more games, and opening up for 3rd party developers? A: they are licensing 3rd party games.