PR WEB – Aug 15 – Lovestruck was selected by a judging panel who spent the first six months of 2013 researching, interviewing and compiling a list of top British entrepreneurs and Businesses. Laurence Holloway, CTO and co-founder of Lovestruck said: "We are delighted that our growth abroad – in particular Hong Kong and Singapore – has been recognised by the panel of judges."
Category: All UK & Europe
eDarling CEO Interview, Lukas Brosseder (MD And co-Founder Of Affinitas GmbH)
OPW INTERVIEW – Aug 13 – eDarling recently pared away from eHarmony and is independent again, and ready to compete internationally. eDarling launched in the UK recently and is now open for business in 22 countries. Here’s their founding story, from Affinitas co-founder Lukas Brosseder. – Mark Brooks
This is our first interview with eDarling. What’s your founding story?
David Khalil and myself founded the company in November 2008. In Europe, we didn't see a true matchmaking company. Here, it was always a combination of a dating site and a personality questionnaire, but not a true matchmaking service, and existing players weren’t very innovative. None of the matchmaking sites such as Parship in Germany and eHarmony in the U.S. were able to go international. We believed that this was possible, and that was our idea. In May 2009, 6 months after the launch in Germany, we were live in 4 other countries.
Would you say that your product and philosophy is different from the likes of Parship and eHarmony?
What distinguishes us is a very true matchmaking system. We are focusing on delivering very good matches. You only get 7 initial matches when you finish our relationship questionnaire. We pride ourselves in the quality of the matches, and the communications.
eHarmony has been a big part of us for a very long time, and we have grown together in a lot of ways. Initially, they were one of our biggest heroes. Our matchmaking system is very different from the eHarmony system.
Let's talk about matchmaking then. What is your philosophy; what kind of basis do you focus on for the matchmaking?
All the other larger competitors’ matchmaking is based on the big five model. We truly believe in compatibility and being matched based on having similar interests and personality traits. We have several innovative algorithms implemented that understandably I can not talk about in detail. A big part of the secret sauce are the users on the site, and here we pride ourselves on having a high educated, extremely dedicated user base. I think that also is a big part of our success.
Recently you parted ways with eHarmony. Could you give us some more insight on why, and what happened?
We parted on very good terms on either side. I think the main reason for the parting was Dr. Neil Clark Warren’s strategy to decrease eHarmony’s international footprint. We wanted to grow internationally. It was a good way and good timing for everyone to take different routes and to take different strategies.
How many countries are you in now?
We launched in UK and Ireland just a couple weeks ago, and now we're in 22 countries.
Congratulations on entering UK and Ireland. How did that go, and how did you seed into those countries from scratch?
We have done this 20 times before. We know how to grow business internationally. With UK and Ireland, it was the same set up as it was with Hungary, Finland, Denmark, and Slovakia, which all were launched at the beginning of this year. We make the site free and spend significant 5-digit marketing budgets per day to build up a user base. When we have a user base and also activity on the platform that is sufficient, we start to charge.
What is eDarling going to look like in a year or so's time?
We will grow further international. We just launched in Ireland and UK which is the largest dating market in Europe. So there are a lot of things to do. We won't rule out launching in more countries in Europe. We also see opportunities in South America.
Interview With Meetic’s Digital Marketing Director
BANDT – Aug 1 – Meetic was founded in 2001, is headquartered in
France, and has 5M active users. Meetic’s digital marketing director
Pierric Duthoit shares some of Meetic’s history and plans for the
future.
Q: How many countries are you in now?
A: 16 countries, in 13 languages, with offices in London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm and Munich.
Q:
Meetic acquired the European operations of Match.com in 2009. In 2011,
IAC bought Meetic. How has that impacted on your business?
A: Match.com purchased an 81% capital share of Meetic. This partnership
resulted in one clear pan-European leader. It has brought us a lot of
new, fresh ideas.
Q: You must hold a lot of data about your customers. How do you use this data to enhance the customer experience?
A: We do not use members' data outside of our website. We have a
business intelligence department working on optimising the user
experience through algorithms based on users’ behaviour.
