Dating Services

MeetMe is a smaller player in the social networking space, but it has undertaken a number of initiatives to boost its customer base. Looking at the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2015, they appear to be paying off.

Highlights of Q2 include:

• Mobile revenue was $8.3 million, up 47% from the second quarter of 2014
• Mobile revenue represented 75% of total revenue, the highest in MeetMe's history
• Total revenue was $11.1 million, up 4% from the second quarter of 2014
• Cash and Cash Equivalents totaled $16.2 million at June 30, 2015
• Net income was $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million for the second quarter of 2014

We're halfway through 2015 and IAC has good news to share. The company's profit in Q2 2015 exceeded expectations, thanks in large part to the overwhelming success of the paid version of its mobile app Tinder.

Match Group, the star of the conglomerate, has driven consistently strong results for the last few quarters, and this one has been particularly momentous. IAC announced its intent to pursue an initial public offering of less than 20% of the common stock of the Match Group. The IPO is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2015.

“The IPO positions The Match Group for continued success with an independent currency, and allows us to focus our attention and capital on growing the rest of IAC’s assets,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin in a statement.

The Match Group also announced plans to purchase PlentyOfFish for $575 million on July 14, 2015. The transaction is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The paid version of Tinder, launched in March, has garnered good responses from users, despite concerns from many that the model would fail.

"Monetization continues to perform at or above our expectations on key metrics like renewal, conversion and resubscription rates,” said Match Group Chairman Greg Blatt. “We’ve seen no discernible negative correlation between monetization and growth."

IAC reported that the number of paid subscribers for its dating services grew 18% to 4.1 million in the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue at Match Group, which accounts for about a third of total revenue, rose 19%.

Outside of IAC's dating businesses, the company has other successes to report. Within Search & Applications, Applications queries increased 8% driven by 20% B2C growth. B2C revenue increased 18% versus prior year. In the Media segment, Vimeo grew paid subscribers 25% to nearly 630,000. In the eCommerce segment, HomeAdvisor revenue grew 26%.

On the downside, Websites revenue decreased 20% due primarily to a decline in revenue at Ask.com and certain legacy businesses. Applications revenue decreased 2% due to lower revenue in B2B. Revenue in Media was down 1% versus last year, despite the strong growth at Vimeo. Operating income for the match Group in the current year period was negatively impacted by a $4.2 million year-over-year increase in amortization of intangibles.

All in all, revenue growth clocked in at 2% for a total of $771.1 million. IAC's net income was $59.3 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $18 million, or 22 cents per share.

There is a free communication going on at eHarmony this weekend in both the United States and Canada. It starts today (Friday, Aug 14th) and runs till the end of the day on Monday (Aug 17th)

It is getting close to the end of summer and this might be the last free event before the fall. With the event, new and existing members get to communicate for no cost on the eHarmony website and app for 4 days. The dating app is available on iTunes and Google Play for both phones and tablets.

For new members all you need to do is signup for a free membership (no credit card required) and then fill out eHarmony's profile questionnaire. eHarmony is all about the matchmaking so the profile contains a number of questions that will probably take you about 30 minutes to complete. This is for your benefit as how you answer the questions determines who you will be matched with. eHarmony has over a decade worth of research going into their matchmaking algorithms and this has resulted with them matching a large number of men and women together. eHarmony's goal is to create long-term quality relationships. Free communication events at eHarmony do not include the viewing of profile photos, secure call (phone service), or skipping the guided communication process.

Our review of eHarmony contains lots of information about the dating site and app. If you would like to find out more before you signup this is a good place to start.

By now, we’ve all heard of the latest in cyber attacks; personal information from infidelity dating website Ashley Madison was stolen by hackers who have since threatened to expose its 37 million users.

However, information about what exactly was stolen – such as credit card information or social security numbers – is still a bit hazy. Ashley Madison customer service has, according to news website Inquisitr, provided customers with conflicting information about what was subject to the hack, namely because they don’t know what was stolen and sold or given to third parties. Some customers have been told that credit card numbers weren’t hacked, but others were told that third party credit card data was indeed hacked.

A few websites have emerged to help customers see if their personal data has been leaked, including a site “Was he on Ashley Madison,” (WasHeOnAshleyMadison.com). Customers of Ashley Madison and also of hacked website Adult Friend Finder could search through emails to see if theirs were compromised. However, as of July 31, that website was put up for sale, and quickly bought by someone looking to make a statement to users of Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder. Hours later, what appears to be a former Ashley Madison user posted a statement lashing out against the company, including this paragraph to those who were hacked:

“You have been through enough pain and anger and anxiety about their hack without having some opportunistic scammer buy this domain and charge you money for data they do not have.

I have decided that I am going to fight the AM people so I can keep this domain. They have refused to offer any of their customers any kind of solace or at least a year of identity theft protection which is standard practice when your data is hacked. They prefer to sit in their ivory tower and hide behind their lawyers.

