Itâ€™s a date! Meetic and Orange boost their cooperation

Following a number of years of cooperation, meetic – the European leader in online dating â€“ and Orange are strengthening their partnership in various domains:

Internet: meetic has reaffirmed its presence as the exclusive dating chain for the orange.fr and voila.fr portals. Within the framework of this new agreement, the new 2.0 version of meetic will be deployed on Orange‘s portals, thus enriching the services provided to Orange and Voila’s users and making them more interactive, customised and fun via messenger, chats, videos etc. Furthermore, Ulteem, meetic’s new matchmaking site (based on matches between similar psychological profiles) will become the orange.fr portal’s exclusive matchmaking chain.

Mobile: Orange and meetic are extending their partnership on the Orange World portal, on which meetic operates the dating section on Orange‘s behalf.

Advertising: Orange Advertising will be the meetic.fr site’s sole advertising representative.

The aim of this new global agreement is on the one hand to create substantial synergies by creating more bridges between the Internet and Mobile segments and on the other hand to enrich Orange Advertising’s ad offer by contributing meetic.fr’s significant (notably vis-Ã -vis the female target) and qualified audience. Orange publicite, Orange‘s leading internet media sales company, has 15% market share and some 15 sites in its portfolio.
“Meetic brings the guarantee of a recognised and legitimate brand in the dating sector, which will enable Orange.fr to offer its Web users a referring dating chain. Secondly, the confidence meetic has put in us through its choice of Orange Advertising as its ad representative that thus strengthens our leadership position on the Internet ad market. And, lastly, this cooperation will immediately lead to a significant broadening of the Orange Advertising targeted offer. This represents a potential of close to 2 mln unique visitors, detailed by age, title, socioeconomic group”, says Luc Tran Thang, Orange Portals Director.

Orange is the flagship brand of France Telecom, one of the world’s main telcos with over 161 million customers across five continents.
In June 2006, within the framework of France Telecom’s integrated operator strategy (the NExT programme), which aims to offer simple and converging products, Orange became the umbrella brand for mobile, Internet and TV in France, the U.K., the Netherlands and Spain, thus reinforcing its position as the second-largest Mobile Telephony and Internet services provider in Europe.

Moreover, Orange Business Services, present in 220 countries and territories, incorporates all of France Telecom’s communication solutions and services aimed at companies.
France Telecom is listed on the Eurolist by Euronext Paris market and on the New York Stock Exchange. At 31^st March 2007, France Telecom had over 100 mln mobile phone clients, almost 12.5 mln Internet clients and 48.5 mln fixed-phone clients.
In 2006, France Telecom recorded consolidated turnover of 51.7 billion euros.
Five years after MEETIC’s launch, the online dating company (www.meetic-corp.com) manages eight services (Meetic, Meetic Mobile, Ulteem, Superlol, Lexa, ParPerfeito, Dating Direct and eFriendsNet) and markets two highly complementary economic models in the dating market, one based on internet use, the other on mobile phones. MEETIC has become the European leader in online dating with some 500,000 subscribers in January 2007 and 10.2 mln single visitors in Europe including
DatingDirect. MEETIC is established in 15 European countries, China and Brazil, and available in 12 languages. In 2006, MEETIC posted sales of â‚¬78.8 million and net profit of â‚¬10.1 million.