Month: September 2005

Match.com Invests £3m in UK Offline Advertising

Posted on September 1, 2005

MatchcomAug 31 — Match.com is urging singletons to 'make love happen' in a £3m UK advertising campaign, launching next week. It is the first major ad campaign for Match.com in this country, and will include television, radio and print ads. Earlier this month, Nielsen NetRatings revealed that personals sites attract more than 3.5m people a month in the UK — an audience that has almost doubled in the last year alone.

The full article was originally published at Revolution, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Europe is hallowed ground…opportunity awaits…but, it's far more challenging than the homogeneous US market.

Spark Networks Reports Q2 Results

Posted on September 1, 2005

Spark_networks_1PR NEWSWIRE — Aug 30 — JDate revenue increased 9%.  Also among the highlights of the company's quarter was the acquisition of MingleMatch, which added ChristianMingle, BlackSingles Connection and LDS Mingle, among others.  EBITDA for Q2 2005 was $368,000, compared to an EBITDA loss of $3.1 million in the same period last year. Revenue was $15.5 million, a decrease of 2%, compared to $15.8 million for Q2 last year. The company reported a Q2 net loss of $859,000, compared to a Q2 net loss of $4.1 million last year. Q2 2005 revenue for AmericanSingles was $7.3 million, a decrease of 16%.  Average paying subscribers for the company totaled approximately 215,600, a decrease of 6%. (Jdate 68,100, a decrease of 3% / AmericanSingles 109,000, a decrease of 18%).  Direct subscriber acquisition cost was $31.11, a decrease of 23%. (JDate $13.82, an increase of 90% / AmericanSingles $41.30, a decrease of 23%).

Mark Brooks: It's good to see the acquisition costs diminishing.  Looks like American Singles is finding it's balancing point between growth and profitability. 

Patent Threat Looms

Posted on September 1, 2005

Epic_realmVNUNET — Aug 31 — Former web acceleration company EpicRealm has filed lawsuits against 13 companies, including eHarmony, It's Just Lunch and FriendFinder, for allegedly infringing on two patents that cover the way in which many dynamic web pages are constructed and served.  The Texas-based company filed the first lawsuit If the patents are upheld in court, they could apply to "most modern e-commerce sites involved in dynamic web page generation and caching", according to Ira Rothken, representing FriendFinder.  Rothken claimed the patents are invalid because somebody else invented the technologies covered in the patents before EpicRealm. 

The full article was originally published at Vnunet, but is no longer available.