Match.com and Europe
The European world changed a lot ´during the last 9 Years – especially in Dating. When mtach.com entered the European market, they stared with English-speaking countries, which include Great Britain, Ireland and most of the Scandinavian Countries, where English is a quite common Language. It was very easy for match.com to compete with Friendfinder, the other company from the USA who did a lot of business in Europe.
Nowadays, this changed dramatically. There is Friendscout24.de on one side as a dating side, and there is parship on the other side as an online-matchmaker in Germany. . But that is not all: Meetic, a company one did not even mention a few years ago, bought a lot of companies in Europe – including neu.de and partner.de and became the second biggest dating company in the world. And there is be2, a company which is very strong in Spanish-speaking countries and in Germany. The growth of be2 must be frightening for match.com, as the Spanish speaking world is a target of both companies.
One example that match.com does not really understand Europe is the new “matching-test“ by the “famous“ Dr. Helen Fisher – a person not well known in Europe, and probably not a person you must know if you try dating sites. So it was useless to inform the press about a test from the USA – in a typical US-style.
Europe has a lot of languages – and not only that – we have a lot of habits as well. When two Hungarians meet, they will kiss each other on their cheeks – real kisses. When you try to kiss a Finnish lady that way she will think you want to rape her after the kiss. That is only one example why tests “made in the USA“ will not match Europe’s needs.
So what Questions should Mark Brooks ask Meetic and Match? Sure not this one:
“What does Marc Simoncini think about Downtoearth and the strategy of Match to go back „from fee to free“ ? “ That’s just the kind of nonsense you should never ask in Europe. And by the way: Match,com does not go “from fee to free“. Their “free“ website “Dwontoearth“ is just a new way of marketing – and gaining new paying customers fro match.com.
Read the press release from match.com, please.
