PRESS RELEASE - Feb 4 - Meetic and Match.com will contribute their respective properties in South America to the new joint venture: Meetic’s Brazilian site, ParPerfeito, and Match.com’s activities in other South and Latin American countries. Match.com and Meetic will each own 50% of the economic interest in the entity, and Match.com will control the new entity’s operations. Match.com will pay Meetic $3M in cash at the closing, which is expected by March 15, 2010. Meetic’s participation is subject to put-and-call rights that can be triggered beginning in the fourth year, whereby Match could purchase Meetic’s stake at fair market value at that time. An additional payment of $1.5M could be triggered at that time. Read the full press release here.
Mark Brooks: Match.com operates in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. It also owns Netclubencuentro.com, but this website looks to be down now. It was working ~2 months ago when we were researching the South American market. The South American idating market skews a lot younger, and has low registration to paying member conversions. Its still a growth market, a few years behind the USA market growth curve.
ParPerfeito had been losing traffic since last July 2009.
The entire 2009 showed big paid sites with worldwide less traffic than 1 year ago or decaying in traffic.
I think daters are getting tired of those major paid online dating sites.
Tired of being scammed with "automatic renewal" of their subscriptions and other "credit-card billing trickery" that will not be allowed any more.
Meetic and Match are like 2 seamstresses patching old clothes!
They might think that people from South American countries are like wild monkeys in the jungle.
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Feb 04, 2010 at 04:12 PM
Fernando,
I agree with you! Recently my wife's friend joined Match and subscribed to a 1 month membership and she did go on dates with people she met, but nothing came of the dates. Right when her month ended, (which was last week) she was automatically billed another month and was really upset and called my wife to let her know what Match has done! Lats I heard she was going to call Match's billing dept.
This in fact is a "trick" paid dating sites use because majority of members will forget to cancell. Paid dating sites should NOT allow auto renewal and have the member subscribe again if they see fit.
Tony
Posted by: EuropeanKiss | Feb 04, 2010 at 08:28 PM
By that reasoning, your local phone and cell companies, gym memberships, magazine & newspaper subscriptions, and anything else you subscribe to until you cancel shouldn't be permitted, either. That makes no sense.
Dating sites which are up front (as we are - I can't speak for Match) about how their subscription system works (in normal font size and not buried in some obscure place in their agreement) can only let people know in so many ways. It is up to the consumer to actually read what is written.
For the record, we go the extra mile beyond all that and refund any membership fees where the customer claims they weren't aware of the process. We make exceptions where the customer is clearly using their account and waits an unreasonable amount of time and then claims that, "I haven't used it since I was renewed". Uh, that's why we have log files - and you've logged in 85 times since. :-)
Otherwise, it's no questions asked. That's how all good businesses should operate.
Posted by: Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com | Feb 05, 2010 at 09:53 PM
For a variety of reasons, the Brazilian dating space is tough - very tough. We've been in this market since 2007 (with http://www.barbrasil.com.br), so can speak from experience. My wife is Brazilian, so we have the benefit of intimately knowing the local culture.
In spite of this, it is still tough, as I am sure Meetic/Match can attest.
Posted by: Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com | Feb 06, 2010 at 11:22 AM