Dating Services

On February 19th, Match.com announced that Greg Blatt had been named Chief Executive Officer of Match.com. His previous job title was InterActiveCorp’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel. As the new CEO, Mr. Blatt:

... will have primary responsibility for the strategic and operational leadership of IAC’s personals businesses, which includes the global operations for its flagship brand, Match.com, as well as Chemistry.com and DowntoEarth.com.

Greg Blatt will be taking over for Thomas Enraght-Moony who has held the CEO position since April 2007. Thomas first started working at Match.com in 2004 which was the same year Greg started at IAC in senior management.

For more information on the dating site, read our Match.com review

Since InterActiveCorp announced the sale of Match.com European Operations on Thursday, February 19th, by Friday IAC's stock price ended the day up 4 percent or 57 cents to $15.05. Match.com European operations are estimated to be valued at $110 million according to analyst Jeetil Patel. Match.com European operations also earned about $12 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 which is 13 percent of Match.com's total revenue.

For a more complete picture, read the Forbes article.

This is a story from a couple of weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle. In December MyShape.com partnered with eHarmony. MyShape provides customers with a selection of clothes based on your bodies key measurements, along with your fashion tastes. Business has grown quickly for MyShape and since last year their customer base grew 5 times. Currently they have over 500,000 customers and in September repeat business was 50 percent. With these statistics in mind, eHarmony decided to add a date planner section to their eHarmony Advice website. MyShape's date planner role is to help people figure out what to wear on dates.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our eHarmony review.

The Chicago Tribune has a story about dating when you have children. In it they discuss how the stigma has changed about single parents and dating. The author also mentions how online dating has started to change the way single parents can find dates and how it has become more socially acceptable to use. A number of interesting statistics were included:

Part of the story is the numbers. There are 12 million single parents living with children younger than 18 in the U.S., according to 2007 Census Bureau figures, a whopping 200 percent increase over 1970, when there were 4 million.

Another surprising number mentioned was, Match.com reported that 47% of its members in the United States have children.

I wonder if I should add Match.com to our Single Parent Dating Site Reviews Category?

In a really surprising move (at least IMO), Match.com has sold 100 percent of their European operations to Meetic for approximately a 27 percent share in the company. Match.com will also get a 5 million euro note plus some additional terms which has not been released. Over the last several years it has been a battle between these two companies for the European online dating market. It looks like instead of trying to beat their competition, Meetic decided to buy them out and give Match an offer that was too good to refuse. Of course, with a 27 percent share in Meetic, Match.com will still have influence in online dating in Europe.

While Match.com tends to make more partnerships with companies to increase their market share internationally, Meetic tends to buy out their competition. Currently Meetic manages ten services, including Meetic, Meetic Mobile, Meetic Affinity, Lexa, ParPerfeito, DatingDirect, Neu.de, Cleargay, Partner.de and Lexamore. According to TechCrunch:

... Meetic had revenues of 153,7 million euros (close to $195 million) in 2008 and currently counts over 696,400 registered users. The company is public and listed on NYSE Euronext, currently valued at nearly 228 million euro ($289 million).

Meanwhile because of this deal, Match.com will go from having operations in 40 countries down to 24. The countries with operations now include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, Venezuela and Vietnam. As a comparison to the Meetic numbers in the above paragraph, in 2008 Match.com had revenues of $368.8 million with 1,347,300 paid members in Q4, 2008. It will be interesting to see the number of paid members reported once the European operations have been removed. Currently 13 percent of revenues come from Europe.

The partnership between Meetic and Match.com will take several months to complete. At this moment it is unknown how this may affect members at Match.com European dating sites.

On a last note, I have to say that I am still surprised by this move from Match.com. We just did a story earlier this month which showed that Match.com UK memberships rose 26 percent in January.

Here is the gender ratios of members at ChristianCafe.com grouped by age range for January 2009:

Age Range	% of Males	% of Females
18 - 20	50.7%	49.3%
21 - 30	42.8%	57.2%
31 - 40	40.8%	59.2%
41 - 50	37.5%	62.5%
51 - 60	33%	67%
61+	31.9%	68.1%
Avg. Overall	39.9%	60.1%

Source: Online Personals Watch

Except for members who are 18 - 20 years old, females make up the greater percentage of members at Christian Cafe. As you move up in each age range segment, females gain a few more percentage points over the previous segment. By the 51 - 60 age rage there are twice as many females as males. Does this mean older males are less likely to consider Religion as an important factor in dating or do just more older females join dating sites in general compared to men of similar age?

For more information on this award winning dating site, read our ChristianCafe.com review.