This is not OK with me and it should not be OK with you.”

According to Inquisitr, there have been many sites claiming to provide information for those who feel their personal information could have been hacked, but many of these sites have been nothing but spam themselves. According to an investigation by BBC, Ashley Madison users were sent emails providing links to third party websites, supposedly with information about the hack. Some included the recipient’s Ashley Madison user name, giving more credence to the email, but worrying customers that their information was indeed sold to a third party. However, when people clicked on the links, they were sent to spam sites that were booby-trapped with malware and, in some cases, graphic images and videos of adulterers ‘burning in hell.’

Now Ashley Madison users are turning to Reddit to provide current information about the hack to other users in an attempt to gain information.

One Reddit user claimed that Ashley Madison sold user information to third party sites from the beginning, because that user began getting spam emails as soon as he/she signed up on the website. While it's difficult to tell where exactly information has gone, it has been compromised. We'll see what Ashley Madison does next to address the issue.

Twelve years after Markus Frind founded PlentyofFish as a side project, the company sold to Match Group for $575 million. That's an impressive price for anyone, but it becomes astonishing when you consider the site's origins.

Frind launched POF from his apartment and, for the first six years, didn't hire any employees or raise a cent of venture capital. That would be bad news for any other company, but Plentyoffish.com was already getting 2.2 billion page views a month and generating millions of dollars in revenue.

The risky move turned out to be a brilliant one. Except for the IRS, Frind didn't have to share the funds with anyone. He had money to continue his business, travel the world, and buy anything he could imagine. Match tried to purchase the company for a decade, and Frind could easily say no.

He continued to grow POF on his own. At the outset there was no advertising budget, no business plan, and only a basic website. Frind's experience was practically non-existent, so he taught himself about marketing, business development and product. It wasn't until 2009 that he hired his first developer – and he was still running the business out of his apartment at the time. It didn't matter. By then, he had 10 million users. To say it happened “against all odds” is almost corny.

Frind's perspective changed last year, when his daughter Ava was born. “Having a 10-month old daughter, you start measuring time in different increments,” he said in an interview. “Every day you see something’s different – she’s trying to take her first step, or she’s crawling around. Whereas before you measured the company in milestones in terms of the revenue or user growth or some kind of company target.”

Now, having sold his miracle online dating company to rival Match Group, Frind is contemplating the future. He says he has already bought everything he could personally want, so many hope he will instead use his wealth invest in the startup scene in his hometown of Vancouver.

“I think he will invest a lot more and help a lot of businesses,” said Arash Fasihi, founder of online furniture retailer Cymax Stores Inc., to The Globe and Mail. Fasihi's company recently received an $18 million investment from Frind and made him a director.

Vancouver venture capitalist Boris Wertz has similarly high hopes: “He’s a smart guy and he knows how to deploy money, and hopefully some of that will flow back into the tech ecosystem.”

For more information on Frind's dating site your can read our Plenty of Fish review.

Cheaters are having a bad week.

In case you're not up to speed on the latest scandal to rock the online dating world, here's the gist: a group of hackers calling themselves The Impact Team attacked Ashley Madison and gained access to the site's database of 37 million members. The hackers got hold of financial records, addresses, and other highly sensitive personal information, and have threated to publish it online unless Ashley Madison shuts down.

Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company, says it has secured its sites and is working with law enforcement agencies to find the parties responsible. Despite their efforts, files containing emails and passwords for some Ashley Madison users have started to spread online.

Some have called this the beginning of the end for Ashley Madison. It's devastating for any website to be hacked, but infinitely more so when it's designed for a philandering clientele whose top priority is privacy. Ashley Madison has failed to uphold one of its most important – perhaps the most important – promises.

And it gets worse. Avid Life Media announced earlier this year that it hopes to raise $200 million in an initial public offering in London in 2015. The brand's value is based almost completely on the service's ability to protect its members' privacy. Without that, is the Ashley Madison worth anything in the first place?

“If a password manager such as LastPass was hacked,” writes Christina Warren for Mashable, “the service would be dead in the water. After all, the whole point of a password management service is to secure and protect your passwords.”

The same principle applies here. Ashley Madison's adulterous target audience is likely to be wary of a site with a history of being hacked. New customers will think twice before joining. Current customers will jump ship. And the IPO? If the hack doesn't squash it completely, it will at least significantly reduce the value of the company.

A renaissance isn't impossible. Other companies have endured disasters, rebranded, and risen from the ashes. It's possible that Ashley Madison could update its security practices, change its name, and come back to reclaim its place in the online dating market.

But should it? Will anyone buy into the narrative that Ashley Madison has seen the error of its ways and reformed? Will cheaters, who require privacy more than anything else, take a chance on a service with such a shoddy track record? The damage may already be irreversible.