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Home > France News > A Year After its Launch, Meetic has Become the Leading pan European Dating Service and Contributes to the “European Union” !
A Year After its Launch, Meetic has Become the Leading pan-European Dating Service and Contributes to the “European Union” !
Paris, (PR Web) 17 April, 2003 -– Proud of its member base of 1,5 million web users singles, Meetic celebrates its first anniversary. A year after its launch, Meetic has gained a strong foothold in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Great-Britain and Belgium. Meetic has already seduced 1,5 million European singles into joining its member base, which makes the dating site occupies first place on the European market – with a comfortable leading position in France, Italy and Spain (Source Netratings).
The success of Meetic demonstrates that the singles dating market on the internet needed a real leading player able to deliver clearly identifiable services, and that singles needed new services perfectly adapted to their search for a “soul mate”.
Meetic also demonstrates how a quality dating service, with no resemblance whatsoever to the erotic services emerging in the 80s, can turn into a commercially and financially business, with an estimated turnover of 10 million Euros for fiscal year 2003. Finally, Meetic gives a love touch to the European Union. While offering a common pan-European data base, Meetic gives European singles the opportunity to have access to the service in their own language and to get in touch with singles from all other countries. Meetic team itself consists of 5 nationalities!
History of the company: On 24 April, 2002, after a 6-month preparation period, Marc Simoncini, the former founder of the network i(france), (later sold to Vivendi Universal for 192 million Euros), launched a new concept of a multimedia-based service targeting web users singles (and accessible via internet, by telephone, by SMS, and via Wap). The goal of this innovative multimedia-based service was to meet a legitimate and openly-expressed need for contact by singles. Meetic team ambitioned to restore a positive image to on-line dating.
“Our goal was to take a true professional approach to dating services. We wanted the musty dating sector to regain quality. So far, the latter had suffered from a lack of credibility and from a vague border between dating sites and erotic sites. We managed to evangelize this concept” said Marc Simoncini, CEO and founder of Meetic. “Meetic is perceived as high quality and reliable. We released a quality charter made up of 10 points of engagements we commit ourselves to comply with (this implies no false adverts, only real profiles, only decent contents etc). We devote major efforts to guaranteeing high quality service. Actually, the team in charge of the moderation accounts for almost half the headcount. This team has significantly contributed to the undeniable success of Meetic on the European market”.
Meetic successfully managed to export its concept through the openings of sites in Italy, Spain, Germany, Great-Britain and Belgium. “Growth trends are similar in all European countries, which highlights the success of the concept and the adequation of Meetic to the new behaviors towards dating” added Marc Simoncini.
“We want Meetic to project a positive image. Thanks to the quality of our service, we want people to know that the Web can offer a modern way to meet, that singles registered on Meetic are interesting and open-minded people, and finally, that internet dating can produce positive results and turn into long-term relationships” said Christophe Salanon, General Manager.
Meetic is about to achieve this goal; it counts members with various profiles such as solicitors, artists, managers… Every day, Meetic receives dozens of thank-you messages from members who fell in love thanks to the site. Meetic already contributed to build thousands of couples.
Finally, the next birth of the first Meetic baby, as a result of the on-line meeting between a Swiss and a French member, will lay a solid foundation for the construction of the Europe of love!
• About Meetic
Founded at the end of 2001 by Marc Simoncini, former CEO and founder of the network i(france), Meetic has a foothold in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Great-Britain and Belgium. The site was launched in France on 24 April, 2002. Today, Meetic team consists of over 20 people represented by 5 different nationalities.
Taking advantage of an European base of 1 500 000 subscribed users with over 8000 new members daily, Meetic positions itself as the leading European dating site, holding an undeniable leading position in France as well as in Spain and in Italy (Source Netratings – based upon the number of single visitors on a monthly basis).
The success of Meetic relies mainly on the following 3 factors:
1) A BREAKTHROUGH TECHNOLOGY
The development of Meetic required several years of men’s work in order to achieve a state-of-the-art service. Here are some exclusive functionalities developed by Meetic:
- Access from the web, the phone, by SMS, via Wap, and soon via I-mode.
- Meetic created a unique profile-matching software. This software named “meetshake” retrieves from the data base of the registered members the singles you are most likely to like and who are most likely to like you! (double matching). Should the name of the same person be shown in both lists, he or she is very likely to be a “soul mate”.
- The opportunity to contact the selected members by emails and also via instant messaging, which allows real time connection with around 5000 members who are usually connected at the same time.
2) THE QUALITY OF THE ADVERTS DISPLAYED
The quality of the site largely praised by Meetic members can be related to the process of moderation implemented from the very beginning of the site. Indeed, a team of a dozen of people (half the overall headcount of Meetic) validates and verifies a priori the pictures, adverts and messages, this being done in 5 different languages. Therefore, only pre-checked and recent messages (messages posted for over 3 months are deleted) will be shown to Meetic members. Unlike many other sites, Meetic will remove all accounts of members who have not used the services for a period of over 3 months.
Finally, the team in charge of the moderation takes care of any complaint raised by a registered member about a behavior problem and it reserves the right after several warnings to exclude from the site any person who does not conform to the convivial spirit of the site.
3 ) AN EFFECTIVE MARKETING APPROACH
Meetic develops active communication campaigns in all the operating countries. Beside buying spaces, Meetic ,as it already did in the past, will keep on signing partnership agreements with major domestic or European players in order to co-publish dating sites operated by Meetic. Being financially profitable and taking advantage of a successful first fund raising of 2 million Euros, Meetic will increase its marketing efforts further over the second half of 2003.
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