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December 3, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Finance people certainly have a unique grasp of language. According to the Form 8-K dated 30-Nov-2006, Spark Networks President and COO Gregory R. Liberman “entered into Amendment No. 2” of his employment agreement.
Liberman can now look forward to 287,000 reasons to stick around Spark while contemplating the purchase of up to 150,000 of the Company's ordinary shares at fair market value.
Technorati Tags: sparknetworks
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November 29, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks plc (AMEX: LOV) announced today that it has launched live and anonymous calling and interactive games on a number of its online communities including AmericanSingles, Date.ca and CollegeLuv via Userplane Webchat and Webmessenger applications.
This is good news for Userplane (Sponsor of this blog), especially after being acquired by AOL earlier this fall. I'm not sure why JDate and other services weren't included in the deal. American Singles userbase has eroded significantly as marketing spend continues to be reduced at underperforming sites in the Spark network.
Interactive games are mentioned briefly, but there is no sign on the AS homepage that anything has changed.
Technorati Tags: userplane
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | spark networks
November 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
After practically begging to be bought by Match or Yahoo, Spark Networks board of directors has approved the company’s Share Repurchase plan authorizing the potential repurchase of up to an aggregate of approximately 2,000,000 shares.
Those following the Spark story will remember that Great Hills Partners bought a minority stake in Spark in December of 2005. They purchased 6,000,000 shares, representing a 19.8 percent stake in the company.
Technorati Tags: sparknetworks
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November 20, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
A certain high-ranking official with close ties to the clandestine dating/social-networking industrial complex has forwarded me top secret footage of recently-release video of Eharmony's CEO speaking with Marketwatch's Bambi Francisco.
Bambi Francisco :Have subscriber Acquisition Costs (SAC) gone up for eHarmony?
Greg Waldorf: No.
Dave, talking to monitor: Greg, what's up with the eye roll? Looks like the prompter was up in the ceiling.
BF: Match grew 22% to $80 million last quarter.
GW: eHarmony is growing at about the same rate as Match.
BF: Revenue growth for 2007?
GW: Next year's revenue growth will be most likely due to subscriber base increase, not price increase. Emphasis mine.
Dave to monitor: Bambi, ask him how much of that $110 million is left in the bank.
BF asking her usual questions. How many subscribers?
GW: We don't break out our individual subscriber counts. Many hundreds of thousands.
GW: 14 million signups since inception.
BF: What is average lifetime of a subscribe and how to you value your subscribers.
GW: We value them on trying to make them successful.
Dave: Nice dodge!
BW: applying pressure...
GW: Lifetime value of subscriber is well over $100. We don't break out into months.
BF: What new services are coming next?
GW: Serious R&D. New services for married couples in wellness space.
Dave: Nothing about expansion plans that have been pinging around the blogosphere.
BF: Spark has 26 niche sites. Talks about the network's demographics, pays homage of sorts.
GW: eHarmony relies on an algorithm.
Dave: Wishes he could have coached Greg on that one. That was a giant softball question he totally threw away.
BF: Average subscription price?
BF: I can tell you that 90 people get married every day on eHarmony.
Dave: !!!!!
What did we learn during this interview?
We don't know how many subscribers eHarmony has. Could be 300-700k.
We don't know much about what they are going to do to grow the business.
The CEO refuses to quote how much he charges for his service.
That drove me particularly nuts. How can you not have a price? I hear unsubstantiated reports that they are giving away free and multiple months to people so who really knows except the CFO what's going on there?
Eharmony spent more than $60 million advertising in 2005. It raised $110 million in 2004. EHarmony projected 100,000 marriages on the site in 2005. Looks like the actual number was about 17,000 people.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Research | eharmony
November 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Think Partnership Inc. has announced a new letter of intent to sell its Internet dating business to Mountains West Exploration Inc. for $21 million. More at Tampa Bay Business Journal.
If the deal closes under the stated terms, MWXI will pay $5 million in cash, a secured promissory note for $13 million and unregistered common stock of MWXI worth $3 million. The promissory note would bear a 7 percent interest rate and be payable in 12 monthly installments beginning July 1, 2007, a release said.
The aggregate purchase price would be subject to a downward adjustment of up to $6 million depending on the 2007 EBITDA performance of Cherish.
The sale includes Think Partnership's online dating subsidiary Cherish Inc. and other direct and indirect subsidiaries that comprise nearly all of the Think Consumer market segment, including Personals Plus Inc. and Vintacom Florida Inc.
The principal activities of Mountains West is to acquire, explore and develop coal bed methane in the South Central Colorado region. Makes perfect sense, right?
Think originally signed the original letter of intent in March of 2006. Changes include a reduction in the cash changing hands from $21 million up front to $5 million plus a $13 million promissory note.
More info on the Think acquisition of Vintacom in December 2005.
Technorati Tags: vintacom
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Posted by Dave Evans
Behold, an easy to read breakout of Spark Networks properties, including JDate, American Singles and a new dating site called Other Businesses. I'm working with a client who's basing some of their P&L assumptions on JDate, the timing couldn't be better.
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November 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
David Siminoff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks, appears to be doing at least a few things right since he came on board in August 2004.
JDate up approximately 10% in revenue and subscribers. American Singles continues it's decline, with revenue down 26%. Last time I checked they has 120,000 members and that number has basically been cut in 1/2 over the past year.
JDate Subscriber Acquisition Costs (SAC) are in the $13 range, whereas American Singles is a whopping $40.
JDater's are worth so much more than American Singles, I wouldn't be surprised if we see AS at 30k subs a year from now.
Overall, SAC is down, spending is coming under control and the benefits of the new back-end systems are becoming apparent.
We'll see how deep JLove can cut into JDate's subscriber base, too early to tell what the impact is.
I have been compiling the last few years of data on Spark and Match, will post when I get a chance.
As usual, it pays to dig into the financials and do you own analysis.
LOV is currently trading at $6.75.
More details at Yahoo News.
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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October 30, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Today, Markus incorrectly guessed that Union Square Ventures funded OkCupid to tune of $6 million earlier this year.
BZZZZZ Wrong.
I just got back from having a coffee (venti chai latte with soy) with OkCupid founder Sam Yagan in the Boston gardens. It was our first time meet and we lounged in the warm October New England sun, talking about our business pasts, why free dating could take even more users and revenue away from paid dating sites and the need for better metrics to measure success in the online dating space (advertisers want one number, site owners want another, users couldn't care less about either).
I found Sam to be an extra-sharp guy, knowledgeable about the power of "Free" and he has a track record (SparkNotes, eDonkey) and refreshing perspective that puts my confidence level in a good place when talking about the future of his business and the models that drive it. I'm always on the lookout for interesting free dating sites. The problem is that most don't meet both criteria. Anyone can buy traffic, all it takes is the right amount of bank(True.com). I'm not sour on paid dating, just hearing from some kick-butt entrepreneurs who are hell-bent on making life for Match, Spark Networks and eHarmony miserable. A breath of fresh air. But Sam, seriously, take the damn beta sign off the home page.
It's about time there was another free dating site to talk about, besides PoF. Does Markus get his own conference track at iDate this year? Just kidding Markus, keep stirring up the pot, we need more people like you in the industry outrageous claims and all. Markus says he's thinking about doing an affiliate program, I wonder how that's going to work out? How many layers to the pyramid can PoF add to the mix?
As always, show me the innovation/traffic/revenue and tell me a good story about why your site matters and I'm all ears.
I had no idea Sam was only a few miles away in Cambridge. Boston recently lost 8 Minute Dating to Florida; Tom Jaffee was a frequent lunchmate, our offices were only a few blocks apart, Tom I miss you buddy.
Every once in a while I see Nelson, who runs LoveAccess, in Boston, although he got married this summer, which may explain his absence at our past few industry lunches. Nelson has jumped on the personal matchmaking bandwagon. Nothing like getting members to pay someone else to pick people up for them. I love that model and I can't wait to see if that actually works.
Sam, you're definitely invited to the next lunch. Are there any other Boston-area dating or social networking entrepreneurs that want to get together? Let me know and I'll add you to the invite list for our next lunch, sometime in November. Who knows who else is lurking on here.
The networking scene in Boston is pretty much spent after you hit a few rubber chicken dinners. In general I avoid them like the plague. This town is too small and unless you need legal advice or a CPA, I avoid handing out my business card whenever possible. Call it network protection. You gotta earn your right to LinkIn to me and most people at these things are mid-level Account People and social malware.
Feels like it's time to pony up and get some of that Boston internet buzz going again. Been very quiet the past few years, here's to hoping that will change, because I really don't want to move to San Francisco, much as I love visiting. Kind of how I feel about New York.
Gregpc and I are going to throw some sort of social/tech networking event here soon. He used to to PR for eHarmony and is now at Weber Shandwick. Greg, I just redesigned my other blog and added you to my blogroll, you can quit bugging me now.
