Friendster and eHarmony announced an exclusive partnership to bring scientific matchmaking to Friendster’s rapidly growing community. As part of the agreement, the companies will jointly launch a co-branded matching service that will combine eHarmony’s patented Compatibility Matching System with Friendster’s 13-million member community to help Friendster members find love and long-term relationships.
Scott Sassa, President and CEO, Friendster:
We have a great deal of synergy with eHarmony. We provide a network for meeting new friends, dates or business partners with shared interests, while eHarmony provides the safest possible environment to explore deeper compatibility and cultivate serious, long-term romantic relationships. Both companies have built leading online services — from the ground up — and we are firmly committed to this partnership to offer our users additional opportunities beyond their circle of friends.
Friendster raised $13 million a year ago and management has been under pressure to figure out how to monetize their members, which skews towards casual daters from the younger crowd. Membership soared as the viral aspect of inviting everyone in your address-book into your circle of friends took off, and now they’re stuck with millions of members who don’t want to pay for anything. On the other hand, eHarmony draws the older, and according to some industry insiders, religious, demographic willing to pay premium prices to meet their mate.
To make this deal work, eHarmony will have to come up with a value proposition that makes sense to a demographic they have no experience targeting. Reduced pricing, re-branding and a new marketing campaign will be required to get the attention of the younger crowd. The details of the exclusive partnership are not known at this time. It will be interesting to see how the integration proceedes.
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