home | singles and dating news | personals news | archive | 19th Nov | Love is in the air at Time Warner’s America Online division
Love is in the air at Time Warner’s America Online division
The online giant’s AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) service has begun plastering advertisements for a new online personals service called Love.com. Details remain murky, but an AOL spokesman said Love.com will use the AIM community as a way for subscribers to get to know each other.
“LOVE.COM WILL marry the benefits of real-time communications together with AIM’s active user base to deliver a casual, fun and comfortable place to meet and get to know new people online,” AOL representative Derrick Mains said in an e-mail, adding that the site will preview the service in the “next few weeks.”
Mains declined to elaborate on how AIM will be used
to connect online daters. The Love.com Web site offers scant
One source familiar with the project said online personals service Spring
Street Networks will build the service’s infrastructure while AIM
collects profiles created by users. Mains declined to comment on the partnership.
Spring Street CEO Louis Kanganis declined to confirm or deny any partnership
with AOL.
Online personals have become popular among consumers
and a burgeoning business for Internet companies. InterActiveCorp subsidiary
Match.com, considered the online personals leader, reported $4.4 million
in revenue last quarter, up 18 percent from the previous year. Yahoo,
also considered one of the personals giants, does not break out revenue
but highlights personals as a growth area for its subscription-based income.
Free services such as start-up Friendster have amassed millions of users
based on linking online social circles together. InterActiveCorp’s
Evite last week launched a competitive product as part of its online event
planning service.
This is not the first time AOL has entered into the online personals market.
The online giant used to run an online personals service called Love@AOL,
but
Full credit for story goes to: MSNBC