Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Startups directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.
Check out our full suite of dating site consulting services.
Samat Mutra had written a five-part series on Web 3.0 & Gannett.
Gannett (GCI) publishes 85 daily newspapers, nearly 1,000 non-daily publications and 23 television stations in the US. In the UK, Gannett publishes 17 daily newspapers and around 300 non-daily publications. Gannett’s popular newspaper USA TODAY with a circulation of 7.3 million is the US’s largest-selling newspaper. USA WEEKEND is a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 2.3 million. The company’s 23 television channels cover approximately 18% of the US and have a market reach of 20.1 million households. Gannett also operates a number of web sites.
Part 4 mentions online dating industry acquisiton targets. Samat thinks that Gannett should acquire OkCupid, Engage, eHarmony, or Meetic.
Personally I don’t think any of those options are a great fit for Gannett.
OkCupid is in it for the long haul. I can’t see Sam Yagan and his people in Manhattan wanting to be controlled run into the ground by a global publisher. Doesn’t make sense.
Suneet Wadhwa’s Engage.com model, while quite novel addictive, like OkCupid, is too focused for a broad media play. There are other organizations that might be interested in the members-as-matchmakers business model, which is slowly gaining traction.
Remember when SpringStreet powered many of the largest media portal dating sites? Where are they now? Buried in FriendFinder.
Eharmony: There is no way they can sell now. They have made themselves a business dug themselves a hole and they have to focus on execution for the time being. Something tells me that eHarmony is going to be quite a different service in 18 months given the current online dating environment.
Meetic founder Marc Simoncini is in the middle of a battle with Match for dominance in the EU. Would they sell and risk taking their eye off the prize? I don’t think so.
I’m surprised that True.com and Plentyoffish weren’t mentioned. Speaking of True, while I haven’t heard more rumors about the alleged non-payment of advertising, other vendors are getting paid on schedule.
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }