Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Is Meetic For Sale?

LE FIGARO - Sep 13 - The two main shareholders of Meetic, the leading European dating site, confirmed that Messier Partners mandated to "evaluate all strategic options for the company and its shareholders." Among these options, Marc Simoncini, who still holds 22.98% stake in the company he founded, and Match Pegasus, which owns 26.72% stake, may sell their holdings. According to the statement released Sunday night, "no takeover bid has been received and any decision to sell was made". By unveiling half-year results in July, Meetic has confirmed his good health: the sequential growth stood at 10.6% in the Q2. Since the beginning of the year, Meetic shares rose 12.3%. FULL ARTICLE @ LE FIGARO

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Easydate Takes Over Two Dating Sites

IB TIMES UK - Sep 1 - Easydate has acquired PlanetSappho.com for £200,000 and Spanish-based dating site Granamor.com for £25,000 to boost its international growth and expand its niche portfolio. Easydate said it had entered into an agreement with dating website Flirt.com to license the domain for an initial period of six months. Easydate will run the dating service across English speaking markets with an option to acquire the domain based on the performance over this period. Easydate has also entered into partnerships with Associated Newspaper's 'Metro' newspaper and Cosmopolitan and Men's Health magazines to promote two individual dating events in London scheduled over the next month. FULL ARTICLE @ IB TIMES UK

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Jazzed Powered By eHarmony

ONLINE DATING SOUND BARRIER - Aug 25 - Jazzed is a new free dating site and it will always be free for ever. Jazzed is designed to leverage eHarmony  and is going to compete with PlentyOfFish and OKCupid. PlentyOfFish and OKCupid are freemium sites, but at Jazzed, they suggest to upgrade migrating to eHarmony. FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE DATING SOUND BARRIER

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Spark Networks Launches New Content Site

MARKET WIRE - Aug 24 - Spark Networks is launching Believe.com, a new faith-based content destination serving the Christian community. "Based upon member feedback, it became clear there was a need for a content destination site where devoted Christians could obtain advice, insights and interaction with other community members," said Garry Poole, Advisory Board Member of ChristianMingle.com, which is owned and operated by Spark Networks. FULL ARTICLE @ PR INSIDE

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Parship Launches Its Gay Service Worldwide

PRESS RELEASE - Aug 19 - Parship is now offering its gay service on a global scale: from now on, gay men and lesbians around the world can go on a worldwide search for a suitable partner by visiting gay-parship.com. The site is now available in nine languages. FULL ARTICLE @ PARSHIP.DE

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Triangulate Gets Cash From Playdom Chairman

PAID CONTENT - July 27 - Triangulate, a startup trying to build an online dating business on Facebook, has raised $750,000 from Trinity Ventures and Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson. Triangulate is the latest so-called “social dating” site to attract interest from investors; Zoosk, the most established player in the market, has raised more than $40M, while SmartDate, raised $2.2 M in March. Triangulate’s Facebook app, called Wings, uses data from a member’s Facebook profile, as well as from their accounts on Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Twitter and Foursquare, to automatically generate a basic dating profile for them, which includes topics they are interested in, where they like to hang out, and who their friends tend to be. FULL ARTICLE @ PAID CONTENT

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Spark Network Services Partners With Match.com

PR WEB - July 27 - Spark Network Services announced that its MatchLink and WebFriends online dating solution will now be powered by Match.com, but with the continued customization of the media partner brand. MatchLink serves over 150 radio station groups and daily newspapers in the US and Canada. Under the MatchLink brand, Spark provides a telephone IVR-based dating solution, an online dating solution, and a mobile text message dating product for its media partners. The new partnership with Match.com allows for the MatchLink media partners to customize its online dating web sites with the look and feel of the radio station or newspaper, but with the power of Match.com and the largest database of singles in North America. Spark Network Services, a division of Advanced Telecom Services, has been providing dating solutions to radio stations and newspapers since 1993. Through nearly twenty years, the Spark MatchLink system is responsible for an estimated 10,000 marriages. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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eHarmony To Leave Pasadena, Taking Its 380 Jobs To Santa Monica

PASADENA STAR NEWS - July 13 - eHarmony is moving its corporate headquarters out of Pasadena to Santa Monica. Eric Duyshart, Pasadena's economic development manager, said he and others in the city held talks with company officials in an unsuccessful bid to convince the firm to stay. While eHarmony provides very little to the city in direct sales tax revenue, Pasadena greatly benefitted from having the jobs in the city. FULL ARTICLE @ PASADENA STAR NEWS

