OPW -- May 21 -- Earlier this week I spoke with Marc Simoncini, the Founder and CEO of Meetic. Meetic is focusing on expanding Meetic Affinity all over Europe. Its in all countries except for the Nordics at this stage. This is a higher end dating product for serious daters (which is akin to eHarmony in the USA). They will be rolling out a product for a younger audience called Peexme. Its a mobile application and web application that will be launched in June. Watch this space for more info. Peexme will be more of a flirting than a dating service. Meetic is their dating service and their matchmaking product is Meetic Affinity. As far as their acquision of Match Europe goes, they will continue to run all the brands but will only promote the top brands. Meetic will run Match in the Nordics, and Meetic all over the rest of Europe. They will actively market and promote one brand per market. So that means they will stop promoting Match and DatingDirect in the UK. Additionally, they will merge the Match Europe and Meetic databases.
The deal with IAC is an eight year agreement. There are three main elements to the agreement.
1. Match has no right to manage the daily business in Europe. It will be managed by Meetic
2. There's a reciprocal right of first refusal for acquisition
3. And there will be two members on the board of Meetic, from IAC
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