True is on sale now
The best timing to sell your online dating company is when you do not need to, when it is a healthy ship and not when the owner/CEO is simply jumping from a sinking ship.
PlentyOfFish is quite similar to True. Both are in the USD 30 million revenue range.
PlentyOfFish is a free online dating site, performing as a marketing tool for paid online dating sites. On free sites, daters, instead of paying with money, they pay with precious time.
The IAC (the owner of Match/Chemistry) had recently bought the free online dating site OkCupid, and previously bought YahooPersonals, SinglesNet and PeopleMedia Communities.
The lawsuit against Match can bring a new Legislation to the Online Dating Industry (or new interpretations of existing laws) and can kill free online dating sites, if they force them to conduct ID verification and background checks.
PlentyOfFish tried to be the next free eHarmony and failed.
The owners of PlentyOfFish tried to launch a paid online dating site inside PlentyOfFish and failed.
They also failed with the PlentyOfFish Marriage Predictor.
And then failed again with eVow, a paid online dating site, but with less quality than PlentyOfFish. It is funny eHarmony, a paid site, had launched a free online dating proposal (Jazzed) nearly at the same time PlentyofFish, a free site, had launched its paid proposal, eVow (failed, game over). Both eHarmony and PlentyOfFish had failed in launching other proposals to complement their long time strategy.
The real secret of PlentyOfFish is: it needs to show ads mainly from online paid sites, then send prospective customers there and receive commissions when they acquire a paid membership.
PlentyOfFish had reached operating ceiling where it operates, mainly in Canada, United Kingdom, United States and Ireland, less in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Germany and France; and cannot operate in other countries like Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia or Argentina because it has no ads from paid online dating sites to show nor the commissions PlentyOfFish can earn sending those customers to paid online dating sites.
PlentyOfFish, eHarmony, and others were hacked on last January 2011, but they survived.
Daters were not worried about those hacking incidents.
PlentyOfFish had received a facelift, and upgrade/redesign recently and it is now being translated to Spanish, German, French and Italian version.
PlentyOfFish performs mainly as a Behavioural Recommender System
If a new user, a man says he likes slim tall blonde with blue eyes and unmarried women, but he searches profiles of fat short brunettes women and of that group only sends messages to smokers and divorced, the recommendation algorithm remains showing him those similar profiles.
If a new user, a woman says she likes athletic tall blond with blue eyes and single men, but respond to messages of fat short black smokers and divorced men; the recommendation algorithm shows similar profiles.
PlentyOfFish is not like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to achieve an IPO.
If the owners of PlentyOfFish can not innovate in the Online Dating Industry, the best strategy for them is to sell PlentyOfFish.
Joining PlentyOfFish is like joining the army. You can not expect to find the most beautiful and intelligent women there for serious dating. Any man will see over 95% of women looks fat, ugly or not his type at PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is mostly for casual daters, for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification and not for serious daters looking for a long term relationship with commitment. PlentyOfFish has a direct link to AFF (AdultFriendFinder)
Not sure if the IAC (Match) could be interested in acquiring PlentyOfFish, as the IAC has acquired OkCupid before, perhaps the IAC is more interested in trying to destroy PlentyOfFish than buying it. (see legal letter sent a year ago)
A denounce never investigated???
No comments:
Post a Comment