REUTERS — Jan 14 – PlanetOut, which serves the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, is evaluating strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of the company. PlanetOut, which has been reporting a loss for the last seven quarters, said it will no longer provide quarterly or annual earnings outlook and will not hold quarterly earnings calls. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Category: Outlets – Reuters
Online Dating Brings Hope And Frustration
REUTERS — Dec 28 — Online dating renews women’s hope in love and sex, but can be just as disappointing as the real-life dating scene, according to new Canadian research. Complaints include a preponderance of men who are looking for much younger women, as well as men who misrepresent their looks, interests or marital status, or who show little interest in moving the relationship offline. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Match.com Prays For Love At Japan Shrine
REUTERS — Dec 6 – Match.com turned to ritual prayers and a Shinto priest to help boost its business in Japan. CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony visited the Shiba Dai-Jingu shrine in Tokyo to take part in a private ceremony that included the offering of a sacred sakaki tree branch. Match launched in Japan in 2004 and has now 840,000 members. "It's important to learn about the countries where we operate, to be successful." Enraght-Moony said after the ceremony. Over 2/3 of Japanese in 1935 had arranged marriages. Today 90% of Japanese find their marriage partners on their own.
The full article was originally published at Reuters, but is no longer available.
Meetic Buys Neu
REUTERS — Nov 29 — Meetic buyS Germany's Neu.de matchmaking site with 26,000 subscribers for 25 million euros ($36.83 million) in cash. Meetic would merge its existing Meetic.de site under Neu.de. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Jajah And Jangl Partnership
REUTERS — Nov 15 — Jajah and Jangl have formed a partnership. Both companies provide alternative Internet based alternatives to traditional phone calls. They also offer calling services for social networking sites that allow users to call each other without revealing their mobile or home phone numbers. Jajah's strength is discount long-distance. Jangl has focused on offering phone services through Match.com, Facebook, and FriendFinder. The partnership would help them gain a competitive edge against rivals such as Jaxtr, said Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Mark Brooks: A potent combination. Anonymous calling + click-to-call with cheap long distance.
Meetic Gets AOL Distribution Deal
REUTERS — Oct 29 — Meetic has signed a distribution agreement with AOL to become the exclusive dating channel on several European portals of Time Warner Inc’s Internet division. The agreement extends a similar partnership signed in February between Meetic and AOL France. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
Mark Brooks: A great vote of confidence for Meetic. MSN next?
Find Your True Love Through A Bad Date
REUTERS UK — Sep 26 — BadOnlineDates, set to launch next month, hopes to connect members via negative dating stories. The site, “a combination of MySpace and Match.com”, will allow users to enter the standard dating data, as well as photo albums, blogs, and nightmare date stories. Keyword matching finds similar themes in the members' profiles and bad date experiences to make a match. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS UK
German Politician Advocates Seven-Year Marriages
REUTERS — Sep 21 — Gabriele Pauli, one of the politicians running for the leadership of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), has shocked the Catholic state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years. After 7 years, the party rebel who stands almost no chance of winning next week argued that marriages be mutually extended or automatically dissolved.
Nokia Betting On Mobile Social Communities
REUTERS — Sep 5 — Juniper Research expects annual revenues from wireless social networking to increase from $260 million to $3.9 billion by 2012. Top cellphone maker Nokia is betting on that. In July, the company bought Twango – a service that allows users to share photos, videos, and audio files – and now plans to build this social networking technology into the underlying layer of its S60 software.
Mark Brooks: As carriers suffer from commoditization, the phone and software companies will be in stronger positions. Apple (iphone), RIM (blackberry) and Nokia (N95), etc, need to strengthen their mobile SNS and dating, along with gaming and content (music and videos) offerings and build new revenue streams that the carriers can take a cut of. A small cut preferably, but that depends on just how fast the phone and software companies move.
Match.com Expands Mobile Online Dating Service
REUTERS — July 30 — Online dating service Match.com is launching a new application for cell phones. MatchMobile will first be made available in the United States, UK and Canadian markets, with plans to extend the service to nine more countries by the end of the year. For an extra fee of about $5 per month, MatchMobile subscribers can receive and answer e-mails from suitors on their mobile phones.