Yesterday saw the announcement that The Pirate Bay has launched a new dating site. PirateDate.com carries the unmistakable Pirate Bay galleon and replicates the well-worn pirate-style font, but how connected with The Pirate Bay is it? Well, perhaps not as closely as some might presume, but being mentioned in the same breath could be good enough.

On Tuesday, TechCrunch broke the news that The Pirate Bay is partnering with the dating company Meezoog to launch a new online dating site to take on the likes of Match.com and Zoosk.

“PirateDate will allow singles to share and assist their social connections in finding potential dates, while getting recommendations and referrals from their friends,” explains the article. “Pirate Date is utilizing Meezoog’s technology to provide users with ‘social proximity’ measurements, that allow people to efficiently filter their cyber connections.”

TechCrunch went on to question why people would want to join this new dating service, once the type of Pirate Bay user is taken into consideration. The torrent site, they argue (probably correctly) is more oriented towards men than women, a sentiment shared by some Digg commenters.

“Registered users: 12,000,000 dudes. 6 women,” notes one. But not all feel this situation is a problem. “lol that’s a better male to female ratio than most dating websites,” adds another.

Another user couldn’t resist taking the apparent file-sharing connection to the next level. “Wow, 50 guys hammering the same girl. I mean, it works for BitTorrent, right?”

But joking aside, are The Pirate Bay crew really diversifying into new markets? Well, not exactly, but they are prepared to benefit from them so they can support their site.

It’s taken a little while, but in 2010 The Pirate Bay brand is one of the most recognizable on the Internet. Many millions of people use the site on a daily basis and hardly a week goes by without it appearing in the news, and not just geeky news either. The Pirate Bay’s brand went global and mainstream a long time ago.

What advertisers and marketeers need are a good way to generate interest and for those who don’t mind being associated with the self-styled baddest site on the planet, The Pirate Bay can generate that in truckloads.

For their part, what The Pirate Bay needs is a steady stream of income to keep the site running. In the main they are achieving that with advertising but it appears they are prepared to consider creative partnerships if those deals make sense.

So, although it may seem that The Pirate Bay crew are launching an online dating site, in reality they’re not. What is actually happening is another company is launching a dating site which uses the branding and marketing power of The Pirate Bay in order to penetrate the market.

Just as PirateShops and PirateChat are linked from the site’s massively-visited homepage, in due time PirateDate will be too (outside of Scandinavia), alongside another familiar product – iPredator. Even though it doesn’t use the site’s branding, this VPN service draws a huge amount of publicity purely because of its connection to, and promotion by, The Pirate Bay.

So while the site clearly has a great use as a file-sharing location, it also has considerable strength with certain advertisers and marketeers. Other companies have also picked up on The Pirate Bay’s popularity and successfully boosted their own profiles – who can possibly forget Hans Pandeya and Global Gaming Factory?

As The Pirate Bay generates value in its brand and the awareness it creates, it also becomes a problem when the inevitable chancers come along. In late 2009, Swedish company Sandryds Handel took the opportunity to hijack The Pirate Bay’s logo with the aim of using it to sell USB drives.

Will the future see The Pirate Bay enforcing protection on its trademarks and other rights, or will anyone be allowed to come in and do as they please with its image? Do the site’s owners even care as long as they’re making enough to keep the site going? Time will tell.