Tuesday, April 1, 2014

My answer to the Topeka Analysis: Why Investors Should NOT Be Enthusiastic About Tinder.

The report, by investment research firm Topeka Capital Markets, says the industry has returned to a state of secular growth, despite being once thought of as mature.

Topeka Analysis online dating industry 2014 worldwide market
http://es.scribd.com/doc/215816073/topekaanalysis-pdf
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Why Investors Should NOT Be Enthusiastic About Tinder.


Tinder Has Made 1 Billion Matches == It is performing as a machine gun shooting flowers. http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/13/tinder-1-billion-matches/
A recent article at Seeking Alpha suggests "Tinder could soon start to monetize its popularity"
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/16954232-high-conviction-ideas/2768073-iac-interactive-corp-once-tinder-hits-the-1b-landmark-monetization-is-expected-to-follow
but
Do you remember Chatroulette?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatroulette http://onlinedatingpost.com/archives/2010/04/chris-hansen-from-dateline-nbc-visits-chatroulette/ http://onlinedatingpost.com/archives/2010/02/forget-twitter-chatroulette-is-the-hottest-new-dating-site/
It seems Tinder is like Chatroulette but it will collapse like Skout.
Lots of persons want to use it, but nobody wants to pay for it.

The same for Twitter or Zoosk planning its IPO or PlentyOfFish (POF). - Twitter, operating at a loss since years.
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2014/02/twitter-operating-at-loss-since-years.html
- After Zoosk redesign, then comes Badoo redesign. http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2014/01/badoo-redesigned.html - PlentyOfFish (POF). PlentyOfFish (POF), the biggest free/freemium online dating site with annual revenue of USD 40 Million (estimated)
http://bit.ly/1pfRYNo
Website Popularity: 860,000 visitors per day
+
http://bit.ly/1pfRZ3C
Website Popularity: 15,900 visitors per day
PlentyOfFish has the traffic but others receive the money.  
Remember: Tinder like the other IAC owned and operated application called Twoo, are marketing tools to migrate free users to Match/ Meetic and make them pay there. It seems other social dating applications are decaying like Badoo, Zoosk (planning 2014 IPO), Skout, Twine, AreYouInterested, etc.
When the IAC Personals bought OKCupid (3 years ago) for an astronomical amount of money (USD 90 million), the OKCupid team had the task to copycat Badoo, but they failed in that mission.
IAC Personals backed Tinder instead, as the copycat of Badoo, but it seems there is a divorce between Tinder and Match just now!
My FINAL CONCLUSION: Tinder is like Chatroulette but it will collapse like Skout. NO WAY to successfully monetize it.
Please read:
Tinder Under Fire Over Young Teen Users
http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/2014/02/tinder-under-fire-over-young-teen-users.html
http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/news/skoutcom/
http://www.globaldatinginsights.com/27022014-more-concerns-over-under-18-hook-up-app-use/

About Skout case with minors/teens.
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2012/06/about-skout-case-with-minorsteens.html 


For eHarmony: eHarmony is a 13+ years old obsolete site and a HOAX, based on a big scientific fraud. The same for sites like them, like Chemistry, another fraud in the Online Dating Industry.
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2013/01/we-have-chemistry-not.html
As for Zoosk, they do not deserve success.
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2014/03/zoosk-6-six-long-years-operating-at-loss.html

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION (2013) from Meetic Group. ( A 307 page pdf report )
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2013/05/confidential-information-from-meetic.html

There is a large dotcom bubble fueled by venture investment funds, investors who are dragging other investors to continue investing until they can sell shares of the company and recover leveraged money, but the last holder of shares is going to lose.
Many technology companies, without having a concrete business model (supposedly will generate revenue from advertising and premium subscription accounts) receive millions of dollars in funding to offer something free, acquiring fastly a large mass of captive users as if they had made them addicts, and then, the exit strategy (for investors) is to get someone to buy the company at a staggering figure, as did Blogger, Fotolog, MySpace, YouTube, Skype, Bebo and others. They are like continually inflating balloons and they need to find a buyer before they explode. If they can not find a private buyer for the entire company, the investors had the strategy of going public, to start trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, they turn those pieces of paper (shares) in real money, they get thousands of buyers purchasing lower small parts (shares).

Imagine a NEW Legislation for Online Dating Sites to force them disclose how many active members they have (Premium members: paid or with gift subscriptions) ?
And also force them to conduct ID verification ? A variety of new laws, or new interpretations of existing laws, could subject dating sites to claims or otherwise harm their business. (extracted from IAC SEC filing)

U.S.A. Minnesota Senator Introduced Bill To Protect Users' Privacy On Mobiles.
REMEMBER mobile concept evolving, meaning tablets with Wi-Fi Network access and not smartphones.
Worldwide there are less than 7 million paid members (adding up all the ones at eHarmony, Match, Chemistry, Meetic, MeeticAffinity, OkCupid, PeopleMedia's Communities, PlentyOfFish, Parship/eCift, and others).

WorldWide, there are over 5,000 -five thousand- online dating sites
but no one is using the 16PF5 (or similar) to assess personality of its members!
but no one calculates similarity with a quantized pattern comparison method!
but no one can show Compatibility Distribution Curves to each and every of its members!
but no one is scientifically proven!

NO INNOVATIONS SINCE YEARS IN THE ONLINE DATING INDUSTRY.

C level executives do not  pay attention to latest research from Academics which could be beneficial for the Online Dating Industry. 
Paid online dating sites have high acquisition costs, they can not abandon the attracting, converting and retaining marketing stages; the automatic renewal of their members's subscriptions with dirty credit-card billing trickery.


The Online Dating Industry needs Innovations, but the innovations the Online Dating Industry needs will come from only one source: the latest discoveries in theories of romantic relationships development with commitment.

Do you want to innovate in the Online Dating Industry?
Read: The 8 tips to innovate in the Online Dating Industry 2014! 

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