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Oasis Active Takes The Lead In Australia

DIGITAL MEDIA - July 9 - Online dating site Oasis Active, managed by 3H group, has overtaken Fairfax’s RSVP as the number one dating site in Australia, according to the latest figures from Hitwise. The shift seems to reflect a general move by consumers away from pay-to-play providers to those supported by advertising alone. FULL ARTICLE @ DIGITAL MEDIA

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EasyDate Raising £10m Through AIM Flotation

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - June 29 - EasyDate, Edinburgh-based online dating business, goes public with a £10m placing on London’s junior market. Founder Bill Dobbie and business partner Max Polyakov are floating their niche-focused dating business on AIM to fund acquisitions and international growth as they attempt to win more of a global market worth an estimated £1bn. Tomorrow’s listing will give the company, which has a turnover of £11.5M, a market cap of approximately £45M as it issues 75 million shares at 60p. EasyDate is currently adding 200,000 members a month, and projects revenues will hit £19M next year. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

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Quepasa Launches Zoosk Online Dating Service

MARKET WATCH - Jun 15 - Quepasa Corporation, owner of Quepasa.com, an online social network targeting the Latino community, completed its implementation of the Zoosk dating service within the social network. The objective of the partnership is to extend the Zoosk community across the countries of Latin America by promoting and monetizing the Zoosk offering to the users of Quepasa.com. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WATCH

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Match.com Partners With Yahoo!

PR NEWSWIRE - May 24 - Match.com will become the exclusive online dating site on Yahoo!. Yahoo! Personals users will have the opportunity to move to a new co-branded Match.com experience, "Match.com on Yahoo!" where they will combine with the Match.com community. The Match.com on Yahoo! service is available starting today. FULL ARTICLE @ MATCH MEDIAROOM

Mark Brooks: The writing was on the wall for Yahoo Personals USA when Yahoo Personals UK partnered with Match.com to power the UK service in June 2006. IAC's Barry Diller showed interest in Yahoo in April 2009. Then sold Match Europe to Meetic for a 27% stake in Meetic. IAC will likely buy Meetic, in time. We surmised Match would either be buying Singlesnet or Yahoo Personals back in February. They bought Singlesnet. Here's a link to the transition options for existing Yahoo Personals users. Users can transition their profile and membership over, or cancel and get a prorated refund, or continue using the service through July 21st when Y! Personals officially shuts down. Users will still be able to move their profiles over to Match through Jan 19th, 2011.

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EasyDate To Acquire Allegran

PRESS RELEASE - Apr 5 - EasyDate has acquired Allegran's online dating business, one of the UK's largest online dating groups, from Associated Northcliffe Digital. The acquisition increases EasyDate's current portfolio of dating sites from seven to twelve. EasyDate has purchased GirlsdateForFree.com, Loopylove.com, Quickflirt.com as well as the successful niche dating sites DatingForParents.com and MatureDating.co.uk. FULL ARTICLE @ EASYDATE

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IAC’s Match.com To Acquire Singlesnet

PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 25 – Match.com has signed an agreement to acquire Singlesnet. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com said, “While Singlesnet’s traffic is currently in decline, we believe we can reverse that trend, increase the site’s profitability and improve the overall user experience. This is more of a value acquisition than a strategic one, and Singlesnet will predominantly be run as a standalone business. Nonetheless, the addition of the site’s considerable traffic to our existing aggregation of traffic in this single category should open new monetization opportunities for Match.com’s collective portfolio of domestic online dating brands.” 

Adrian Ong, who joined Match from Soulmates Technology, a company acquired by Match.com in 2002, will assume responsibility for Singlesnet. Mr Ong has held various leadership roles within Match.com's International business, primarily in the areas of product and technology, and most recently has led Match.com’s effort to transition its European business to Meetic in connection with its sale last year. Quinn Lipin , Singlesnet's founder, will continue to work for the company in an executive capacity. FULL PRESS RELEASE @ PR NEWSWIRE

Mark Brooks: Traffic is down from over 7 million uniques a month in January 2009 to 4.5 million a month in January 2010 according to Compete. Singlesnet has been rogue-ish in its marketing tactics in the past so its good its coming under Match.com's wing. They can polish the site up and make it less of an embarrassment to the experience that should be 'internet dating,' and then put it to bed.

