OPW — May 6 — In response to discrimination litigation, eHarmony agreed to launch the gay version of its heterosexual match-making service. Compatible Partners is live now and members can get 6 months free membership if they register today.
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OPW — Apr 10 — Spark Networks has acquired Engage.com. The deal had been in process for several months. No details have been released as yet. Engage is headed by Suneet Wadhwa (formerly the co-founder of Snapfish.com, Harvard MBA) and Trish McDermott (formerly VP Romance at Match.com). The site allows users to become virtual matchmakers and match members. It's great theory, but the site has never really taken off. Traffic tanked from 300k monthly uniques in May '08 when they ran out of money and switched off the ad buys. See Compete graph. Now they are at 50k uniques a month, which isn't many more uniques than this blog gets. Where will Spark take Engage? Its a decent domain, but the site needs an overhaul. The concept was good, but the viral effect that they were hoping for didn't kick in with their implementations. Do people really want to be matchmakers? Yes, but very very few people, and they tire quickly, especially if they are not rewarded consistently. I'm fascinated by Engage. I hope Spark gets a new launch right, and it doesn't end up locked in a boardroom quagmire. The site has potential. – Mark Brooks
LA TIMES — Mar 30 — eHarmony agreed in November to start the dating service as part of a settlement with the New Jersey attorney general in the wake of a discrimination suit. Dating site consultant Mark Brooks says Compatible Partners will be watched closely. "This will be one of the most scrutinized products in Internet dating," said Brooks. "They will have to introduce an A1 product." It's not a comfortable fit for eHarmony's founder, Neil Clark Warren. "I never had a gay couple." Brooks thinks Compatible Partners could be a winner. "Niche products are proving to be very effective," he said. "People are more likely to connect with a brand that serves it, specifically." FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES
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PR NEWSWIRE — Feb 19 – IAC and Meetic have entered into an agreement for Meetic to acquire Match.com's European operations from IAC. IAC will sell 100% of the stock of the entity that houses Match.com's European operations for an approximate 27% stake in Meetic, plus a 5m euro note. FULL ARTICLE @ IAC MEDIA ROOM
ONLINE DATING INSIDER — Jan 15 — DownToEarth went live Dec' 08 as free-singles.com, signing up 1k people daily. Initial testing was done with churches. ~20k people joined the site in the last few weeks according to Compete. DownToEarth.com is targeting 250k members by the end of '09. RealRatings™, encourages daters to rate other people's profile accuracy. Finally, a dating site that is taking reputation seriously! DownToEarth employs less than 10 people is located in the same building as Match & Chemistry and has no customer service, instead relying on community-based policing. Development was outsourced. The site is seeing strong signups from the south and southwest. I don't see a single reference as being a dating site. The partner page features 20+ competing dating sites with affiliate links. FULL ARTICLE @ ONLINE DATING INSIDER
SF BUSINESS TIMES — Jan 9 — Gay and lesbian media company PlanetOut Inc will merge with Here Networks and Regent Entertainment Media, two related businesses that have bought parts of PlanetOut in the past few years. Here Media and Regent will pay $4.7m in cash into the new company as part of the deal. They'll own, through special preferred shares, 80% of the business after the merger.
The full article was originally published at SF Business Times, but is no longer available.
REUTERS — Dec 23 — FriendFinder Networks Inc, an operator of
social-networking websites and publisher of the adult men's magazine
Penthouse, filed on Tuesday for a $460m initial public offering.
FriendFinder plans to use the proceeds of its IPO primarily to pay
off debt, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
PRESS RELEASE — Nov 12 — be2,
a global matchmaking site with more than 12m members in 34 countries,
received an investment of €15m from the Index Ventures growth fund. be2
will use the capital to further international expansion and increase
its user base in existing markets.
Mark Brooks: Keep your eyes on this company. One to watch. 😉
RBC — Aug 29 — Mail.ru, the Russian email service provider
and Internet portal, has acquired a 30% stake in the
Russian dating site Mamba.ru from the Finam Investment Company. Market participants estimate the value
of the deal at $15m. According to experts' opinion, however, Mamba.ru
is running the risk of losing its other major partner Rambler, which
provides the dating service with 25 to 30% of its users. The
client base of Mamba.ru currently amounts to 9.8m people, according to
the company's site, and its revenue topped RUB 300m (approx. USD
12.22m). FULL ARTICLE @ RBC
PRESS RELEASE — Aug 28 — SpeedDate.com, the online speed dating service, has secured $6m in Series B funding from Menlo Ventures. SpeedDate will use this funding to further grow its user base, expand operations, and enhance SpeedDate.com's functionality. The site launched in October '07. SpeedDate.com allows singles to meet each other through 3-minute online speed dates using webcams, audio, and instant messaging.
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