Rumors, networking and rubber chickens, feels like Monday to me.
Technorati Tags: okcupid, boston, networking, sam yagan
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Posted by Dave Evans
Last week I spoke with Rajat Paharia, CEO and founder of Social gaming company Bunchball, and board member Gene Mauro. Gene is a long time video game exec., started and operated several high profile game ventures including Capital Entertainment Group (with the founders of the Xbox) and Myelin Media (with billionaire Carl Icahn).
Bunchball has announced it has raised $2 million in first round funding. The Bay Area-based company raised the funds from Granite Ventures and Adobe Ventures, having previously received an angel round. The company aims to share revenue with the host sites, and also plans to launch a women’s TV network.
Via Mashable.
The company previously riased a small angel round. CEO Rajat Paharia is the former co-director of the Software Experiences Practice at IDEO- via PaidContent.
Gene and Rajat walked me through several integrations, some more impressive than others. At first I was hung up on the fact that the games looked a little Windows 3.1 for my liking. But the pair quickly showed me that they have much bigger plans than simple Flash gaming widgets for blogs and social networks.
Yes Virginia, collaborative games are coming to online dating, finally. It may not be like sitting across from each other at a candle-lit table, but it's a huge improvement over browsing static profiles.
I won't say much more at the moment except that gaming and collaborative 20-question style features would be a welcome addition to social networks and dating sites.
Pete at Mashable complains that only 200 people have installed the Bunchball widget on Myspace. Pete is missing the point. Bunchball is not a pure Myspace play and there is a lot more to the company's business model than just a presence on Myspace and other social networks. That's what happens when you just look at stats but Pete is a busy guy and often skimps on the depth of focus he can put into site reviews, which I am prone to do when there is such a torrent of information fighting for my attention.
Clear value propositions, focused, experienced management teams and easy-to-grok revenue models get me all hot under the collar. The question is, will widgetizing their games on social networks bunchballdrive enough advertising revenue to make the company viable or will partnerships and more difficult dating site integrations be the real cash cow?
Technorati Tags: bunchball, games
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | innovation
October 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I.Q. Webquest to Debut Latest Online Dating: This company can't even spell eHarmony.
eTwine Begins Trading: Interesting features but then they try to do everything: Dating, social networking and event planning. Too much, focus!
- Date Now!- View Singles available to Date on specific Days
- Unique Double Date / Group Profiles Concept
- "My Wingman" Concept
- Create/View Events for Singles Only
- Invite your "Hotlist" to your Events including Speed Dating
- View Events listed by your "Hotties"
Technorati Tags: dating+sites
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October 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
This really should be subtitled "How To Build a Dating Site Part IV."
I will treat dating sites with respect when they do the same for their members. I try hard to say nice things about the industry, but it's difficult, and I am generally a positive person.
Dating sites think singles are sheep with credit cards tattooed on their foreheads. I look forward to the day when dating and social networking sites begin to respect their members and cater to their deeper, more evolved needs.
I have belonged to 50+ dating sites and have read over 3,000 profiles for research projects. Right now I don't belong to any dating sites, a protest against the current state of the online dating experience which gets me thinking about other things for a while.
Why is it that the sites that make the most money selling banner ads and buying inventory on social networking sites are the sites most likely not to give a crap about their members?
I'm constantly blown away by all the money dating sites are leaving on the table. Millions of people waiting at your doorstep, yet the door remains closed.
Mainstream dating sites make all the money, while more and more people are meeting on local or niche sites. The problem is, I want to belong to both, without paying multiple times.
I will pay a hell of a lot more than $20 to meet my future wife. The problem is, there is not one single site or service in the US that I would, or could, give my money to that caters to my demographic and that I have a reasonably high level of confidence in. Totally depressing. Where is the $500 hands-on service?
Where is my 7-day pass to a network of dating sites? I want to check out Yahoo, several Spark Networks properties and a few others, free and paid. Let me create a single profile that works across all of them.
Event-based dating sites are taking off, this is good to see. I made three event dates this week, that's huge compared to the usual hunt and pick on most dating sites.
Mspace is hurting the online dating industry, for now, but only a portion of it, young 20-somethings that will never make it to paying dating sites because the value proposition is so off for them. Nobody can be cool on a dating site. Who the heck wants to be a voyeur, paid or otherwise, on a dating site when we have Girls Gone Wild on Myspace?
Blogging gets boring from time to time, it's difficult to stay charged up all the time about the next new dating site. Look at Onlinepersonalswatch, Mark works in the diet industry now, scans news feeds and writes about YouTube. It's hard to stay focused when most industry news is a snooze. Social networking stole online dating's thunder, from a media and revenue standpoint. Go ahead, start another blog about social networking. When do you have time to get any work done?
PlentyOfFish is a great media story, although I often wonder how long Markus will rule the free dating world. I'm dying to check his server logs, same goes for Mate1.
Dating sites need to grow a pair and put programs into place to get rid of stale profiles. Six months is stale. Match, Yahoo and everyone else on down the line have been misleading consumers for years. Clean up your act and your database. Less profiles will lead to more money. Embrace the dynamic nature of the real-time web. A dating site database is not a card catalog, it should be a guided, rich multimedia experience, with a profile stream that flows like water. If you don't understand the concept, it's time to get smart. Email me learn more.
Europe is learning the lessons the US dating market learned 3 years ago. This was to be expected. Why then, as I thumb through the Amsterdam iDate conference proceedings, is everything about mobile dating? Haven't we been through this before? Sure, EU singles use their phone more, but why are 1/3 of all presentations about mobile dating? How big is the leading social network in Estonia and why was the CEO speaking? Why is it important to convert males to customers? Aren't females the minority?
Profile helpers are coming out of the woodwork. They all work off the same script, zzzzz, and they certainly don't scale well.
People don't join a dating site because of an expert. I would like to see how much more money sites make when they hire said "experts."
Where is the next generation of personality testing? How come I can't collaborate and take a test *with* someone?
The technical minutia of personality testing is lost on 100% of online daters, who tend to judge effectiveness on results, not weighted averages. How does one testing service differentiate from another when the mechanics and algorithm are not taken into consideration?
User-created video posted to free sites like YouTube will be huge. Major sites need to add video back into the mix. What they didn't do last time was provide privacy and progressive communication controls. Everyone emails the blonde with the big boobs, so give her the tools to protect and manage her suitors. Where are the scripts, the helper-apps to make creating a profile and video easier? Why do I have to pay someone to help me with that? There is a strong argument it should be part of the service offering from dating sites. Yup, there goes some of your margin, but the upside will be huge. Background checks I'm not so sure about adding into the monthly price, seems like an added-cost for the time being.
Speaking of background checks, how many women need to bilked out of their money or assaulted before dating sites start offering their services? I just heard from a women who was bilked out of six figures by a scammer on Match. And she wants to sue. I have a hard time sympathizing with people who get scammed. Being lonely certainly lowers the defenses.
Dating site executives often do not belong to multiple sites. That's crazy! That's as bad as singles not checking out the same-sex competition to see how they stack up.
What ever happened to live events? IRL went kaput pretty fast and Match Events fizzled for a reason. Time to try again.
Anonymous calling, Background checks, voice/chat providers, time to get in bed together, on your own you're not going anywhere fast. Userplane not included, they are the gold standard for integration and advertising models, although I don't feel comfortable with chat interface, but 125,000 websites do, what do I know.
If you work in the dating industry, go brainstorm something useful and cool for your site, create a new ad campaign, market to a new niche or tweak your search algorithm or find a new way to entice people to sign up for your site. Do something extraordinary that differentiates you from the competition.
If you're single, go outside and do something outside your comfort zone. Talk to a stranger that catches your eye, strike up a conversation with new people, they are often more likely to connect you with someone than your friends.
Comments (14)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Features | Finance | Safety | Traffic | partnerships | personality testing | social networking | startups
October 13, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
There is not enough pr0n on the internet. I was in NYC for a friend's birthday party in a rented loft in Soho. While lounging in the floating bed, I perused the bookshelf, where I came across Bunny Tales, stories about being one of Hef's girlfriends. A few days later, SF Chronical has the story on Playboy.com finally ending up with the much sought after sex.com domain name.
The empire that Hugh Hefner built said Tuesday that it will run the Sex.com Web site, featuring on-demand video and photo content, for the domain's owner, Escom LLC of Delaware. The original Match.com owner who sold sex.com to Escom LLC, has a colorful background. Worth hitting the search in the sidebar to check out, I've written a few posts about him.
