OPW — Feb 20 — I've requested CEO interviews with Meetic's Marc Simoncini and the new Match CEO, Greg Blatt. What questions would you most like to be put to the CEOs of Meetic and Match? – Mark Brooks
Category: Meetic
Meetic And Match.com Announce European Partnership
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
Europe’s Online Dating Services
EASY JET — Feb 11 — Match.com is now the world's largest dating website, boasting 15m subscribers. In 2007, match.com had a global turnover of €240m with an operating income of €54m. Over in Germany, a rival website, be2.com, was launched in 2004 by Robert Wuttke, who has a PhD in sociology. Within three months of launching in Germany, be2.com launched in Spain and Italy; it now operates in 35 countries worldwide, spread across all six continents. Meetic.com was an instant success in France. It is now Europe's largest, and the world's second largest online dating service. Meetic makes €130m a year and has more paying customers than any other in Europe. 60,000 babies have been born as a result of couples meeting on Meetic. The online dating industry seems to be resistant to the current economic downturn, with all the companies reporting steady growth.
The full article was originally published at Easy Jet, but is no longer available.
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Meetic: 2009 Target: 20-25% EBITDA Margin
PR NEWSWIRE — Jan 5 — Meetic will focus on profitability in 2009. Meetic allocated ~15m Euros exceptional ad expenditure in 2008, mainly for offline branding to increase the profile DatingDirect, Neu.de and the matchmaking service MeeticAffinity. The Group is confident that it will gain a significant share of the European matchmaking market in 2009 and generate EBITDA margin of 20% to 25%. In '08 the Group disposed of its Chinese operations (eFriendsNet, Yeeyoo). Investments in Latin America, which are currently marginal, will be maintained.
The full article was originally published at MSN Money, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Search and communication features are not enough for paid dating services now. You need to differentiate by improving and branding your 'matchmaking' technologies. That's how you can differentiate and charge a premium. Create a black box with magical matchmaking services. Find a camera friendly spokesperson.
Marc Simoncini At LeWeb Conference
OPW — Dec 17 — Marc Simoncini had a discussion with the host of LeWeb Conference in Paris on xyz. Here's the transcription of the interview. Below is a summary of main points.
– Meetic is now in ~22 countries
– Marc sold his previous company for 200m Euros and started Meetic in 2002
– It was a bad time to raise money so he invested half a million dollars of his own money
He chose internet dating because he
1. didn't want to have to pay for content
2. wanted to charge a subscription
3. he liked that the business is self-controlled, so the community controls the website for free
4. dating sites can be easily localized
5. wanted to have a chance to be the leader in Europe and saw that he had a chance with internet dating
6. he just loved the business of love
Meetic can compete with free sites because,"If you can choose to go and dance at the most expensive nightclub in New York and the free nightclub, which one would you choose? Probably the paying one."
– Meetic has charged half a billion Euro in 6 years
– There are more women than men in the UK on DatingDirect. It's the only country in the world where you have more women than men on a website.
– Meetic Affinity is the second largest internet dating website in France in terms of revenue just behind Meetic.
Meetic: We Are Unbeatable In France
OPW — Dec 11 — In spite of Match.com's assaults on the French market or other challengers such as BE2(Germany), Meetic is able to maintain a comfortable market share in France. Their CEO Marc Simoncini remains vigilant in his domestic market. He refuses to give up sub-segment niches such as VIP dating or Affinity Meetings (Common interest dating). As far as social networks like Facebook, it is estimated that their activities are "complementary"… we'll see. Other work in progress: Marc Simoncini announces for 2009 "a real mobile service" still in the online personals segment. – Translated by Pat Dines, CEO of Mary.com.
Interview With Darren Richards, Founder Of Dating Direct
GLOBAL EDGE — Sep 25 — Darren Richards grew Dating Direct from nothing into the UK's largest dating site with over 4m monthly users. He sold out to Meetic for £30m in 2007. He talks to Globaledge about his plans to repeat his success in the property portal market with PropertyIndex.com.
