Match

Back in February of 2009 Match.com sold its European Operations to Meetic. Well according to Informatica, a independent provider of data integration software, they completed the post-merger integration of Match.com in Europe with Meetic 40 percent faster than by using a home grown solution. It took only 4 months on the Informatica Platform.

The data, which required integration from Match.com in Texas (Orcale Databases) to Meetic in Paris, included millions of profiles from 15 countries. Photos from the profiles as well as all messages were migrated over as well. All this integration was done seamlessly and without interruption to any online services.

To find out about the dating site, you can read our Match.com UK review.

Match.com in Australia (Match.com.au) has been in operation for 15 years now. They launched back in April of 2002 after buying out Soulmates Technology. To celebrate this milestone they have released some Aussie statistics about Match.com:

• More than 80,000 profiles are viewed every day.
• Everyday 16,000 winks and messages are sent. This equals to 6.5 million communications a year.
• 67% of Australian singles have never been married.
• 59% of members are looking for a non-smoker.
• 90% of members are okay with a partner who drinks on occasion.
• Gold Coast members are 45% more likely to have children than those members from Sydney.
• 64% of men are looking for a partner who has some tertiary education. With women it is 71%.

To find out more information about this dating site, read our review of Match.com.

Glamour Magazine has partnered with the online dating site Match.com. This is a good move for both companies. Of the roughly 3 million women who visit Glamour.com, 70 percent are single or divorced. This is obviously an ideal market for Match.com to offer their service too. Plus a large percentage of Glamour readers are between the ages of 20 and 50. This age range is the prime users of online dating sites. From this 2 year deal Glamour will receive a percentage of the revenue from people who sign up for this Match.com extended dating service called Glamour Matchmaker.

When singles log into Glamour Matchmaker they will find specially chosen profiles which are organized by personality types. These personality types will be created by the staff at Glamour and will include names like "Adventure Seeker" and "Foxy Bohemian".

Glamour Matchmaker is expected to go online sometime this month.

For more on the story, read The Wall Street Journal. To find out more about the dating site which partnered with Glamour, check out our Match.com review.

Match.com's free dating site DownToEarth.com was launched in early 2009 but by October of the same year the dating site was taken down and replaced by Stir.com. Stir was aimed more at the college age crowd as it allowed singles to more easily find each other and meet up at bars (think a social networking website for the club scene). Well, as of the middle of this month both Stir.com and DownToEarth.com redirect to SinglesNet.com, which Match.com just recently acuired.

For the moment It seems Match.com has stopped with experimenting with new dating and social networking type sites and instead has opted with acquiring other dating sites and creating partnerships (like the latest one with Yahoo! Personals).

I knew change was a foot on Yahoo! Personals.

I was visiting the site this morning and all was normal and then just a couple of hours ago we were sent official word that Match.com is now the exclusive online dating site for Yahoo in North America. We had hints of this possibility back in May of 2009 when the CEO of IAC (owners of Match.com), Barry Diller mentioned that they were in talks with Yahoo about acquiring their personals service. Yahoo and Match are also no strangers to partnerships. The dating sites for Yahoo UK, Germany, Taiwan are all partnerships with Match.com in Europe. Granted the Match.com European Operations were bought by Meetic last year but these partnership deals were in place long before the sale. It also looks like the partnership with eHarmony that Yahoo Australia had is over with Match.com taking the helm.

For current members of Yahoo! Personals, you will be experiencing a transition period. You have 3 options to choose from:

Match.com released a interesting study on April 20, 2010 about America's dating behavior. Back in 2009 and early 2010 Match.com commissioned Chadwick Martin Bailey to conduct 3 studies. With these studies, 3 surveys were created to collect data:

• Marriage Survey - A survey of people who were married within the last 5 years.
• Online Dating Survey - A survey of people who have used dating sites within the last 5 years.
• General Survey - A survey of people who are single or are in a new relationship.

Over 11,000 people participated in these surveys. All are 18 years or older and live in the United States. The General Survey's participants also had income of at least $30,000.

From these surveys Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) concluded several interesting findings.

Marriage Survey - 7000 participants

• 38 percent of couples who married in the last year met through work or school.
• 27 percent of couples who married in the last year met through a friend or family.
• In the last 3 years (and year), 17 percent of couples who married met on a online dating site. (1 in 6 couples)
• Bars, Clubs and other social events counted for only 8 percent of marriages.
• Churches counted for 4 percent of marriages.

Online Dating Survey - 3000 participants

• Match.com counted for 30 percent of all marriages of people who met on dating sites. The 2nd ranked competitor was at 16%, followed by the 3rd at 15 percent.
• 35 percent of Match.com members had a relationship of 3 months or more. The 2nd ranked competitor was at 17%, followed by the 3rd at 16 percent.

General Survey - 2525 participants

• 20 percent of single people have dated someone they met on a dating site. (1 in 5 singles)
• 20 percent of people in a new committed relationship met on a dating site. (1 in 5 singles)

Click here (pdf file) for the full Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey study. To find out more about this dating site, read our Match.com review.