Love is in the Sky.com

DatingDirect.com, the UK‘s largest dating service and Sky.com have announced a
new partnership and launched Sky Dating. The agreement is the first major  partnership announcement following the acquisition of DatingDirect.com in January by Europe‘s largest dating service, meetic.

Sky.com users can now click through to a co-branded DatingDirect.com homepage where they will have access to over five million members registered with DatingDirect.com in the UK, as well as further million members registered on other meetic websites worldwide. Following the new migration of the platform in June, members will now be able to tell when other members are online, access features such as instant messaging, video calling and video intros, as well as create their own compatibility tests and personal photo albums.
“As the European market leader following our acquisition by meetic earlier in the year, we are now creating partnerships with other leading brands across all platforms,” said Alistair Shrimpton, UK Managing Director of DatingDirect.
“Following our partnership with Vodafone UK last month to provide our dating service via mobile phone, we are delighted to have now partnered with Sky.com, further illustrating the quality of service, security and safety we provide.”

The partnership is part of Sky’s strategy to broaden the range of content on Sky.com.

“With the acquisition of DatingDirect at the start of the year and the setting up of a partnership with Vodafone last month, this new agreement with Sky.com will again enable us to significantly strengthen our leadership positioning on the UK online dating market. Indeed, our presence on this market is a key factor regarding our strategy of reinforcing our European leadership”, concludes Philippe Chainieux, MEETIC’s Managing Director.
MEETIC, the European online dating leader (www.meetic-corp.com) manages eight products (Meetic, Meetic Mobile, Ulteem, Superlov, Lexa, ParPerfeito, DatingDirect and eFriendsNet) and markets two highly complementary economic models in the  dating market, one for use on the internet, the other for mobile phones.

MEETIC is established in 15 European countries, China and Brazil, and available in 12 languages. From inception the group has pursued a clear leadership strategy  focusing on quality, innovative marketing and perfect technological expertise. MEETIC works hard to optimise service quality and to satisfy every possible expectation of its European subscribers. In 2006, MEETIC posted sales of €78.8m and net income of €10.1m.