Technorati Tags: adult, playboy.com, sex.com
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | audio&video
September 22, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 What a week. Facebook and Yahoo are dancing, Comscore rolls out wildly inaccurate numbers (Zencon?), Dogester raises $1 million bones, dead people on Myspace, FriendFinder turns 10, all my friends are sick, getting married or having babies, Plentyoffish continues to roar up the charts and about 100 new social and business networking sites launched, most of which no one will ever visit.
Technorati Tags: exhausted, tgif
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September 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Congrats to Ted Rheingold, who has managed to turn animal social networking a viable business model with Dogster and Catster. Ted raised an additional $1 million from a group of high-powered angel investors.
Dogster makes 95 percent of revenue from advertising and sponsorships and the rest from premium subscriptions, with 250,000 registered users, a quarter of which are very active on the site.
More at GigaOM.
Update:The lead investor of this round, Michael Parekh, will join the board. Other Dogster investors are Joshua Schacter (of del.icio.us./Yahoo fame), Adam Beguelin (of Truveo/AOL), Michael Tanne (Wink), Jim Young (hotornot), Mike Jones (Userplane/AOL), George Sarlo (Walden Funds), Frank Caufield (Darwin VC), Aydin Senkut (of Google, now Felicis Ventures), Robert Simon (Alta Partners), Brad Feld (Mobius Ventures) and Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC). From VentureBeat.
Technorati Tags: catster, dogster
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Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks Board of Directors as authorized the Company to seek approval of a share repurchase plan at its next Annual General Meeting. The company intends to to authorize the potential repurchase of up to an aggregate of approximately 2,000,000 of the Company's GDSs and ADSs, which represent the Company's ordinary shares, on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and/or the American Stock Exchange, respectively, or in privately negotiated transactions.
This week Spark announced the appointment of Adam Berger, former CEO of WeddingChannel.com Inc.; Jonathan Bulkeley, CEO of Scanbuy, Inc.; Christopher Gaffney, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Great Hill Partners; and Scott Sassa, CEO and Founder of W Cubed Media. In addition, David Siminoff, the company’s CEO and a current director, was appointed Chairman of the Board. The company also announced the resignation of Scott Shleifer from its Board.
Recent Forbes article on Spark. Includes useful CPA, revenue and call-center operating cost information.
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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September 6, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Jobs
August 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
While I was away for the weekend at a bachelor party, Liz Gannes at GigaOM (congrats on the move Liz!) wrote that Friendster has raised another $10 million dollars.
This appears to be separate from the company’s $3.1 million recapitalization round earlier this year. The social network, for all the hits it takes in Silicon Valley, has a pretty strong audience, especially in Asia. The problem is that they cannot monetize that demographic. Alexa gives it a rank of 35th overall and shows upward growth, outpacing Facebook.
They couldn't sell it for $5 million and now they've taken another $13 million. Who cares about not monetizing the Philippines when your next big revenue stream is patent enforcement.
We'll see how the Facebook API affects traffic over the next few months.
Technorati Tags: friendster
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | social networking
August 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 I just got off the phone with Userplane CEO Mike Jones after taking a few much-needed days off the grid in Vermont.
I met Mike a few years ago in San Francisco and have always liked the way we approached chat in the dating and social networking spaces. Mike has been a startup junkie and my hat is off to him and the whole Userplane team for excellent execution over the past five years, all without taking outside investment.
For those not in the know, Userplane provides web-based video and chat to 100,000 Web sites and online communities in 25 countries.
PaidContent has the most revealing information about the deal, which is supposedly in the $30-40 million range. Jeff Clavier, who has been working with Userplane, talks about letting go of a portfolio company. Such sweet sadness.
Mike swears that Userplane will remain as autonomous as possible, operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Time Warner unit. It will be overseen by Marcien Jenckes, VP-AIM Service. Dating sites running Userplane chat such as Date.com (disclaimer: current client) should not expect anything to change.
Userplane is moving offices to Santa Monica because they are running out of room in their current location.
Userplane runs their ad network on Friendster and Myspace as well as being embedded in the chat clients.
Userplane revenue is split 50/50% between social networking and dating, with 20% of their users seeing 1 billion ads each month.
I forgot to ask Mike what the Myspace deal with Google means to Userplane, which was been providing advertising on Myspace for a while. If Userplane revenue is about $1 million a year, that means they are earning about $500k in social networking and dating each.
Did you know that Google Adsense is now powering Myspace, YouTube and Digg?
Userplane will be working with AOL on a bridge into AIM for several months. AIM interoperability will be explored based on user interest. Discussion with the ICQ team continues.
Mike had a term sheet from a big VC when he was approached by Jon Miller, the new AOL CEO who is quickly taking AOL in new and exciting directions
The deal came together in about two months from start to finish, which Mike categorized as "less cumbersome than expected."
Technorati Tags: aol, instant messaging, userplane
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | audio&video
August 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 JDate has launched a website called JMag. Similar to Match's Happen Magazine, there are lifestyle stories, how to's and dating tips. Speaking of JDate, Spark Networks' Second Quarter results were announced last week.
The Company reported second quarter 2006 revenue for its JDate segment of $7.0 million, an increase of 13% compared to $6.2 million in the same period in 2005. JDate revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2006 was $14.0 million, an increase of 10% compared to $12.7 million for the six months ended June 30, 2005.
Average paying subscribers for the Company's JDate segment were 75,100 during the second quarter of 2006, an increase of 12% compared to 67,100 from the same period in 2005. Average paying subscribers for the six months ended June 30, 2006 were 75,200, an increase of 10% compared to 68,400 for the six months ended June 30, 2005.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost(5) (SAC) for the Company's JDate segment in the second quarter of 2006 was $14.93, an increase of 8% compared to $13.82 from the same period in 2005. SAC for the six months ended June 30, 2006 was $14.06, an increase of 24% compared to $11.30 in the six months ended June 30, 2005. The increase in JDate SAC is due to increased marketing expenditures, particularly offline, in order to build and maintain the strong JDate brand.
Markus calls the American Singles situation a continuing death spiral. Subs down 16% to 90,000. It will be interesting to see the effect MingleMatch has on the Other Businesses segment reporting.
More at Yahoo Finance.
Technorati Tags: jdate, spark+networks
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Marketing | spark networks
Posted by Dave Evans
Lawless Luvoo.com: Missouri residents on the Do Not Call list are receiving telemarketing calls from dating site Luvoo.com. Reader Renaldorv says I have been living under a rock, that Luvoo is not the real deal. I put Luvoo and Mate1 in the same category. Site that will be around for a while, but how good are they when it comes to getting yourself off the dating market? Fads people, fads.
Measuring Dating Site Success By Active Users: Markus says that of the top 50 dating sites there are only three free sites? This bears looking into, difficult to believe. Let's talk metrics. How about the number of active users logged into the website, averaged month-to-month. Now if we can get other large-scale sites to measure the same way we may have something along the lines of apples-to-apples comparison. For niche sites this won't work. How to measure their success?
Look at JD Power and Associates. Sterling brand, highly respected, solid results. Why can't we get this level of accuracy and truth when it comes to measuring website attributes?
Bill Tancer (blog) @ Hitwise, stats gurus at Comscore and Alexa. Go take a vacation together for two weeks somewhere with limited cell service and lots of umbrella drinks and figure out a decent measurement algorithm.
I"m beginning to like what I see from some Keynote more and more, although even they have troubles with rankings (LoveHappens as the "darling of the online dating industry?). Clearly no one system is enough. To that end, I propose a mashup of Hitwise for real-time data, Keynote for customer satisfaction rankings, Comscore for deeper five-figure research papers, and either Google Toolbar or some other equivalent for user tracking.
Social software coverage at the Social Software Blog has moved to the Download Squad. Looks like that's the end of that.
Mark Brooks is starting a site for internet dating affiliates. While I question the need for yet another site dedicated to educating affiliates, my hat goes off to anyone who can raise the clue density amongst affiliate managers and the countless lazyweb people who throw up affiliate-driven dating site review. Almost every one I've ever seen has been awful. Weak category structure (don't put eHarmony in every category for crying out loud), bad UI and cheesy Adwords.
Dating site affiliate marketing is in a sad state of affairs on both ends. How about raising the bar with well-designed websites, helpful content and edutainment for consumers? One last thing, if you are an affiliate with a few dating sites, don't just list the ones that make you money. That's not a directory it's a waste of people's time.
 True is touting the fact that Hitwise calls them the #1 dating site. Nice marketing exercise if it were remotely True.
 Webdate Desktop Application: Actually, it's an Agent. Message, Instant Message, & Search other singles in your area. I'm glad it "Sits snugly in your windows taskbar." Download.
Hottest Dating Sites Based on Religion, Ethnicity: MarketingVox says some niche dating like JDate, Shaadi.com or Naseeb.com are thriving.
I was featured in a English as Second Language DVD last year, just put the clip up on Youtube. I will probably regret posting this link but I've been quiet all week and you need something to laugh at. Talk about a bad hair day.
Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, online dating, social software
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Finance | Legal | Marketing | Research | Traffic | innovation | niche
August 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
New dating site CupidSurfer's members become eligible for CupidSurfer.com's $2 million giveaway simply by signing up. For every 500 premium members who register, CupidSurfer.com will hold a drawing for a prize of $500. Once the Web site reaches its 1 million premium member mark, it will host a drawing for an additional grand prize of $1 million. Each winning member's profile will be prominently displayed on the CupidSurfer.com Web site.
Yahoo News press Release.
Technorati Tags: cupidsurfer
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Posted by Dave Evans
A bunch of posts stacked up, here they come...
Yahoo and Canaan Partners have invested in the BharatMatrimony Group to the tune of $8.6 million. Canaan was the first investor in Match.com in 1995. BharatMatrimony has about 3.5 million active users. In March, Sequoia Capital, formerly WestBridge Capital, bought an undisclosed stake in People Interactive which runs a matrimony portal, shaadi.com, for $8 million. Bharat Matrimony was founded in 1997 and until now was self-funded. More than 500,000 marriages have been arranged online in that time.
Technorati Tags: canaan+partners, BharatMatrimony
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July 26, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Much of my work in the online dating industry involves working with startups looking for a way to leapfrog their way into a market-leading position in a particular niche. Other times it's developing new growth strategies for established sites that are looking to crack the top 10, or struggling to stay there.
I've spoken with many startups consisting of a single person with an idea and the drive and ambition to see their vision realized. The one thing almost every one of these people lack is funding. It's near impossible to raise VC for a startup dating site these days, the risk factor is off the charts. This leaves most people to hatch their idea and work on the site when they come home from work and on weekends. A select few are able raise angel financing from friends and family to work full time on their labor of love.
A typical call from a dating site startup goes something like this:
I paid a developer a lot of money for a site and the developer has become unresponsive to my ongoing needs. I'm not sure how much to spend on marketing, or where to spend it. I don't have a strategic plan for moving forward, and I feel overwhelmed thinking of everything I have to accomplish in order to launch, let alone achieve profitability.
They can't launch with a 1/2-finished site, or worse, launch with a broken site that doesn't meet the minimum requirements of today's online daters. They have a To Do list as long as their arm and not enough time in the day to get things done. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Or, as is often the case, the caller has a live site not getting the traction they expected after three, six or even nine months. The person has usually burned through what they consider a significant amount of capital and earned a lot of grey hairs for their efforts. This is especially frustrating, they have earned their startup battle scars and need a fresh strategy for getting out of the red.
Most people can't afford a typical five-figure consulting engagement, and all dating site startups need similar help. To this end I am putting together a new consulting product to address the needs of startup dating sites.
Typical startups have a different problem set than established players. The new consulting arrangement will cover issues common to all dating site startups. Generally things will start out broad in scope, further refinement of the focus of the engagement occurs naturally as familiarity and understanding grows between us.
The new practice will be structured to reflect the where the company is in it's life-cycle; startup, crossing the chasm, mainstream adoption to exit strategies. I suspect most interest will be in the startup mode, although I have been speaking with several sites who are mid-tier and need a push to progress to the next level.
To manage time and costs, I'm testing the new Ether pay-per-call service. It's easy to schedule a call where we can address a predefined list of questions. You provide the initial list and I will suggest additional topics prior to the call. From this list, during the call we will begin to develop a plan of action tailored for your specific circumstances. You get the benefit my years of experience in a condensed a la carte format where you can purchase as much time and expertise as you need.
The first phone call is an hour long minimum and will be used to establish a baseline status of your company, site, resources available, expectations and goals. Additional hours can be easily added. More often than not, the initial discussion and questions bring about more of the same as we zero in on your specific needs.
If you are seeking insights into how to accomplish any of the following goals for your dating site or social networking service, this new offering may be right for you.
- Drive more traffic to your site
- Increase conversion rates
- Free or paid subscription
- Service differentiators
- Marketing strategy
- New features (VOIP, chat, mobile, games, anonymous calling)
- Comprehensive site evaluations
- Other specific issues you define
All calls are confidential and you will receive an brief summary outlining key points of discussion.
Call Me to schedule time on the phone, affordable advice immediately. Get the information you need, when you need it. No long term consulting arrangements, contracts or hassle.
Technorati Tags: consulting, startup
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July 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Integrated Enterprises, a mobile marketing and direct response communications holding company based in Miami, and its subsidiary Love In A Flash, LLC announce the acquisition of Rapid Dating, Inc.
RapidDating was founded by dating coach Renee Piane, author of Love Mechanics. Integrated Enterprises is the holding company for Rapid Dating.com, a leading dating/relationship venue; for Centella, LLC, a mobile payment system; for Mobile Information Network, LLC, a worldwide mobile marketing company; and for Respuesta Directa, LLC, a product development/direct response company that serves the global Hispanic Market.
Additional details besides the press release are not available at this time.
Technorati Tags: rapiddating
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July 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Interactive media group YooMedia has abandoned plans to sell its online dating business after securing £2.9m of additional funding from Mentor Marketing & Investment (MMI).
Earlier this year the company revealed that it was considering spinning off its YooMedia dating service in an effort to raise extra cash. However, it now intends to concentrate on developing both its Dateline and Avenues branded businesses.
I've not heard of Dateline or Avenues, but with that kind of money maybe they can buy some traffic from Yahoo.
Technorati Tags: funding
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July 14, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Friendster's recent attempt to patent social networking has elicited remarks from industry insiders that range from "who cares" to careful dissection of the patents' wording. Friendster's June 27 patent refers to a "system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks." BusinessWeek has more.
I knew some of the guys at Sixdegrees.com when they were building the site in Silicon Alley in the mid-90's. Sixdegrees earned a patent in 2001. Tribe.net founder Marc Pincus, purchased that patent at an auction in 2003. Pincus and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, formed a limited partnership without Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, in order to purchase the so-called "Six Degrees" patent for $700,000. Here's more on their fallout.
I like the Friendster service, don't get me wrong. There was a time when it was a fun place to be and I'm sure after a few more lifecycles it will get some of it's mojo back. For the meantime, I'm taking down my Friendster profile because it's been languishing for about a year, hardly any pageviews and everyone I know is on Myspace or LinkedIn now. I simply can't justify continuing to maintain multiple social networking profiles and I need contacts and consulting work more than I need new friends.
I'm still waiting for the social networking site for 30-somethings, somewhere between Myspace and LinkedIn. Where is it?
Technorati Tags: friendster
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Finance | Legal | social networking | startups
July 12, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Engage, which is making a name for itself by allowing members to play matchmaker, has raised an additional $5 million in a round led by Advanced Technology Ventures and seed investors Revolution Ventures. The Founders Fund and Josh Kopleman also participated. The company was originally seed funded by Pay-Pal co-founders to the tune of $1 million.
Engage launched in June 2005. Founded by Suneet Wadhwa, a co-founder of the photo-sharing site Snapfish. The site features include matchmaking, Hot-or-not style introductions and E-pinions for rating matchmakers.
The concept of members-as-matchmakers is novel and totally engrossing after you have matched a few people. I've spoken to a few matchmakers on the site and they are passionate about what they do. Engage plans on building on this passion as more people play matchmaker on the site.
Suneet is a sharp guy and has good instincts about what it takes to succeed in the dating market. However, timing has a lot to do with a site's success. Engage launched just as the dating industry started flattening out, which has made it that much more difficult to reach critical mass.
Engage is a good example of a site that is going to grow gradually over time. Not a meteoric growth property like Myspace or PlentyOf Fish, Engage is coming to a slow boil as it continues to build traffic-driving relationships, establish the brand and get the word out about the site's matchmaking capabilities.
Red Herring has the story and Silicon Beat wrote about Engage last year. Funding announcement press release.
Full disclosure: Engage has been a client of mine.
Technorati Tags: engage, matchmaking
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July 10, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
ChinaDateFinder is looking to do what they call a Public Percentage Spot Offering. I mention this only because I have not previously come across this type of funding in the dating space.
Profits from ChinaDateFinder will be distributed quarterly based on spot percentages calculated on the site's after cost (net) profit for the previous quarter. All income and costs will be fully disclosed to spot holders.
While this is speculation, based on the iResearch report, even with a reasonable goal of 1% of the Chinese market, in 2008 ChinaDateFinder should enjoy $810,000USD of revenue, and with a estimated 40% overhead, return $468,000USD in net profit, or $187.20USD per 0.04% spot which originally cost $50USD, a 374% return on investment. A 1.0% leverage, or 25 spots, originally costing $1250USD, would result in a $4680USD return.
Technorati Tags: chinadatefinder, investing
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July 6, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks announced today Michael A. Kumin (bio) has been elected to the company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately.
