DatingDirect has other deals with sites including iVillage.co.uk and ITV.com, and has more than 2m members in the UK. It is ranked by Nielsen//NetRatings as the largest personals site in the UK in terms of monthly unique users, ahead of Meetic.co.uk and uDate.com.
Research compiled by Jupiter shows that the Western European dating markets will be worth €117m (£80m) by 2007. The UK online dating market is particularly showing rapid growth, currently worth £11.7m and is estimated by Jupiter to grow to £47m by 2008.
DatingDirect was founded in 1999. As well as hosting white-label dating services for other websites and its own branded website, it runs offline dating events, which it sees as a way of raising brand awareness.
All correspondence between members is carried out using DatingDirect.com's anonymous messaging system ensuring the member's personal details such as their real email address is always kept confidential, and profiles and photographs are vetted to ensure that only genuine profiles go live on the site.
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