Loïc Le Meur, Seesmic founder, talks about the lack of understanding and cultural differences between American and European entrepreneurs.

Meetic is the #1 dating site in Europe, created by Marc Simoncini (disclosure, I am a board member), it has more than 100 million euros in revenues, present in 20+ countries and Marc has not sold to an American Company and time will tell but I see it staying european and defeating US competitors rather than the opposite.

Meetic coverage on TechCrunch? A completely out of date profile on Crunchbase that talks about the 2005 revenues and measures its success with US audience tools Quantcast and Compete that are entirely irrelevant to european sites (what a joke in fact, compete has Meetic as 30k uniques a month, of course, on US routers…). Marc Simoncini, one of our best european entrepreneurs does not even have his profile on crunch base and there is not a single post about Meetic accross the TechCrunch network except in French.

After reading this I saw that Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish, linked to an hour-long interview with Marc Simoncini.

I pay pretty close attention to what is going on in the European dating market. I have had a few European clients and after doing some market research and talking to people like Marc years ago when he was starting Meetic, I came away impressed with the state of online dating across the pond. The US dating market can learn a lot from studying European counterparts. Are you paying attention?

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News from ODI friends in Germany. Light editing on my part.

Meetic bought 100% of neu.de and 100% of partner.de for a sum of 25 million Euros. For dating executives in Europe, the acquisition was not a surprise, because neu.de made a big “pimp up for aquisition” in the last month. Insiders think meetic+neu.de will have postion 2-3 by turnover but the market leader is still friendscout24. We’re all interested in Match’s reaction, they are now absolutly behind the top-players in germany.

Neu.de currently has 26,000 subscribers and is the third-largest online dating site on the German market, after Friendscout and Meetic.

More details at Meetic(PDF). Thanks to Dirk Pflitsch for the insight and information.

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Vacation was fantastic. 18 relatives in a rustic camp on a beautiful lake in the mountains. Re-entry is proving difficult (or I’m just feeling lazy), we’ll stick with links for this week while I get back into the swing of things.

Meetic vs. Match. France versus Texas. Top two UK sites are free, fighting for leftovers. In Europe as a whole, Match.com is number one, followed by Meetic. Perplexing statement: In America Match.com has used a string of specialist dating sites to cater for divorced people, or fit people, for athletes, or Hindus. That’s the first I’ve heard of this.

Takeaway rumor: Match will offer mobile dating, again?

Eharmony partners with Jajah to offer VOIP-powered conversations. A bit of an ouch for Jangle, which powers Match. EHarmony says it will charge $5.95 per month for unlimited calls among its members.

E-cyrano’s Evan Mark Katz on CBS.

Mobile technology company Mobestar Holdings PLC said it has entered into a partnership with online-dating site operator Bone Fish to deliver a mobile phone interface to its customers’ dating web sites.

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Comscore has released a list of top dating sites, with a focus on the European dating market. Meetic sure was smart to buy DatingDirect before they got too large.

Bob Ivins, managing director for comScore Europe, says that usage of dating sites seems to peak in the summer months in each country; July in the U.K. and U.S. and September in France.

Related posts:

1. Comscore On EU Dating Sites
2. Comscore On EU Dating Sites
3. comScore October European rankings

Comscore has released a list of top dating sites, with a focus on the European dating market. Meetic sure was smart to buy DatingDirect before they got too large.

Bob Ivins, managing director for comScore Europe, says that usage of dating sites seems to peak in the summer months in each country; July in the U.K. and U.S. and September in France.

In other news, the site should load much faster now that my web host has fixed connectivity and database problems.

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Continental Europe’s leading online dating agency Meetic said on Monday it was close to concluding a friendly takeover of British peer, DatingDirect.

Meetic founder and chairman Marc Simoncini said, “Thanks to this acquisition we will have conquered in less than five years the leading position on most of the international markets on which we operate.�

The group, already present in 14 European countries and China and Brazil, planned to expand further in 2007, he added.

Meetic had sales in 2005 of 43 million euros. It is due to publish final 2006 figures on February 13. DatingDirect had sales in 2006 of 16 million euros, Meetic said.

The combined revenue is in the ballpark of what Match spends on advertising every year.

Related posts:

1. Meetic IPO imminent
2. Meetic Paris IPO a success
3. Meetic Q1 2006 Financials

Jessica Mintz at Businessweek shines a spotlight on online dating.

Yahoo, ranked the number one site, declined 14 percent in November compared with the previous year. Match.com had 12 percent fewer visitors in November, year-over-year.
Match made $80 million last quarter, mostly by raising fees.

Spark Networks will start using DoubleClick Inc.’s online advertising services to generate more revenue from its sites.

Match.com Tempts Voyeuristic Users with New Campaign: New site features include Web-based tools to help craft a written profile and create and download a flattering photograph, in addition to a free “voyeur� section where potential users can check out other singles.
Nice to see Match getting on the profile enhancement bandwagon, again.

Via clickZ.

The work essentially relaunches the service and touts Match’s Portrait Toolkit, which allows users to seek advice (from Jay Manuel of America’s Next Top Model) about wardrobe, hair, makeup and other attributes to make their photographs more appealing.

Great details about overall advertising spend at Match ($60 million annually) and eHarmony($90 million) at Adweek.

Match has bowed a multimedia push introducing the tagline “It’s okay to lookâ€? in ads crafted by independent Hanft Unlimited in New York. The $60 million effort (largest ever) puts Match’s Portrait Toolkit to the forefront, which allows users to seek advice from America’s Next Top Model’s Jay Manuel about their image in pursuit of making photographs more appealing – in stark contrast to Match’s recent efforts featuring TV self-help guru Dr. Phil McGraw.

Via Marketing Vox

In other dating news, Meetic and Enlaso have paired up to offer multilingual online dating. In January 2005 Enlaso announced they were chosen to be the localization partner to Match.com.

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