Mr. Kumin is currently a Partner with Great Hill Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, where he is responsible for originating and evaluating inv*stm*nt opportunities in the internet, media and business services sectors.
I wrote about Great Hills inv*sting in Spark in December 2005.
Technorati Tags: great+hills+partners, spark+networks
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June 22, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
True.com has been ranked as the nation's No. 1 dating site, according to Hitwise's May 2006 report on lifestyle dating Web sites. I'm glad to see this finally happen, what with Match, Yahoo and PlentyofFish saying they are so popular, I'm glad this is finally settled.
True CMO Cornell McGee has been sending a lot of ads and money over to Myspace, I can't visit my page there without seeing True babes. Is a calendar next? True is taking a play from the Plentyoffish playbook. Advertise an upsell opportunity on a site that doesn't quite do it for many people.
If horny men are a niche market, True has it covered. Is there another market they are going after that I'm unaware of? Horny women perhaps? True also announced a triple-digit increase in its multi-million dollar advertising budget. How much is triple digits?
a) $N00 to $N00,000
b) N,000 to N0,000
c) N0,000 to N00,000
d) N00,000 to N00,000,000
I know what it is, care to hazard a guess?
TRUE remains the only online dating service to offer scientifically-based compatibility testing. Take that eHarmony and Chemistry.com.
True press releases are quite the caricature of the company, much like their ads.
Technorati Tags: advertising, true.com
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June 12, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Holy cow. Plentyoffish AdSense check for $901,000. Subtract $5,400 for hosting/month and Instant Messenger at $8,000/month and you have a nice little internet company going for one guy. I love his blog title, The Paradigm Shift subtitled Adapt or die. Favorite entry, "Any Idiot Can Make millions off Google."
Another good one is about American Singles 34-person development staff and and 30 person infrastructure group. Puts into perspective how resource (capital and personnel) a large dating site can be if you're not watching the bottom line close enough.
$6.00+ per free signup w/o viral marketing, Google making $30+ per user per toolbar download, Markus is not very good at keeping his and Google's competitive advantages private, which is good news for everyone else. I agree 100% that at this point in the dating game he is correct in saying that you have to be at the top, buying your way into the dating market does not work.
I'm sure this is going to heat up in the comments section, interested to hear your thoughts on POF and Adsense.
Technorati Tags: adsense, plentyoffish
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Posted by Dave Evans
In case you didn't know him, Markus runs the Canadian dating site plentyoffish.com. Markus is a true character in the dating industry. He posts a lot of comments here, which are often self-aggrandizing, thought-provolking and Canadian in nature. A lot of his thinking is counterintuitive dating executives, which is what makes Markus' story that much more interesting. Agree or disagree with him, Markus has the online dating market figured out and is making truckloads of money in the process. Not bad for a one-man operation working 2 hours a day. I will say given what I know about his infrastructure that a catastrophic hardware failure would be deadly for the site. Check out this thread, interesting to see people argue, get jealous, slander and attack Markus. Read/WriteWeb has more, including stats on the site.
Technorati Tags: advertising, plentyoffish
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Posted by Dave Evans
Former Baywatch star Carmen Electra is giving out dating advice for Luvoo.com. Luvoo is publicly traded as of Friday, currently trading at $.74. More on Luvoo, including their free 12-month subscription and plans to use celebrity endorsements for publicity. I wonder who David Hasselhoff is going to shill for?
Technorati Tags: bringbackbaywatch
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May 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
$81 million seems like a small number for such an enormous population until you look at the demographics of the country. 60% annual growth rates expected. Baihe.com, which claims to be China’s largest online dating site, received US$11 million in venture capital after attracting more than five million registered users in 2005.
Press Release.
Technorati Tags: china
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May 17, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Quick facts:
Consolidated turnover for Q1 2006 16 Mio Euro (+74%). 19.9 million profiles registered at the end of march. 3.2 million profiles active over 30 days.
MEETIC announces that it has signed an agreement with a view to the acquisition of ParPerfeito, the online dating leader in Brazil. Founded in 2002 and based in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), ParPerfeito runs the www.parperfeito.com.br site, and has rapidly become Brazil’s leading online dating service with close to 8 million registered profiles since its creation. ParPerfeito’s estimated revenues in 2005 totalled R$ 10.4 million, or approximately 4 million euros. ParPerfeito’s estimated EBITDA in 2005 totalled R$ 6,0 million, or approximately 2,3 million euros. This acquisition, which should be finalised over the coming days, concerns 100% of the Company’s capital and voting rights for a global price - totally paid for in cash - of R$ 56.6 million, or 21.6 million euros, excluding further payments based on the Company’s results over the next three financial years.
Full details.
Thanks Dirk.
Technorati Tags: meetic
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May 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I am compiling a list investors active, or looking to become active, in the social networking and online dating market. If you are a VC or angel interested in early-round participation, contact me at relaxedguy at gmail dot com to discuss the particulars.
Technorati Tags: funding, angel+investors, vc
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May 10, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 Managing company growth and keeping top brass happy and in place may be more difficult than finding your mate on the interweb. eHarmony is going through CEO's like I go through free drink tickets at networking events. They're on their third one this year. SiliconBeat, gets to the story a month late after I mentioned it here.
Any chance of a near-term IPO have probably been squashed with the recent goings-on at the profitable online dating service. Eharmony is making over $100 million in revenue each year, remarkable for a service many thought was doomed from the start. Lazy daters are driving the membership, turns out serious daters are tired of browsing and searching profiles and will gladly pay to have someone else (in this case a database server) do the heavy lifting.
Founding investor, Greg Waldorf, has been installed as interim chief executive officer while the CEO search continues.
Technorati Tags: eharmony
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May 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
The UK dating industry is going through some ownership changes. Associated Northcliffe Digital (AND), a division of Associated Newspapers has acquired Allegran, owners of a number of UK dating sites including dating sites including LoopyLove. Allegran Ltd operates GirlsDateForFree and LoopyLove were rated number two and three by Hitwise during March 2006. The firm also owns dating brands DreamsDiscovered, Pocado and the newly-launched DatingforParents. Allegran recently integrated Thomas Technologies assessment tools with several of their dating properties.
I've gotten several emails about this deal from people calling this a big deal. Without knowing revenue numbers and active profiles, it's difficult to tell. What we do know is that the Daily Mail & General Trust recently merged Associated New Ventures with Northcliffe Electronic Publishing to create a new digital division spanning the firm's national and regional online operations. AND sites and services will reach 24 per cent of the UK online population – a total of 7.27 million unique users - every month.
This looks similar to the SpringStreet model of placing dating sites on major online media properties. The problem with Spring Street was that they were never able to effectively generate the ad revenue they initially expected. Springstreet had over 100 partners and sold for around $1,000,000. AND needs to focus on tying classified and local ad revenue to the new properties in order for the deal to make sense.
Press release.
Technorati Tags: allegran, thomas+technologies
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May 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | spark networks
Posted by Dave Evans
PaidContent says Friendster's sale process has ended, for now. They are saying no to offers from at least 6-7 bidding parties. The rollercoaster continues.
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May 3, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Worldwide expansion in Personals grew paid subscribers by 23% over the prior year period, to 1.3 million. Due partly to raising prices. International paid subscribers grew by 20% due to continued expansion in several markets, most notably Scandinavia and Spain. Profit margin declines reflect significantly higher marketing spending internationally as well as increased operating costs related to Chemistry.com, which launched nationally during the quarter. Operating income for the current period was further impacted by amortization of non-cash marketing expense of $3 million.
Personals revenue grew 35% over 2005 to $73 million for the quarter. We'll see how Chemistry's hard marketing launch effects the numbers in a few quarters.
Media & Advertising revenue up 1208%, mostly due to Ask Jeeves acquisition.
Full details at IAC.
Technorati Tags: iac, match.com
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April 27, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
American Singles subscribers continue to decline while "other businesses" grow. Subscriber acquisition costs up almost 50% at JDate and 37% at American Singles due in part to new SAC metrics. I'll leave it to you to dig into the details.
- Record EBITDAS1 Profit of $3.4 Million in Q1 ‘06
- Cash Flow from Operations Totals $4.3 Million
- Cash and Marketable Securities of $15.8 Million
- Company Launches Relationships.com™ for Christian Singles
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., April 27, 2006 - Spark Networks plc (AMEX: LOV), a leading provider of online personals services, today reported first quarter 2006 financial results.
Highlights
“During our traditionally strong first quarter, we reached a significant milestone, reporting EBITDAS profit of $3.4 million, our highest EBITDAS performance to date,” stated David Siminoff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks. “In addition, we closed the quarter with a strong balance sheet, having paid down an additional $5 million of debt from our MingleMatch acquisition last year, leaving our cash and marketable securities position at $15.8 million.”
