Markus says that Yahoo and Match are working together in Europe. I would not have believed it unless I read this article or saw the UK Yahoo! Personals landing page. There is literally zero references to the deal in Yahoo News and a couple in Google. Judging by all the convoluted traffic sharing that appears to be going on, how badly is Yahoo hurting in EU? They have never really been able to get market share there, reaching consumers in Europe requires quite a different approach from the US one-size-fits-all marketing approach.
One of the only references I found to the search term “match.com yahoo partnership” led me to this December 2000 press release:
Match.com, a leading online dating site, announced today that it has signed an agreement with Yahoo! Inc., a leading global communications, commerce, and media company, to give people a convenient and easy way to share their personal ad listings with both Yahoo! Personals and Match.com community members.
Back then Cindy Hennesy was president of Match, and Mark Hull was Sr. Producer of Yahoo! Personals.
According to the June 15, 2006 news:
Yahoo! has struck its first UK partnership with a dating provider, to launch co-branded dating channels in the UK and Germany with global dating giant Match.com. Users of Yahoo! Personals will be offered the chance to access the Match network of services, creating the biggest online dating service in the UK.
Latest Nielsen/NetRatings figures show that Match is the largest dating provider in the UK, with over 1.6m unique users in the quarter to April 2006. In the same period Yahoo! Personals clocked up 915,000 unique users in the UK, taking second place.
Yahoo Personals UK Provided by match.com. Talk about getting your peanut butter in my chocolate. No mention of Meetic anywhere, either.
What is going on with Match’s EU research firm?
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