Matchmaker, the original online dating site, has been purchased by Date.com. Astute followers of the online dating market know of Matchmaker’s storied history, from it’s BBS origins in the early 1980 to the February 2005 sale of Lycos, parent of Matchmaker, to Daum, at which time Matchmaker was put on the block for $2 Million. Other noteworthy milestones include Lyco’s acquisition of Matchmaker for $44 million in 2000, as well as the $170 million asking price in 2004. Last I heard of Lycos and Matchmaker was it’s launch of a meta-dating search engine in February 2005. the dating industry did not take to the Lycos Dating Search concept. The site has the same 4 partners it launched with last year.
Perhaps the acquisition of Matchmaker by Date.com company Avalance LLC, will spark new life into the beleaguered dating service.
More Matchmaker history.
Meir Strahlberg, President of Avalanche LLC and CEO of Date.com:
Through this acquisition, we are looking forward to breathing new life into the site and reinvigorating the brand. By wedding Date.com and Matchmaker.com with one shared technical platform, and a dual marketing strategy, we are excited about ushering Matchmaker back to the pinnacle of the online dating industry.
Matchmaker will continue to operate as an online dating website and, through a licensing arrangement, will share a technical platform with Date.com. Matchmaker will focus on marriage-minded singles, whereas Date.com will continue to cater to casual daters.
Meir tells me he is very pleased with the acquisition and resulting transition and that it was a long time in the works. The transitioning of accounts and profiles has gone pretty smoothly so far, something that could not be said of the SpringStreet move to FastCupid.com.
Matchmaker has successfully been migrated from the old servers and shares the Date.com technical platform. This is similar to recent homogenization of the majority of Spark Networks sites.
Meir says that every community was on a different server, 100+ in all. I know that the underpinnings of Matchmaker were old and clunky. that, on top of 100+ servers, must have been a real maintenance headache.
Upon finalizing the transaction, we quickly Re-launched the site with a similar look and feel to Date.com. Feedback was immediate and extremely positive, and we’re already anticipating significant growth over the next year,” said Meir Strahlberg, President of Avalanche LLC and CEO of Date.com. “In February alone, we’ve seen 8.45% growth over January, and we expect annual growth to be significantly higher than the industries growth rate.
Matchmaker’s appeal to some was the “gated communities” concept, based on geographic area, sexual preference and age. This, and the many essay-style questions is featured, made the service seem less like a date-warehouse and more like a group of niche sites. Detractors vocally pointed out that for example, people in the US-Northeast could not communicate with people outside their area.
The demographics of both companies were similar enough that it made sense to enable Matchmaker members to meet Date.com members and vice versa.
Over time, you can expect to see Matchmaker evolving into an entity that can stand alone. However, for the immediate future, Matchmaker will share a technical platform with Date.com. Eventually, Matchmaker will be positioned toward the serious, marriage minded consumer. Date.com, meanwhile will continue to focus on all relationships, whether serious, casual, marriage minded, or just friends.
The matchmaker acquisition essentially doubles the size of profiles accessible by both Date.com and Matchmaker members.
Technorati Tags: daum, lycos, matchmaker
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Tribe.net, Date.com, Matchmaker.com and others can not be “seen” from Argentina since some months ago.
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Do you mean they are blocked from your ISP or from search engine or simply can’t be reached when you type url into browser?
Funny, Matchmaker was also the site that inspired me to get into the industry:-)
I was on their christian.matchmaker site back in 1998 and met a number of really nice women there. It convinced me that there was a market for single Christians online, which was not being served fully, esp. by christian.matchmaker:-)
My first goal was to beat them at their own game. It didn’t take long – whoever was running that company let it die slowly and never exploited the market the way we did.
We just celebrated our 7th anniverary going “live” (Feb 26, 1999).
Here’s to the next 7!
Matchmaker was the site that inspired me to get into the industry. A shame that it was run into the ground. It could of been the Match.com of today if they stayed the course.
Meir, good luck with your new acquisition!
P.S. Go back to the old-school matchmaker logo and color scheme :)
As the founder of christian.matchmaker.com & a co-founder of matchmaker.com it saddens me to have seen it get passed around ‘post-Lycos’ – its original format was unique and its developer a genius! I wish Date.com would let the intial developer have free reign again!