Contributed by: Editor on Friday, May 22 2009 @ 11:13 am
Last modified on
Online Personals Watch posted a short summary of an interview they had with the CEO of Meetic, Marc Simoncini. Among the things they discussed was the recent purchase of Match.com European operations (see Story). Currently Meetic in the UK runs the following dating sites; Meetic, DatingDirect and now Match. From the interview It looks like Meetic will be promoting only one brand per country or market. This means the Meetic dating site will be the only one of the three which is actively promoted in the United Kingdom. Will this affect DatingDirect and its membership numbers? Not really, since both sites look and function identically and they share the same member database. This means, if you sign up for one of the above mentioned dating sites, you really are then signing up for all of them as your profile will be available on all sites. On a related note, I am working on another article which I plan to further dissect how the large Dating Networks like Meetic work and if the end result is good for its members.
Here are a few more details from the eight year agreement that IAC (Match.com) and Meetic have:
- Match has no right to manage the daily business in Europe. It will be managed by Meetic
- There's a reciprocal right of first refusal for acquisition
- And there will be two members on the board of Meetic, from IAC] Another interesting fact in the summary is Match Europe (not sure if this includes the UK) will have their member database merge with Meetic.
For the full interview of Marc Simoncini, check out Online Personals Watch[*1]