JDate® continued to deliver steady growth with revenue and average paying subscribers increasing 8% and 13%, respectively, over the same period last year.
Also during the first quarter, the Company redesigned and rebranded its Christian community as Relationships.com (www.relationships.com). Already the most-visited online community for Christian singles2, the new Relationships.com brand better represents today’s Christian singles and provides a unique online community created for Christian singles looking to make new friends or find life-long partners who share similar values, traditions and beliefs.
Financial Results
Reported revenue for the first quarter of 2006 was $16.8 million, an increase of 2% compared to $16.5 million over the same period in 2005. The increase is largely a result of the Company’s acquisition of MingleMatch in the second quarter of 2005. The first quarter is typically a strong quarter for the Company, and the first quarter of 2005 was particularly strong given the carry-over effect of significant marketing expenditures for AmericanSingles® in the last half of 2004. Since the last half of 2004, the Company has reduced spending for AmericanSingles in order to lower overall customer acquisition costs for AmericanSingles, thus improving its contribution margin. “I am especially proud that we were able to show increases in both revenue and EBITDAS against the difficult benchmark of first quarter 2005,” said Siminoff.
Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2006 were $10.2 million, an increase of 10% compared to $9.3 million in the same period in 2005. The increase in operating expenses was primarily attributable to share-based compensation expense of approximately $1.4 million as a result of the Company’s adoption of the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123 (R) (“SFAS 123 (R)”) in the third quarter of 2005. Periods prior to the third quarter of 2005 do not contain any expense for share options in accordance with SFAS 123(R). Even including operating expenses related to its MingleMatch subsidiary, which the Company acquired in the second quarter of 2005, total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2006 would actually have been lower than those in the first quarter of 2005 absent the SFAS 123 (R) share-based compensation expense.
The Company reported net income of $710,000, or $0.02 per share, for the first quarter of 2006, compared to net income of $2.0 million, or $0.08 per share, for the same period in 2005. Due to the Company’s implementation of SFAS 123 (R), the net income for the quarter ended March 31, 2006 includes compensation expense related to share options of $1.4 million. Excluding share-based compensation, the Company would have reported a profit of $2.1 million, or $0.07 per share3, for the quarter.
EBITDAS (EBITDA adjusted to remove share-based compensation expense) for the first quarter of 2006 was $3.4 million, and increase of 10% compared to EBITDAS of $3.1 million during the same period in 2005. See the attached Consolidated Statement of Operations for a reconciliation of EBITDA and EBITDAS to net income.
Balance Sheet, Cash, Debt
As of March 31, 2006, the Company had a cash and marketable securities position of $15.8 million, compared to $17.3 million at December 31, 2005. As of March 31, 2006, the Company had remaining payments in respect of the purchase of MingleMatch of $4.0 million, which are due in May 2006, and has accumulated over $50.0 million of NOLs. Cash flow from operations during the first quarter was $4.3 million driven by an increase in multi-month subscription sales, where cash is received up front and service is provided over the life of the subscription.
Segment Reporting4
The Company reported first quarter 2006 revenue for its JDate segment of $7.0 million, an increase of 8% compared to $6.5 million in the same period in 2005.
The Company reported first quarter 2006 revenue for its AmericanSingles segment of $6.3 million, a decrease of 22% compared to $8.1 million in the same period in 2005. The decrease in revenues for AmericanSingles is largely attributable to a 34% decrease in the AmericanSingles marketing spend in the last half of 2005 compared to the last half of 2004. “Online marketing spend tends to have a lagging impact so that spending in prior periods affects revenues in subsequent periods. That lag effect is consistent with impact of the higher marketing expenses we incurred in late 2004 compared to last year and the resulting impact upon AmericanSingles revenue in the first quarters of 2005 and 2006,” stated Siminoff.
The Company reported first quarter 2006 revenue for its Other Businesses segment of $3.5 million, an increase of 75% compared to $2.0 million in the same period in 2005. The increase in revenue was primarily driven by the acquisition of MingleMatch in the second quarter of 2005, and strong growth from the websites associated with the acquisition.
Business Metrics
Average paying subscribers for the Company’s JDate segment were 79,500 during the first quarter of 2006, an increase of 13% compared to 70,400 from the same period in 2005. “We believe the increase in average paying subscribers is a result of focused marketing efforts that we’ve designed to both increase awareness and enhance the reputation of the JDate brand,” stated Siminoff.
Average paying subscribers for the Company’s AmericanSingles segment were 98,800 during the first quarter of 2006, a decrease of 19% compared to 121,600 from the same period in 2005.
Average paying subscribers for the Company’s Other Businesses segment were 66,000 during the first quarter of 2006, an increase of 116% compared to 30,600 from the same period in 2005.
Average paying subscribers for the Company, as a whole, in the first quarter of 2006 were approximately 244,300, an increase of 10% compared to 222,600 from the same period in 2005.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost5 (SAC) for the Company’s JDate segment in the first quarter of 2006 was $13.20, an increase of 47% compared to $9.01 from the same period in 2005. When comparing JDate SAC in the first quarter to that in the same period in 2005, it is important to consider that SAC metrics for JDate now reflect a wider mix of offline initiatives focused on continuing to build the JDate brand.
SAC for the Company’s AmericanSingles segment in the first quarter of 2006 was $35.19, an increase of 37% compared to $25.61 in the same period in 2005. The increase in SAC for AmericanSingles is the result of the previously discussed significant cuts in marketing spending in the first quarter of 2005 compared to the last half of 2004. The carry-over effect in the first quarter of 2005 of increased subscriptions from previous marketing, combined with reduced marketing expense, made for an atypically low SAC in the first quarter of 2005. Since the first quarter of 2005, the Company has slightly increased marketing spending for AmericanSingles.
SAC for the Company’s Other Businesses segment in the first quarter of 2006 was $24.68, a decrease of 47% compared to $46.97 from the same period in 2005. The significant decrease in SAC for the Other Businesses segment is due to the addition of the 20+ affinity-focused websites that were acquired with MingleMatch and the lower customer acquisition cost the Company encounters with regard to JDate and its other affinity-focused websites.
SAC for the Company as a whole in the first quarter of 2006 was $26.11, an increase of 10% compared to $23.84 from the same period last year.
Technorati Tags: spark+networks, subscriber+acquisition+cost
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April 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks will host an investor conference call to discuss its results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2006. The call is scheduled to take place on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time.
Call Title: Spark Networks Q1 ‘06 Financial Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-888-802-7346
International: +1-973-582-2785
Confirmation #: 7293857
One-Week Replay
Toll-Free (United States): +1-877-519-4471
International: +1-973-341-3080
PIN Number: 7293857
Interested parties may join the call or listen to the replay that will begin approximately three hours after completion of the call and run for one week.
The company will also be hosting a webcast.
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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April 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
The Internet Stock Blog has the transcript for the Think Partnership Inc. Q4 2005 Earnings Conference Call Transcript.
Technorati Tags: think+partnership
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March 28, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
According to SiliconBeat, Linden Labs, creator of SecondLife, have raised an additional $11 million in venture capital, led by Globespan Capital Partners.
Yesterday Dave Weiner and Robert Scoble were talking about SecondLife, the popular online environment where people can buy a plot of virtual real estate, build a homestead and live a second life in the environment. Then they started talking about SecondLife as a platform, a thought-provoking throwaway statement that sent me down memory lane.
Scoble thinks Microsoft needs to focus on SL because it runs apps. That made me laugh. You need to focus on shipping Vista. You already own Bungie, no need to overextend yourselves any further. MS Word in 3D anyone?
Forget SL as a platform. Let's back up and have a discussion about the real next generation of the internet, the 3D web, a richly-detailed immersive virtual environment.
When "new" ideas get popular (again), in come the VC, ready to fund 50 competitors aiming to dethrone SL. Competition is good, but we need a common lingua franca for building and linking virtual environments first. VRML sucked, although the people behind all knew we needed something like HTML to make building 3D worlds online easier and more standardized. Imagine needing a different web browser for each website you visited, total nightmare.
Why do I care? Because I was a founding member of the Boston Computer Society's Virtual Reality Group, the first in the country, back in 1993. We built virtual worlds on mega-expensive Silicon Graphics hardware and held monthly meetings where 250 would show up to try out the latest virtual environments. We were a ragtag mix of artists, geeks, musicians and designers, pushing the medium as far as we could, for free, for the fun of it. That was my indoctrination into the bleeding-edge, and I've been a fan of fresh-out-of-alpha ever since.
Where were the pundits in 1995 when we were all in ActiveWorlds doing the same things as people do in SL today? We did not have the GPU or API or the credit card tie-in but staking a claim and building your own graphical environment has been around for a decade at least. Remember Amy Bruckman and MediaMoo and LambdaMOO? Programming your own avatar on the command line anyone? I had a precusor to a blog in ActiveWorlds in 1996, and my friend had one in MediaMoo in 1994. When the pundits come out staking claims of being the first to blog in 3D in SL I have to chuckle.
