Quotes of the Day

Armelle met her Prince Charming on Meetic, Europe's largest dating site, shortly after it opened for business in France in 2001. She divorced him in 2006. She and the prince — his name is Eric — are still good friends, and they're both hanging out on Meetic again (we've used their real names to protect their online identities). "I'm always looking for Prince Charming, and I've already met several," says the slight, dark-eyed, 38-year-old Parisienne, who works in production for one of the big fashion houses. "Some of them become friends, some of them become lovers. None of them will ever become my husband; I'm no longer looking for that."

Barry Diller's Match.com is the Internet dating world's two-ton Cupid, dominating online romance in the U.S., where two-thirds of its 1.3 million paid subscribers live. Match is all business, and that business is landing a mate. On Meetic, the cyber chestnuts are always in blossom, and love is as much a game as a goal. In 2005, a French cad named Lewis Wingrove published a blog and later a book graphically cataloguing a year's worth of Meetic conquests (52 dates, 27 of which finished "sous la couette" — under the quilt.) Meetic founder and chief executive Marc Simoncini went ballistic and briefly considered suing. The young women in Meetic's modest office in Boulogne-Billancourt found the whole thing amusing and told Simoncini to lighten up. He now concedes that it's some of the best publicity Meetic has ever had.

Meetic has clearly scratched an itch. More than 30 million people now have a free personal profile on one of its sites. Since the firm hit the dating scene in 2002, it's picked up around 650,000 paying subscribers in 15 countries, and is the leading dating site in almost all of them. Last year, Meetic earned $36 million before taxes on revenues of $166 million — almost exclusively from subscription fees that range from $47 to $85 a month.

"When I looked around at the other dating sites, they were all so boring and sad," says Simoncini, 45, a suave, slightly somber Frenchman. "I said, my site's going to be much more fun. People aren't going there to get married; they're going to meet someone. Everyone hopes it's The One, but if it isn't, that's maybe not so bad. Meetic is like a bar — the biggest bar in the world."

Not that Simoncini was looking to become a bartender to the world. He had already founded an Internet portal called iFrance, and made a killing when he sold it to Vivendi for $200 million in 2000 amid a mad spending spree by then CEO Jean-Marie Messier.

A year working for Vivendi convinced Simoncini he wasn't cut out for corporate life. At dinner with his three closest friends — all recently divorced — the light dawned. "They all complained they couldn't meet anybody — they worked too hard, they didn't go out anymore, they were too old," recalls Simoncini, who met his wife the old-fashioned way: at a nightclub. "I said to myself, I don't know that many people, so if I know three people like this, there must be millions."

Growth was exponential, and Simoncini expanded rapidly beyond France, first conquering the Latin-lover markets of Spain and Italy, then turning toward the colder climes of northern Europe.

He learned a lot. It turns out that in love, everybody's the same, but different. For instance, Meetic's advertising theme, "The rules of the game have changed," worked brilliantly in France, but bombed in Italy, where courtship rituals remain more traditional. Speak to an Italian man about women making the first move, says Simoncini, and he "doesn't even understand what you're talking about."

In Denmark, there were howls of protest that women got to use the site gratis — and it was women who were doing the howling. "They said, 'What exactly are you getting at, making it free for women!' " says Simoncini with an I-don't-get-it shrug. "We said, Excuse us — we'll bill you." Since last year, women pay everywhere.

England? Who knows. For one thing, it's the only country where historically more women than men pay for dating sites. "England's a mystery," says Simoncini. "We're not sure if they're American or European."

The marketplace may clarify that mystery as Meetic and Match do battle for the English heart. Match.com does a big chunk of its European business in the U.K., where it's in a dead heat with Meetic. Last year, Meetic acquired a large British site called Dating Direct as part of a new frontal assault on its chief competitor. Still, Match CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony claims he's not threatened by his rival in love: "Match is about people looking for an enduring relationship. It's a more poetic, romantic sensibility. Meetic is a lot more casual. It's a different proposition." Simoncini says bring it on: "Now we'll see who the English really are!"

Meetic may be flighty in matters of the heart, but it's serious when it comes to business. Nielsen Media Research rated it the U.K.'s biggest Web advertiser in the first four months of 2008. Elsewhere, Meetic was similarly aggressive, buying a big dating site in Germany last year, as well as sites in the Netherlands, China and Brazil.

Simoncini is also moving beyond the dating game by launching two new media portals. VIOO is a kind of online women's magazine, while PEEXME is a social networking site for adolescents. The idea is to use Meetic to cross-promote the new sites, hopefully snaring some of the heavy traffic that flows through it toll-free.

The reasoning is sound and Meetic has committed at least $15.5 million to strategic endeavors like these. But while the French love a lover, they're less enamored of entrepreneurs. Meetic's stock price has halved since last January, slashing its market value to $280 million — quite a haircut for Simoncini, who owns nearly a third of the company. "It's far and away the worst side of France — they're always telling you that whatever you do, it won't work," he says. "I'm sad for everyone who's lost money, but I'm not going to let it stop me from doing what I think is right — after all, it's my money in there too."

It's hard to figure out why the Bourse is pouting. Revenues rose 21% to $98 million in the first half of 2008, though high marketing costs cut operating margins to 7%. "They're just not getting the benefit of the doubt, and they should," says Trion Reid, who follows Meetic for brokerage firm Jefferies International Ltd.

Simoncini has learned the hard way that while it's fun to play Cupid, playing publicly held Cupid is another thing altogether. "I used to get 10 e-mails a day from people thanking me for helping them find someone, and it was extraordinary — it made me want to get up in the morning," he says. "Now I forget all about that and all I think about is profitability. It doesn't make me happy at all."

• JOSHUA LEVINE / PARIS
• A Frenchman has lured hundreds of thousands to his matchmaking website in the pursuit of love — or fun