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.

The full article was originally published at Match Media Room, but is no longer available.

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.

See all posts on Match.com
See all posts on Yahoo! Personals

Comments

[Merav]

This is a sad day for online daters. Yahoo Personals has been a very good, well designed dating site.

[Match]

Yahoo Personals is to be no more, as the service will be outsourced to IAC’s Match.com. Existing users will be able to switch over to the new service dubbed “Match.com on Yahoo.”

[DopeyFromDating]

Yes, this is not a good development. With consolidation we'll end up with MatchEharmonyFinder.com as the sole dating site. Yahoo did provide a very good service -- hopefully IAC will keep it mostly in tact.

[Kathryn Lord]

I used to recommend Match and Yahoo equally as a primary site for my clients, but started backing off Yahoo a couple of years ago. I sensed that Yahoo was not investing energy in the Personals section. While I don't follow the finances, Yahoo seems to have been struggling overall. I can't imagine that Yahoo Personals wasn't making or couldn't make a lot of money to pump up the rest of Yahoo. Seems to me like killing the golden goose. This does seal the deal for Match in my mind though. Why go anywhere else, unless for specific niche needs like JDate?

[JB]

I've talked to Mark about this a couple of times.I've been on Yahoo Personals for many years because like Plenty Of Fish you can keep your profile "hidden" from the public and still correspond with only the people who you want to see your profile.(Match unbelieveably STILL doesn't allow this)This is a very important feature because many people don't want to be seen in search results.They see it as an invasion of privacy.People would gladly pay extra for the feature although they shouldn't have to.At one point Yahoo was as good if not better than Match but for some reason they never put any effort into advertising Yahoo Personals.I would meet people that were on Match and POF and they didn't even know Yahoo HAD a Personals section.For about the last year I noticed a significant drop of new members on Yahoo where as Match had new people all the time.So basically I'm forced to be on Match because that's where most people are.So I made a Match profile(before the switch that happened yesterday) but kept it hidden because I wasn't ready to put it up "searchable" and low and behold a woman walks up to me in a bar and says "I saw your profile on Match" yadda yadda yadda. I told her she shouldn't of seen it.I SHOULD be "hidden".When I got home sure enough my profile was public and I had responses in my mailbox.I'm a fairly seasoned proficient online dater and I'm 99.999% sure I didn't ever make the profile "live" so how did it get that way?In 10 yrs on Yahoo I never made this mistake. I'm on POF but the photo compression hurts my eyes. So for me now it's Match or nothing? What's with the "Messages more than 30 days old are automatically deleted" I now see on my Match mailbox? They're kidding right? On Yahoo I could keep my messages forever and often referred back to them months and even years later. I understand on a free site like POF but on a site I'm paying for THIS is unacceptable and should be changed.Can I pay "extra" for this feature too?? Of course when you basically have a monopoly you can do what you want because you know you have no real competition.Here's an idea,take a survey of your customer's and ask THEM the features they need & want and what they'll pay extra for and then give it to them.What a concept!

[Sly008]

A very clever move for match.com with 50% rev share what a way to acquire members

[Match]

JD - We appreciate you joining the Match.com community. We'd be happy to help you hide your profile - please contact Mark B at Match.com Care at 214.576.3267. Also, while we do delete messages after 30 days, we send all email communications to the member’s offline email box so they can keep/delete emails as they wish.

[JB]

I know how to "hide" my profile.The problem is when your "hidden" even the people you email or have emailed in the past CAN'T see your profile.So it's basically useless unless you want to hide from everyone which defeats the purpose.Maybe I only want the women I'm interested in to see my profile.In other words I have to be "searchable" for anyone I email to be able to read my profile.That's an invasion of privacy.POF has it right and Yahoo HAD it right.Match has it wrong.

If I'm paying 20 bucks a month for a profile I should decide when an email gets deleted not Match.Do you know what kind of online storage 20 bucks a month can buy? Many gigs!!!! I don't think a match mailbox takes up all that much space.

[JB]

Oh one more thing for the Match people. You have to make a feature so that someone DOES'NT know that you looked at their profile.Again this is an invasion of privacy.That's why all the smart people have a second FAKE profile so we can search and peruse without people knowing we looked at their profile.Again....POF and Yahoo had this feature YOU don't.It's an invasion of privacy.I never LOOK at profiles with my real one.Only my FAKE one.Isn't THAT ridiculous?
Another thing... does someone really need to know that I've been on within the LAST HOUR??? NO !!! They don't.It's an invasion of my privacy.Even worse "online now" It's no ones business if I'm online NOW !!!You should be able to turn it OFF if you want.Especially if you're a PAYING customer.YES...people WILL pay extra for these features although they shouldn't have to.I've been online dating since 1996 before all of you got involved I'm sure...lol

[Tammy]

JB - I believe all the features you're looking for are included on Over35Match.com. Depending on your age, this might work better for you. It's a new site, but trying to grow large enough to be a U.S.-based competition for Match (no, we're not affiliated).

[JB]

Thanks Tammy.If you have THOSE important features on your site then at least you're on the right track of giving the customers the options they want,deserve and most importantly they've been getting on POF,Yahoo and I'm sure a myriad of other niche sites.It's a simple bottom line,WE(as in me and people I know) as online daters/customers have to go where you have the best and MOST options in order to even have a chance to succeed. Right now for better or sadly worse it's Match and POF.That's where everyone who's anyone IS.They and I can't afford not to be.So unless a new site comes along and proves to have MORE profiles on it with equal quality it'll be a 2 horse race.

[JB]

I just figured out the trick Match use's to keep as many profiles as unhidden as possible.

If your profile is "hidden/unsearchable" and you edit it and click "Send for approval"
it becomes "unhidden and searchable" even without you clicking the "show profile" link.
So you have to RE hide it anytime you edit something in it. Absolutely ridiculous and very devious.That's how my profile was live when I thought it was hidden for 10 days.Again on Yahoo & POF the user controls this with no tricks.I'll have to be a lot more careful.

[Online Dating]

Interesting partnership. Match.com have become a very successful dating service and their advertising and marketing campaigns have been lauded and quite rightly so. Does anyone know what the current state of the partnership is between the two?