Point is, avatars are getting more popular, more and more people have bandwidth, fast computers, video cameras and even I am tiring of the static nature of the web. Today's hardware and software is finally able to handle the graphic-intensive nature of a compelling virtual world like SL.
SL has 165k members, so where are the new immigrants going to come from? Some say people on social networks will gravitate towards SL. I don't think so. Most of the people on Myspace will not in fact take to SecondLife because virtual worlds take too long to build and require too much interaction to get anything done unless you are hard-core. Myspace is the ultimate passive online experience for most of us. Stare, click, repeat does not work in SL.
I'm happy that Linden Labs raised more money, hopefully they will push their service farther and make it easier for the uninitiated to get involved. More power to them.
Technorati Tags: second+life, virtual+reality
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March 27, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
My new German dating blogger friend Dirk sent me this PDF of Meetic's 4Q 05 financials. Operating profile up 118% to $9.2 million Euros, net profile up 110% to $8.2 million. This growth and the $83 IPO have put Meetic in a good place to continue growth.
resultats2005ve.pdf
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March 23, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Think Partnership (formerly CGI Holding Corporation) will sell it's online dating and education holdings to Mountains West Exploration. Sale includes $21M in cash an $9m in common stock.
Think purchased Vintacom Media Group in April 2005 along with the Real Estate School for $4.95 million in cash and $4.95 million in stock to acquire the two companies. Think went on to announce the price of Real Estate School as $4.4 million, which means Vintacom was purchased for approximately $5.5 million.
Think funded the cash portion of the purchase price of Vintacom using funds borrowed from Wachovia Bank, which has increased its line of credit for the Company from $5 million to $7.5 million, in anticipation of a $15 million facility. I'm not certain if this actually went through.
Think Partnership CEO Gerard M. Jacobs:
We are under no pressure to divest ourselves of these businesses as they are profitable. However, after due consideration, we believe that this transaction, if completed, would clarify our business model, and better focus our management time and capital on integration and growth opportunities for our online marketing and advertising business segment while allowing a significant pure play opportunity for these important but now, non-core assets.
I have said before, Think is like a smaller version of IAC but it's holdings have been all over the map. One thing they appear to be doing right is getting out of the dating industry while the getting is still good. I'm sure they realized that focusing on their existing stable of online marketing and advertising operations will reap greater profits.
With a caveat that I am not a finance guy, at first glance, the deal appears tenuous at best.
MWXI is a publicly traded shell corporation which does not currently have the capital needed to complete this transaction.
Think has done no due diligence on Mountains West, yet MWXI currently is controlled by individuals who are shareholders of THK and who are actively involved in certain other business transactions and companies with members of THK's management and Board of Directors.
Also announced this week, Think will sell $26.5 million of series A convertible preferred shares to fund its purchase of Litmus Media Inc. The company expects net proceeds of about $24.8 million from a private placement to institutional investors. News.
Litmus has built click fraud protected advertising distribution technologies for the performance-based advertising, search marketing, and e-retailing industries, provides merchants with a unique patent-pending order abandonment recovery technology called Second Bite, and operates a profitable portfolio of web properties including online yellow page services, leading local city directories, a meta-shopping search engine, product/coupon search sites, and an affinity-based web search engine.
Think also filed an 8-K on 3-22-06 stating:
...Think amended its agreement to acquire Litmus Media, Inc. to extend the outside closing date of the acquisition to April 5, 2006, to increase the stock portion of the merger consideration by 79,268 shares of common stock of the Company to a total of 3,250,000 shares, and to allow the pre-closing dividend to be received by the Litmus shareholders out of Litmus' cash on hand to be increased by $150,000.
Think announced that its letter of intent to acquire Crystal Reference Systems Limited ("Crystal Reference") has been terminated, after the Company and Crystal Reference failed to agree upon mutually acceptable definitive agreements.
Think Partnership Inc.'s revenues totalled $30.6M for the nine months ending 9-30-05, up from $11.5M. Net income totaled $1.14M, vs. a loss of $770K.
Think is trading down a penny at $2.00.
Mountains West is up 55% to 70 cents.
Yahoo Press Release.
Technorati Tags: think+partnership, vintacom
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March 13, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Shaddi.com wrote to clarify the numbers from the story last week which quoted a press release stating that it had 500,000 members paying $42 a month.
To give you a brief, Shaadi.com is the No.1 Matrimonial Services Provider which has gone on to become one of the largest Internet companies in India. Today Shaadi.com has over 5 million members worldwide(not 5 lakh as mentioned in your mail), and we have over 5 lakh success stories to our credit. Members on Shaadi.com start of with a free memberships and then pay only if they want to avail any premium services offered by the site. Therefore not all 5 million members are paid members.
(Ed Note: I think 5 lakh = 500,000).
Technorati Tags: shaddi
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March 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
From Venture Wire: Indian Online matrimonial service Shaadi.com said "I do" to an $8 million round, finding a suitor in WestBridge Capital Partners. This is the first round of capital for Mumbai-based Shaadi, whose official name is People Interactive Pvt. Ltd., and is yet another leading Internet company joining WestBridge's portfolio, which already includes Internet portal Times Internet Ltd.
Shaadi already holds about 50% of the online matrimonial market in India, according to Singhal, and will use the new capital to invest in its other Web sites - online dating site Fropper.com and astrology-oriented personals site AstroLife.com - as well as to make acquisitions.
The online service charges subscription fees starting at $42 for a three-month membership, and typically has about half a million members subscribing on average for six to nine months.
It's not often I come across a dating site that is ISO 9001:2000 certified.
Technorati Tags: shaddi
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March 2, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark executives will be talking about something or other at the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet & Telcom Conference.
The presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time at The St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, California. The presentation will be webcast live. To access the webcast, go to: http://www.spark.net/investor.htm. A replay of the presentation will be available until Friday, April 7, 2006.
Quite the generic communication, how about telling us what the topic is?
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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February 27, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Matchmaker, the original online dating site, has been purchased by Date.com. Astute followers of the online dating market know of Matchmaker's storied history, from it's BBS origins in the early 1980 to the February 2005 sale of Lycos, parent of Matchmaker, to Daum, at which time Matchmaker was put on the block for $2 Million. Other noteworthy milestones include Lyco's acquisition of Matchmaker for $44 million in 2000, as well as the $170 million asking price in 2004. Last I heard of Lycos and Matchmaker was it's launch of a meta-dating search engine in February 2005. the dating industry did not take to the Lycos Dating Search concept. The site has the same 4 partners it launched with last year.
Perhaps the acquisition of Matchmaker by Date.com company Avalance LLC, will spark new life into the beleaguered dating service.
More Matchmaker history.
Meir Strahlberg, President of Avalanche LLC and CEO of Date.com:
Through this acquisition, we are looking forward to breathing new life into the site and reinvigorating the brand. By wedding Date.com and Matchmaker.com with one shared technical platform, and a dual marketing strategy, we are excited about ushering Matchmaker back to the pinnacle of the online dating industry.
Matchmaker will continue to operate as an online dating website and, through a licensing arrangement, will share a technical platform with Date.com. Matchmaker will focus on marriage-minded singles, whereas Date.com will continue to cater to casual daters.
Meir tells me he is very pleased with the acquisition and resulting transition and that it was a long time in the works. The transitioning of accounts and profiles has gone pretty smoothly so far, something that could not be said of the SpringStreet move to FastCupid.com.
Matchmaker has successfully been migrated from the old servers and shares the Date.com technical platform. This is similar to recent homogenization of the majority of Spark Networks sites.
Meir says that every community was on a different server, 100+ in all. I know that the underpinnings of Matchmaker were old and clunky. that, on top of 100+ servers, must have been a real maintenance headache.
Upon finalizing the transaction, we quickly Re-launched the site with a similar look and feel to Date.com. Feedback was immediate and extremely positive, and we're already anticipating significant growth over the next year," said Meir Strahlberg, President of Avalanche LLC and CEO of Date.com. "In February alone, we've seen 8.45% growth over January, and we expect annual growth to be significantly higher than the industries growth rate.
Matchmaker's appeal to some was the "gated communities" concept, based on geographic area, sexual preference and age. This, and the many essay-style questions is featured, made the service seem less like a date-warehouse and more like a group of niche sites. Detractors vocally pointed out that for example, people in the US-Northeast could not communicate with people outside their area.
The demographics of both companies were similar enough that it made sense to enable Matchmaker members to meet Date.com members and vice versa.