Q: You must always be after new leads. How do you acquire them?
A: We mainly use two major channels: offline and online. Both are
mandatory in our business and include TV, radio, print and billboards.
The flexibility and efficiency of online makes it a pure performance
channel for the acquisition of new members. We use all the classic
strategies like SEM, affiliation, display and partnerships.
Q: What makes Meetic different?
A: 10 years of experience. Being a leader forces you to invest in many services to stay on top.
Q: How have your digital and display strategies evolved?
A: Mobile is becoming a strong source of traffic for us. We have to be more efficient on mobile than on desktop.
Meetic H1 Results
BUSINESS WIRE – July 30 – H1 Revenue increased 2% to Eur 83.6M. Subscribers increased by 8% YOY to 811,065. Marketing expenses were Eur 41.2M, corresponding to 49% of revenue, compared with Eur 39M or 48% of revenue. EBITDA was Eur 16.8M compared with Eur 19.1M for the prior year period. Meetic net profit was Eur 10.9M, compared to Eur 11.9M for prior year period.
The full article was originally published at WSJ, but is no longer available.
Regulator To Investigate Sale Of Online Dating Profiles
BBC.CO.UK – July 29 – ~10,000 online dating profiles has been sold to the BBC's Panorama programme, many of which were fake. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said it will investigate the sale. The profile seller Edgars Apalais has denied that people did not give consent for their contact details to be shared. Some profiles included photographs of celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Michael Caine and the TV chef Rick Stein. Edgars Apalais agreed to an interview and BBC secretly recorded the conversation.
You can watch Panorama – Tainted Love: The Dark Side of Online Dating Monday 29 July at 20:30 BST on BBC1 and then on the BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Literary Website Launches Dating Service
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – July 26 – The Omnivore, the literary review site, has launched a dating service that matches couples up by their book tastes.
Concerns Raised Over Web Dating ‘Fake Profiles’
BBC.CO.UK – July 26 – A BBC investigation has found that fake profiles are apparently being used to encourage people to pay a subscription to Cupid Plc. Earlier this year the company hired auditors after users told a BBC 5 live investigation they had lots of messages when they signed up to the sites as free users, but when they paid up, interest rapidly tailed off. Cupid commissioned KPMG to look at working practices. The report found that "scammers" were a problem but said there was no evidence of "a Company organised" use of fake profiles. But the BBC has been contacted by Cupid daters, complaining of disappearing messages and fake profiles. The programme team created a profile of a man called James from Glasgow, to see how many of the people who approached "James" were real. "James" profile was matched with Kaz B. However, Kaz B is Karen Bartke, a Scottish actress, who never signed up for Cupid's sites. These profiles did not appear to be the work of scammers. The bulk of Cupid plc's work is done in Ukraine, where journalist Svitlana Tuchynska from the Kyiv Post newspaper went undercover. She applied for a job as a motivation manager. She said: "I was told the job is to communicate with customers on the sites. Cupid described Ms Tuchynska's allegations as "wholly incorrect".
Cupid Falls Out Of Love With Commercial Director
PROACTIVE INVESTORS – July 19 – Cupid waved goodbye to commercial director Mark Doughty after dumping its casual dating business. Doughty handed over the role of CFO to Niall Stirling in December as it expanded its board and his new job was to grow the company internationally.
Alexandre Lubot Named CEO of Meetic
BOURSORAMA – July 17 – Meetic has appointed Alexandre Lubot (previously CMO of Meetic since 2011) as its CEO. Former CEO Philippe Chainieux decided to focus on a new career path but will remain a member of the Board of Directors.
Cupid Sells Casual Dating Sites For £43 Million
INDEPENDENT – July 15 – Cupid sold its BeNaughty.com, Flirt.com and other casual dating sites to Grendall Investment for £43.1M (€50M). The company would retain Cupid.com, LoveAgain.com and UniformDating.com. It also signed a software licensing agreement with Grendall that would generate £2M of revenue over four years. Grendall Investment is managed by Max Polyakov, co-founder of Cupid, who also holds a 15% stake in the company.
See full article at Independent
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