Q: How running a dating site compares to operating a property portal?
A: The challenges are actually very similar. Both businesses are about using the internet to bring people together, either on a date or introducing buyers to sellers in the case of property.
Q: You had first-mover advantage back in the nineties with Dating Direct. It must be very different working in such a saturated market?
A: We always put the user at the heart of the online experience and stayed two steps ahead of the competition.
Q: How do you plan to do this with PropertyIndex?
A: We have over 150,000 properties from over 1,000 agents. We offer agents very competitive pricing but we realise that we need to be more innovative, both in terms of our offering to consumers and agents.
Q: For example?
A: On the consumer side, we have a number of Web 2.0 innovations in the pipeline and we plan to go further than anyone else in this respect. I'm a big fan of sites like TripAdvisor.
Q: Is there anything you can tell me about your plans to improve your proposition to agents and developers?
A: Our lead numbers are growing rapidly at the moment which is ultimately what agents judge us on. Leads were up 70% between July and August and so far for September, we are 25% ahead of where we were last month. In terms of improving the proposition, we recently introduced featured positions and branding on a cost-per-click basis which is something most other portals don't do. Pay-per-performance is generally what agents want and we'll continue to innovate with this in mind.
READ FULL INTERVIEW @ GLOBAL EDGE
Dating Sites Hang On Despite Increasing Competition
IDG SERVICE — Sep 23 — Owners and companies running dating Web sites are meeting Monday and Tuesday at the Internet Dating Conference in London to discuss challenges in their industry. The top dating sites in the U.K. for June were PlentyofFish, followed by Meetic, Match.com, Gaydar.co.uk and GirlsDateForFree, according to comScore. In North America, the top sites in June were PlentyofFish, Singlesnet, eHarmony, Match.com and Yahoo Personals. The number of page views for dating sites are falling, and people are spending less time but revenues are growing. The main revenue model is subscription. Other dating sites are offering premium services used by traditional matchmaking companies. A site in China, Zhenai, charges $200 a year for access to its online site and team of match matchers who work with singles over the phone. That's far less than fees charged by traditional matchmakers, which can cost $5,000 or more a year, said Mark Brooks, who runs a consultancy focusing on social networks and dating sites. FreeDating.co.uk is free, and makes money by showing ads. It's the same model used by PlentyofFish, a relatively simple site that debuted in 2003 and has surged to the top spot in the U.S. and U.K. markets. FULL ARTICLE @ PC WORLD
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Meetic Plunges To Record
BLOOMBERG — July 25 — Meetic, Europe's biggest publicly traded Internet dating service, fell to a record in Paris trading after first-half sales missed analysts' estimates. Meetic lost as much as 1.73 euros, or 11%, to 14.01 euros and traded at 14.55 euros as of 9:22 a.m., the lowest since the shares began trading in October 2005. Revenue rose 18% to 63m euros ($99m), missing the 67.1 million-euro average estimate of two analysts compiled by Bloomberg.
The full article was originally published at Bloomberg, but is no longer available.
Orange Opens Up Mobile Social Net Service
GUARDIAN.CO.UK — July 9 — Orange has launched a major push for mobile social networking in the UK today, introducing a service which aggregates users' accounts across the major social networks. Launched as a trial in France last month under the name MySocialPlace, Orange has now partnered with the biggest social networks – Facebook, MySpace and Bebo – to introduce the service in the UK under the Orange World branded website. UK users can also access the chat service Flirtomatic and the photo-sharing site Pikeo, while Orange customers in France can use the Skyrock community, DailyMotion video site and dating service Meetic. Data from Nielsen Mobile in May showed that 44% of UK mobile phone users have registered with a social networks, and estimated that 1.7% of users, or 812,000 people, had accessed those services from their mobile. Facebook had been accessed by 9% of all mobile web users, MySpace by 3.4% and Bebo by 2.6%. FULL ARTICLE @ GUARDIAN.CO.UK