General News

Match.com and Meetic have created an equal partnership together in Latin America where the two dating companies will be combining their resources. According to the CEO of Match.com, Greg Blatt:

By combining ParPerfeito's strength in the Brazilian market with Match.com's presence in the rest of Latin America, we believe we're best positioned to drive that expansion and create an asset of meaningful value. We're confident from our work together in Europe that further partnering with Meetic will be a productive experience.

The online dating market is less mature in Latin American than the larger North America and Europe markets. By making a combined push now both companies feel that they will come out ahead in this merging dating market. Match.com will control the new entity's operations and will pay Meetic $3 million in cash at the closing (March 15, 2010). I am not sure what Meetic's responsibility in all this is but, I will assume that they must be required to push traffic to the new venture. At the beginning of the fourth year of operations Match.com has reserved the right to buy Meetic's share of the entity at fair market value.

When we receive more news about this new entity (like the name of the website) we will be sure to pass it on.

For more on the story read the press release.

To help celebrate Valentine's Day, eHarmony in the UK is planning on have a Free Communication Weekend starting Friday February 12th, 2010 to Monday February 15th, 2010. New and existing members will be able to review their matches and then use the guide communication process and email others for free. During a FCW promotion FastTracking of the communication process and viewing your matches' photos is only available to paid members.

The last free communication weekend for eHarmony UK was held in January (see Story). I have gotten word that eHarmony here in North America will also be offering free communication this weekend as well. Expect a post soon about this news as soon as I have confirmed the exact dates. For more news on eHarmony's FCW in the US read this Story.

To find out more about this popular dating service for singles interested in long term relationships, read our review of eHarmony.

Match.com currently offers their dating application on the iPhone (see Story), the Palm Pixi (see Story) and the Palm Pre (see Story), or so I thought! While researching a story about the Google Android OS I see Match.com now offer a dating application for the Blackberry phone. As with the other Match.com smart phone applications you can browse for singles, send and receive emails and wink at members. Blackberry App users can also upload photos and edit their profiles. These smart phone apps for the most part allow you to do everything you can on the website. As far as I can tell the Blackberry Match.com dating application was released sometime late January, 2010.

We also just got news that Match.com is currently working on a dating application for Android phones. Once this app is completed in the coming months Match.com will have almost 90 percent of the world's smart phones covered with their dating application. When you combine this with their current matchMobile service (which has been around for a number of years now for regular cell phones) you can tell Match.com has taken a special interest in mobile dating.

For more on the story read Forbes. To find out more about mobile dating applications on Match.com, read out review of Match.com.

It's Just Lunch recently shared their survey about dating plans and dating etiquette for Super Bowl Sunday. Here is what the matchmaking service found out:

• 58% of singles say that they would bring a first date to a Super Bowl party.
• 74% of men and 82% of women stated that they will root against their date's team at the Super Bowl party.
• 65% of men and 72% of women will not stick to their diets during the game.
• Don't talk about anything except football. 52% of singles would try to turn the conversation back to football and if they persisted in non football talk, then 31% of singles would never ask them out again to a sporting event.
• If you had a ticket to the Super Bowl, 46% of men would prefer to bring a date rather than their best friend to the actual game. For women it was 37%.

For the full story read the press release and for more information on the matchmaking service which sponsored the survey, read our review of It's Just Lunch.

Bad news for FriendFinder Networks, they cancelled their IPO after delaying it earlier this week (see Story). They cited market conditions as the reason for not proceeding with the initial public offering. Once market conditions do approve though, FriendFinder Networks plans on reconsidering their position.

I am not surprised at the IPO being cancelled. The comments I read on multiple blogs about the IPO over the last couple of months have not been favorable. Some deal with the fact that most of FriendFinders income comes from adult sources while the rest point out, who wants to invest money in a company that will just use it to pay down their debt. The funny thing is most of FriendFinder's debt is due to the original purchase of the company from the founder Dr Conru, by Penthouse, and the resulting interest being charged. It is not due to the network of dating sites being profitable (which they are).

According to KESQ.com, of the 8 IPOs that have debuted this year, over half are trading below their offering price, with only 3 that are above. With this type of market investors are not willing to take any chances. Most are waiting for the global market to improve.

For more on this story, read the press release.

We just talked about Avid Life Media's IPO (see Story) and it looks like the $60 million initial offering will be delayed on the advice of GMP Capital. The initial response to woo investors was met with a poor reception, even though Avid Life has solid financial records. Sources are also citing market conditions as another reason for the delay.

Avid Life Media is not alone in delaying their IPO. Another similar company, The FriendFinder Networks, did the same thing this week (see Story), and for similar reasons.

For more on the story, read Reuters.