PRESS RELEASE – Sep 30 - eLove, the matchmaking company, has acquired Cupid’s Coach. The addition of Cupid Coach’s two locations in LA and Westlake Village brings eLove’s total number of matchmaking offices to 50 nationwide. As the principal of Cupid’s Coach, Julie Ferman has been in the matchmaking business for more than 20 years. The partnership with eLove makes sense for us on many levels,” said Ferman. “We are now the first dating company to offer our clients both traditional matchmaking through eLove’s existing model and mutual selection matchmaking, using detailed personal resumes and professional photos. FULL ARTICLE @ ARTICLE BASE
Category: All Acquisitions
EasyDate Has Tied The Knot With Cupid
GUARDIAN.CO.UK – Sep 22 – EasyDate acquires North American rival cupid.com in a deal worth £4.4m. EasyDate already operates cupid.com outside the US and will now take charge of its US and Canada operations – reversing a trend that has seen US sites such as eHarmony eye up the UK for acquisitions. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Easydate Takes Over Two Dating Sites
IB TIMES UK – Sep 1 – Easydate has acquired PlanetSappho.com for £200,000 and Spanish-based dating site Granamor.com for £25,000 to boost its international growth and expand its niche portfolio. Easydate said it had entered into an agreement with dating website Flirt.com to license the domain for an initial period of six months. Easydate will run the dating service across English speaking markets with an option to acquire the domain based on the performance over this period. Easydate has also entered into partnerships with Associated Newspaper's 'Metro' newspaper and Cosmopolitan and Men's Health magazines to promote two individual dating events in London scheduled over the next month.
The full article was originally published at IB Times UK, but is no longer available.
CatholicMatch.com Acquires TraditionalSingleCatholics.com
PR NEWSWIRE – July 1 - CatholicMatch.com, the provider of online dating
for Catholics, has acquired the assets of TraditionalSingleCatholics.com. The integration of the niche site is effective today. TraditionalSingleCatholics.com
was launched four and a half years ago. CatholicMatch acquired
CatholicDaters.com in 2007 and SingleCatholics.com in 2008. FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE
Dating.com Sells For $1.75M
TECH CRUNCH – May 13 – Someone has purchased the domain Dating.com
for $1,750,000 at the DOMAINFest auction. Today’s auction racked up
$2.4M in sales. Dating.com was sold by domain firm Oversee.net, via its
SnapNames unit. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
EasyDate To Acquire Allegran
PRESS RELEASE – Apr 5 - EasyDate has acquired Allegran's online dating business, one of the UK's largest online dating groups, from Associated Northcliffe Digital. The acquisition increases EasyDate's current portfolio of dating sites from seven to twelve. EasyDate has purchased GirlsdateForFree.com, Loopylove.com, Quickflirt.com as well as the successful niche dating sites DatingForParents.com and MatureDating.co.uk.
The full article was originally published at Easydate website, but is no longer available.
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Internet Dating Industry Weekly News March 2nd, 2010
This is the news for February 23rd through March 2nd, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
- PlentyofFish continues to grow rapidly
- Match.com to acquire Singlesnet
- German online dating market booming
- Smartdate.com raises 2.2 million Euros
- Australians suffer heavy losses to online fraud
- Weopia.com launches new virtual dating service
- HerWay.com partners with HonestyOnline
- Maryland Bill proposes tight restrictions
- Harvard Professor Michael Norton to speak at iDate L.A.
IAC’s Match.com To Acquire Singlesnet
PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 25 – Match.com has signed an agreement to acquire Singlesnet. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com said, “While Singlesnet’s traffic is currently in decline, we believe we can reverse that trend, increase the site’s profitability and improve the overall user experience. This is more of a value acquisition than a strategic one, and Singlesnet will predominantly be run as a standalone business. Nonetheless, the addition of the site’s considerable traffic to our existing aggregation of traffic in this single category should open new monetization opportunities for Match.com’s collective portfolio of domestic online dating brands.”
Adrian Ong, who joined Match from Soulmates Technology, a company acquired by Match.com in 2002, will assume responsibility for Singlesnet. Mr Ong has held various leadership roles within Match.com's International business, primarily in the areas of product and technology, and most recently has led Match.com’s effort to transition its European business to Meetic in connection with its sale last year. Quinn Lipin , Singlesnet's founder, will continue to work for the company in an executive capacity. FULL PRESS RELEASE @ PR NEWSWIRE
Mark Brooks: Traffic is down from over 7 million uniques a month in January 2009 to 4.5 million a month in January 2010 according to Compete. Singlesnet has been rogue-ish in its marketing tactics in the past so its good its coming under Match.com's wing. They can polish the site up and make it less of an embarrassment to the experience that should be 'internet dating,' and then put it to bed.
Lavalife Is Being Shopped
THEDEAL.COM – Feb 12 - Lavalife is being shopped by its owner, online marketer Vertrue. Vertrue paid C$152.5M ($113.9M) to acquire Lavalife in 2004. Vertrue was itself bought out by management, private equity firms One Equity Partners and Brencourt Investors and venture capital firm Rho Ventures for $855M in 2007. Lavalife's Web properties have been on the block for about four months. Lavalife Voice, a phone-based dating service, is not being shopped. Some say the auction has been going on for longer than that. "They've wanted to sell for a while," Noel Biederman, CEO of Avid Life Media, said of Lavalife. "Lavalife is not of great strategic value, and its business is in decline," said Mark Brooks, an industry consultant with Courtland Brooks. The company has not disclosed revenues since it was taken private in 2007. That year it brought in ~$90M. Although online dating giants Avid Life and FriendFinder Networks canceled initial public offerings this month, the space is still ripe for M&A deals, according to Brooks.
Will Match Acquire Yahoo Personals Or Singlesnet?
OPW – Feb 17 – Match acquired 27% of Meetic in February last year and then acquired People Media for $80 million in July, 2009. They took a piece of the German market last week by partnering with Neu.de. Diller showed interest in Yahoo Personals back in April 2009. Sometime soon, perhaps Match will announce a deal to power Yahoo Personals USA. Match already powers Yahoo Personals in key European markets.
The real question is, how can you possibly compete with the behemoth Match? Its has niches with People Media, Europe with Meetic and Yahoo Personals, and growth this season is looking very strong. I hear concerns about growth stalling for second tier dating sites. However, Piper Jaffray predicts U.S. spending on online dating will reach $1.7 billion by 2013, with $1.2 billion being spent in 2008. Meanwhile, Forrester expects the market to reach $1.6 billion by 2013, up from an estimated $957 million in 2008. – Mark Brooks