http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/zoosk-s1-ipo/
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1438964/000119312514146003/d672159ds1.htm
Please see: More Big Losses from Zoosk Q1 2014
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2014/05/more-big-losses-from-zoosk-q1-2014.html
Zoosk: 6 (six) long years operating at a loss!
Zoosk's IPO is a dirty trick for its former investors to recover their money and then put Zoosk to sleep. I really hope they fail in its IPO.
Remember its Management Team
can not innovate and revolutionize the Online Dating Industry. They can cook a barbecue under the water, they are smoke sellers, but they are not going to innovate in nothing, like
Badoo
and
eHarmony.
(and perhaps HowAboutWe and PlentyOfFish)
They do not deserve success.
eHarmony failed its IPO several times (last 2011, 2010, er ... even 2008?), also failed to be sold to IAC Personals during the eHarmony Japan bluff.
Badoo also failed its USD2 Billion IPO? (during 2011)
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).
Social dating is vaporware. Online Dating for serious daters does not need to be more social, it needs to be more effective/efficient. It needs to reduce the false positives problem.
The key to long-lasting romance is STRICT PERSONALITY SIMILARITY and not "meet other people with
similar interests".
Behavioural Recommender Systems CAN NOT outperform compatibility matching engines based on personality similarity. Several times I had written about punches to behavioural matching algorithms like the one used at Match, the one used at Zoosk, and the one used at PlentyOfFish (POF).
Behavioural recommender systems or other system that learns your preferences are useless for serious online dating purposes and Personality Based Recommender Systems are the next generation of recommender systems because they perform far better than Behavioural ones (past actions and pattern of personal preferences)
That is the only way to improve recommender systems, to include the personality traits of their users. They need to calculate personality similarity between users.
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!
Please read also:
My answer to the Topeka Analysis: Why Investors Should NOT Be Enthusiastic About Tinder.
http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.com.ar/2014/04/my-answer-to-topeka-analysis-why.html
