Can Glamour And GQ's Brands Support A Dating Site?

What goes around comes around: In the '90s, Conde Nast's Internet branch CondeNet shut down the thriving dating and personals service it ran through its Swoon website, ceding the lucrative space to Match, Nerve and eHarmony.

Now the company (facing a brutal round of closures, layoffs and cutbacks) has decided to try again, with trulymadlydating.com, aimed at matching women who read Glamour with GQ's male audience. Gawker's sleuths note the site appears aimed at the British market and is operated by The Dating Lab.

Conde Nast (my former employer, I need to note) moved quickly onto the Internet in the mid-90s, though it was slow to evolve online for a while thereafter. Swoon was their early attempt to take content from print magazines like Glamour, Self, and Mademoiselle and package it under new stand-alone web brands. Swoon, focused on relationship content, and Phys, which was about health and fitness, are long gone, but Conde Nast's approach of separate web brands continues with Style.com (fashion content from Vogue and W), Epicurious for food and Concierge for travel.Continue reading...