European Online Dating: An 'Ideal' Web Business

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE / NY TIMES -- Apr 24 -- Mark Simoncini, Meetic CEO, built a company in four years with 17 million profiles in 13 countries speaking nine languages.  The idea behind Meetic emerged in 2000, after Simoncini sold iFrance, iEspana and iDeutschland to Vivendi for 182 million Euros ($224 million).  Meetic raised 100 million Euros from its October IPO.  Annual results released in March showed a doubling of revenue to 43 million Euros in 2005 (net profit 5.7m Euros).  Both Meetic and Match claim to have the largest online dating community; each has roughly 275,000 users on the Continent.  Simoncini argues that the American approach to relationships gets lost in translation overseas.  Match.com has local sites for 31 countries in 18 languages.  Europe's acceptance of such dating services has been accelerated by the proliferation of social networking, according to Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch.  "The Europe online dating scene is still in the growth phase, which is why I am basing myself out of Prague right now," said Brooks.  "American sites have had some trouble moving into other cultures,  which has opened opportunities for Meetic as well as single-country players in Europe."  Meetic last year started Ulteem.  A high-end service costing 99 Euros for a three- month subscription.  Meetic recently bought Lexa (100,000 users), a dating service in the Netherlands and Yeeyoo (4 million users), a youth-oriented Chinese site.  Competition among youth-oriented sites like Superlol is fierce.  FULL ARTICLE @ INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Mark Brooks: Meetic started Ulteem to compete with Parship.de, in similar fashion to Match starting Chemistry.com to compete with eHarmony.