Online Dating

This story was originally from December 28, 2008 and has been in my draft folder ever since. I thought it was about time I should finish it up.

As we know FriendFinder Networks Inc. (formerly Penthouse Magazine) filed to go public in late December, 2008 and intends to list under the symbol FFN, on the New York Stock Exchange. (see Story). In order to do this they released some financial and subscriber numbers for investors. Lets review the reason for the IPO first. Penthouse bought FriendFinder Networks from Various in December 2007 for $500 million (see Story). Since then Penthouse decided to change their name to FriendFinder Networks Inc. for a number of reasons including to help market themselves as a Social Network to would be investors. The main reason for the $460 million IPO is FriendFinder:

Facebook announced late last month their new Open Stream API to developers. What this means is, Facebook user information now can be shared with other websites and software. Don't worry, users will still have full control on who can see and use their information. Apparently permissions will work similar to how the current Facebook Application system works.

This is good news for dating sites. It means we will probably see in the coming months or year the ability to transfer over information from Facebook when we create a profile on a dating site. Not all dating sites will do this initially but I bet one or two of the popular ones will test it. Dating profile quality is important for a successful dating site and it does suffer when people join multiple dating services. Who wants to type in the same information over and over? When this happens, less information typically is included in the newer profiles by the single as they grow bored entering the same information again. I am sure online daters would much rather store their profile information and update it in one spot. Facebook has enough members (over 200 million global users) to make them a prime candidate to offer this type of service.

For more on this story, read the Facebook Developers Blog and check out the Online Dating Insider for further insight into how Open Stream may help the dating industry.

The Miami Herald has some interesting information in their article about people going online to look for married dating and affairs. The largest affair dating site of it's kind is Ashley Madison. As with most dating sites it is free to join but requires you to buy tokens or credits to message other members. AshleyMadison.com reported in March revenue in the 10's of millions of dollars and 3.86 million members worldwide. 12 months ago we reported that Ashley Madison had just over 2 million members (see Story). Business has been very good for them as they increased their membership by 50% in less than a year. The six largest markets for Ashley Madison in order are:

• New York
• Los Angeles
• Toronto
• Dallas
• Houston
• South Florida - With over 177,000 members.

The gender split on average is 70 percent male and 30 percent females but in Florida it is more even with 60 percent of South Florida members being male. This ratio split is on par with other dating sites whose main theme is the intimate encounter.

Founder Noel Biderman when he launched the dating service in 2001 decided to name it after the two most popular girl baby names that year, which happened to be Ashley and Madison. He originally decided to create an affair dating site after he did some research and found that almost 35 percent of people using online dating sites already had a partner. He thought this would be a win-win situation by providing a place for cheaters to go and preventing singles on other dating sites getting duped by people just looking for affairs.

We have talked before about the dating site called Scientific Match which uses DNA and the body's natural fragrance to match compatible singles (see Story). The Discovery Channel has an article which examines the dating site and the science behind it called Major Histocompatibility Complex or MHC for short. The idea is that opposite immune systems attract, thereby making it easier for any offspring of the relationship to fight off disease. To back up the science in their match system, ScientificMatch.com has more than:

40 peer-reviewed and published studies documenting the positive effect of different MHC's in couples.

The problems in which Scientific Match is having, is trying to gather enough members to be able to create proper matches. Plus these matches are not cheap and cost nearly $1000. Plus, Scientific Match still needs to screen potential matches for the normal profile attributes like location, age range and other preferences. That is why they are now considering licensing the technology to other dating sites.

For the full story, check out The Discovery Channel website.

Real Housewives of New Jersey star Danielle Staub has been using the dating site WealthyMen.com to find a sugar daddy according to the New York Post. The name she uses on the site is Guccilove (I checked and she is still there). Her hunt for a man is featured in the first episode of Bravo's latest spin off of the Real Housewives franchise. Apparently it didn't go to well at the end of the episode as a planned meeting with her new potential boyfriend at a New Jersey restaurant ends in a no show.

For the full post visit The New York Post and for more information on this dating site for finding sugar daddies, read our Wealthy Men review.

We wrote recently about Match.com selling their European operations to Meetic (see Story). For the sale we knew that Match.com will receive 27 percent share of Meetic plus a 5 million euro note. What we didn't know is, according to Ross Williams, CEO of WhiteLabelDating:

There was a clause in the announcement that didn't make many of the headlines, but I think will tell you the direction IAC is going in: Match has the option to buy Meetic in its entirety in about three years.

This makes things interesting. Before I knew about this piece of information, I had thought Match.com had decided to maybe concentrate on the North American market like everyone else. If Match.com has the option to buy Meetic then this makes more sense in the long run for the two companies. I could never see why Match had decided to get out of Europe since revenue wise they were doing well and, they have numerous other partnerships in places like South America and Asia (therefore they are not just concentrating on North America). If the sale does go through then, Meetic's CEO and founder, Marc Simoncini, will still be the main shareholder with over 20% and 36% of the voting rights.

Visit Mad.co.uk for the full article called Love is in the air.