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.
Related Posts
Gannett and eHarmony Launch Localized ServiceMeetic Acquires Lexa.nl
Meetic plans 3Q IPO
Match.com Expands International Partnerships
Meetic buys German Dating Sites
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I’ve been on quite a few dating sites in the past year including match and yahoo, but have met my beshert (partner) on koshercupid.com I was sceptical about internet dating at first, but that seems to have built quite a brand name from what I’ve heard tailored to Jewish people, I’m happy anyway!:)
I’ve been on quite a few dating sites in the past year including match and yahoo, but have met my beshert (partner) on koshercupid.com I was sceptical about internet dating at first, but that seems to have built quite a brand name from what I’ve heard tailored to Jewish people, I’m happy anyway!:)
I’ve been on quite a few dating sites in the past year including match and yahoo, but have met my beshert (partner) on kosher cupid (koshercupid.com) I was sceptical about internet dating at first, but that seems to have built quite a brand name from what I’ve heard tailored to Jewish people, I’m happy anyway!:)