REVOLUTION MAG -- May 20 - AOL has signed a two-year deal with www.DatingDirect.com to provide its members with access to the UK's biggest online dating agency. DatingDirect has other deals with sites including iVillage.co.uk and ITV.com, and has more than 2m members in the UK. It is ranked by Nielsen//NetRatings as the largest personals site in the UK in terms of monthly unique users, ahead of Meetic.co.uk and uDate.com. Research compiled by Jupiter shows that the Western European dating markets will be worth €117m (£80m) by 2007. The UK online dating market is particularly showing rapid growth, currently worth £11.7m and is estimated by Jupiter to grow to £47m by 2008. DatingDirect was founded in 1999. As well as hosting white-label dating services for other websites and its own branded website, it runs offline dating events, which it sees as a way of raising brand awareness.
The full article was originally published at Revolution, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Dating Direct is pulling ahead in the UK market it would seem. It's tough to compete with sites that know how to do good deals.
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