Adult Site Operator FriendFinder Shelves IPO

REUTERS - Feb 5 - FriendFinder Networks Inc indefinitely shelved its planned $220M initial public offering on Friday. The company did not say when it might again try to price the IPO, but said in a statement it would not proceed "until market conditions improve." FriendFinder intended to sell 20M shares for between $10 and $20 each and use the proceeds largely to pay down debt. FriendFinder first filed for the IPO in Dec 2008, and initially sought to raise as much as $460M. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

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FriendFinder Sets IPO Terms

REUTERS - Jan 10 - FriendFinder set the terms of its initial public offering on Friday, cutting its size by more than half. FriendFinder's properties range from AdultFriendFinder.com to BigChurch.com and SeniorFriendFinder.com. It also publishes pictures and video, and the magazine Penthouse. FriendFinder plans to sell 20M shares for $10 to $12, each. At the midpoint that would raise $220M. The company filed for an IPO in December 2008 of up to $460M, but did not disclose details. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS

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Zoosk Secures $30 Million In Series D Funding

PR NEWSWIRE - Dec 3 - Zoosk, the social dating community, has closed a $30M Series D round of funding. The round was led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners, the oldest venture capital firm in the United States. Existing investors Canaan Partners and ATA Ventures also participated. Since its launch in December 2007, Zoosk has attracted~40M singles. Singles can join Zoosk via their social network by adding the Zoosk application on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

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Class Action Against Match.com Moved To Dallas

DALLAS BUSINESS JOURNAL - Nov 21 - Match.com has managed to get an East Coast class-action suit moved to the local area. Originally filed in New York, the litigation alleges that the “vast majority of Match.com members are canceled subscribers, or have never subscribed at all,” court documents say. The suit also charges that if a Match.com subscriber writes to someone on the site, the company won’t inform the subscriber in the event that the person they’re writing can’t read or respond to the e-mail. Match.com said that the lawsuit “is without merit, and we will defend it vigorously. FULL ARTICLE @ DALLAS BUSINESS JOURNAL

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DownToEarth.com Changes Name To Stir.com

OPW - Oct 23 - DownToEarth, a free dating site run by Match.com's parent company IAC Interactive, announced exclusively to Online Personals Watch today that the site has relaunched as Stir.com. The new brand will focus on offering young adults ideas for where to go on dates. 

“We’re thrilled to announce that Stir.com is going live today to give 18 to 25 year olds suggestions about the best places to go, and people to go with, based on their interests,” said Jacob Solotaroff, General Manager of Stir. “We learned a lot from our trial with DownToEarth.com and know that we have a unique way to help college-aged people interact with one another. Stir.com will help them mix up their nights.”

All of DowntoEarth.com's members have been rolled over to Stir.com. Older members will be incentivised to try Match.com. The site was always meant to be an experiment. They learned that younger generation members weren't over the bar scene, and wanted a more casual environment to 'hang out' in.

Stir has teamed up with fellow IAC directory site Citysearch.com to provide daters with personalized restaurant, bar and activity recommendations. Members will also eventually be able to post their own event suggestions. Social networking features include photo sharing, as Stir members will be able to upload pictures from their excursions. Stir will eventually allow users to buy tickets directly on the site. Tickets to some New York City Halloween parties are already available for users. 

The monetization plan for Stir is still in the development stages, according to Solotaroff. 

Stir is part of Match’s new plan to target specific dating verticals. In July, Match acquired People Media and its 27 niche dating sites that cater to specifics communities, from singles parents to various religious affiliations.

"Match.com has been increasing its portfolio of vertical dating sites like BlackSinglesMeet and JPeopleMeet,” said Tom Smithyman, Senior Director of Success Marketing at Match.com. “These sites cater to people of certain demographics or with certain interests. Stir.com is adding people 18-25 to that mix, and we're confident it will have a big impact on Match.com's overall business."

Solotaroff says the name Stir was chosen, because the title encourages users to be social and try new activities.

FriendFinder To Complete IPO By End Of Year

XBIZ - Oct 13 - FriendFinder Networks intends to complete its IPO process by the end of the year. “The primary purpose of this offering is to repay some of our outstanding debt, including certain debt held by our affiliates, which we expect will decrease our interest expense and increase our flexibility with respect to our operations and growth strategy,” the company said in the filing. As of June 30, the company had ~$81M in debt at the parent level. It also had ~$442.1M in debt in connection with its acquisition of Various, which was the preceding parent operator of its FriendFinder websites. FULL ARTICLE @ XBIZ NEWSWIRE

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