Over time, you can expect to see Matchmaker evolving into an entity that can stand alone. However, for the immediate future, Matchmaker will share a technical platform with Date.com. Eventually, Matchmaker will be positioned toward the serious, marriage minded consumer. Date.com, meanwhile will continue to focus on all relationships, whether serious, casual, marriage minded, or just friends.
The matchmaker acquisition essentially doubles the size of profiles accessible by both Date.com and Matchmaker members.
Technorati Tags: daum, lycos, matchmaker
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February 24, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Meetic has acquired LEXA.nl, one of the largest dating sites in the Netherlands, for $13.6 million.
Meetic founder Marc Simoncini:
LEXA was acquired by purchasing assets including 30,000 subscribers at the end of December 2005 - compared with 224,618 subscribers... the deal boosts our subscriber based by 13%. Sales came to $4.7 million in 2005, with marketing expenses of only $1.78 million.
Meetic continues to pressure Match and other major dating sites in the European Union. Congrats to Marc on what looks like a smart acquisition.
Technorati Tags: meetic
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February 17, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Press Release has full details.
Revenue up a paltry 1% for 2005.
Loss of $6 million in 2004 to a profit of $6 million in 2005.
Total operating expenses down 10% to 10.8 million.
JDate revenue up 10% to $6.8 million. 73,000 singles, up 8%.
JDate is saturated, they have to increase ad spend to go to after non-web channels. Up 15% to $12.25. For the year, SAC (subscriber Acquisition Cost) was up 57%. JDate may be a verb, but growth is clearly stalled.
American Singles got hammered, 30% decrease in subscribers.
AmericanSingles revenue down 22% to $6.7 million.
AS SAC was flat in Q4 04 vs. Q4 05. 19% decrease for the year.
Reduced marketing spend for AS resulted in 3% revenue decrease to $16.6 million.
Double-digit SAC decrease overall across all business lines.
Spark runs an additional 25 relationship sites that are never mentioned. These 25 sites are responsible for 4Q revenue of $3.1 million, up 41%. This includes MingleMatch.
To be clear, the new technology platform is for reducing costs, not scalability, as CEO David Siminoff would have us believe.
The generic cookie cutter look & feel doesn't do it for me. Worse than FriendFinder Network or Relationship exchange. The sites look cheap and lack any personality. Several sites still need to be ported over to the new system.
Average paying subscribers for the Company's JDate segment were 73,700, during the fourth quarter of 2005, an increase of 8%, compared to 68,500, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, average paying subscribers for JDate were 70,500, an increase of 1%, compared to 69,800, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the Company's AmericanSingles segment were 91,900, during the fourth quarter of 2005, a decrease of 29%, compared to 129,400, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, average paying subscribers for AmericanSingles were 105,300, a decrease of 21%, compared to 132,500, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the Company's Other Businesses segment were 58,600, during the fourth quarter of 2005, an increase of 88%, compared to 31,100, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, average paying subscribers for the Company's Other Businesses were 44,200, an increase of 86%, compared to 23,800, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the Company, as a whole, in the fourth quarter of 2005, were approximately 224,200, a decrease of 2%, compared to 229,000, from the same period in 2004. For the year, average paying subscribers were 220,000, a decrease of 3%, compared to 226,100, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost(4) (SAC) for the Company's JDate segment in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $12.25, an increase of 15%, compared to $10.68, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, SAC for the Company's JDate segment totaled $12.70, an increase of 57%, compared to $8.09, for the year ended December 31, 2004. "SAC metrics for JDate are not an apples-to-apples comparison when you consider the marketing mix has shifted from a primarily online, direct marketing effort to one that now includes a wide mix of offline initiatives focused on continuing to strengthen the JDate brand," stated Siminoff. "Because of these efforts, we proudly feel that, within the Jewish community, JDate has become a verb."
SAC for the Company's AmericanSingles segment in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $36.66, compared to $36.52, in the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, SAC for the Company's AmericanSingles segment totaled $35.16, a decrease of 19%, compared to $43.29, for the year ended December 31, 2004. The decrease in SAC for AmericanSingles is a result of the re-orientation of the Company's marketing program during 2005, which resulted in a reduced AmericanSingles marketing spend.
SAC for the Company's Other Businesses segment in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $29.73, a decrease of 11%, compared to $33.51, from the same period in 2004. For the year ended December 31, 2005, SAC for the Company's Other Businesses segment totaled $32.05, a decrease of 8%, compared to $34.74, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
SAC for the Company, as a whole, in the fourth quarter of 2005 was $27.78, a decrease of 5%, compared to $29.37, from the same period last year. For the year ended December 31, 2005, SAC totaled $28.36, a decrease of 16%, compared to $33.85, for the year ended December 31, 2004.
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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February 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks, which owns various dating sites including JDate and American Singles, has been approved to trade on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol "LOV."
Spark has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 2000 under the symbol “MHJG.”
Technorati Tags: spark+networks
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February 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
The Knot enjoyed revenue up 27 percent in Q4 but expenses were up to $36.9 million, including 4.8 million in legal fees related to litigation with WeddingChannel.com. The Knot also tied up with Travel + Leisure magazine to launch a new joint venture in April.
Technorati Tags: theknot
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Posted by Dave Evans
From PaidContent, total revenue for Q4 was $13.3 million, up 87 percent compared to $7.1 million for the year-ago period.
Advertising services revenue for Q4 was $5.7 million, up from $2.1 million for the year-ago period.
Technorati Tags: planetout
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January 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Taking pages from the IAC playbook, CGI continues to gobble up companies and raise capital. With $17.5 million of fresh cash from Wachovia Bank, CGI has enough bank to continue the acquisition trend.
Kowabunga is most well-know property and likely a cash cow, I know they get some of my money every month. Many of the other companies seem like they were bought at a particular time for reasons that may not make as much sense today. European educational content, secure ad feeds and lot's of marketing companies fill out the roster. Just today, they announced the purchase of Morex, a company specializing in marketing to expecting mothers.
The synergy between the myriad companies in the CGI stable remains only partially clear. Interchange appears to be CGI's closest competitor, time to go look at the financials.
Technorati Tags: cgi, interchange
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January 24, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
BoingBoing says sex.com (not worksafe) has been picked up for a cool $14 million by a web development company called Escom. A social network is in the works.
Owner Gary Kremen should be familiar, he founded Match.com. I've covered the backstory here a few times which goes into details of how Cendant bought Match in 1997 for $8 million and flipped it a year later for $50 million. Those were the days.
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January 17, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Meetic, the gigantic EU dating sites, has taken a 70% stake in EfriendsNet, the online dating leader in China.
Founded in November 2003 and based in Beijing, eFriendsNet – the owner of efriendsnet.com web site launched in January 2004 - has rapidly become China’s leading social networking and dating Mobile Community Network. With roughly 4 million registered profiles, eFriendsNet provides web, wap, SMS and IVR services. eFriendsNet’s 2005 earnings totalled an estimated $2.8 million.
Marc Simoncini, Founder and CEO of Meetic:
MEETIC is happy to announce its entry onto the Chinese market via the strategic investment in eFriendsNet, which validates the development of the group’s market plan in line with the strategy announced at the recent IPO. This operation will definitely give us a new dimension and confers on Meetic the leadership in China.
I'm not sure how Europeans gauge the term "leader", does that mean most members total, most paying, least upset with the service, traffic, revenue or what?
Meetic (sorry Marc, I can't stand all upper caps) has dibs on the remaining 30% over the next four years. The 70% was paid for in cash.
Update: Marc tells me the $20-25 million USD is for the 100% valuation. They only have the China Alexa ranking, but most use their mobile anyway. EFN made several million dollars in revenue last year.
PaidContent link to press release PDF.
[tags: meetic]
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December 20, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
CGI Holding Corporation, which plans to seek shareholder approval to change its name to Think Partnership Inc. ("THK") today announced that the Company has entered into a letter of intent to acquire Litmus Media, Inc., which has developed and implemented revolutionary real-time "in the clickstream" click fraud detection and protection technology. By protecting advertisers on its ValidClick platform from click fraud, click-to-transaction conversion ratios are higher and therefore advertisers can justify paying a higher price per click, which in turn attracts website publishers to Litmus' profitable and rapidly growing ValidClick Network. Litmus has also developed and implemented a highly effective patent-pending abandoned shopping cart recovery technology called Second Bite, which has been demonstrated to increase sales for online retailers. The Company expects Litmus to add more than $4 million of pre-tax income to the Company during 2006.
More at Yahoo News.
[tags: litmus media, think partnership]
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December 9, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Cliff Kurtzman sent me a link to his article, The Acquisition of MySpace. Great stuff, a must-read if you're at all interested in the history of Myspace and want to know more about it's financials. Also talks about Friendster.
[tags: myspace]
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December 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Rafat Ali at Paid Content says that Great Hill Partners, the Boston-based PE firm which bought IGN in 2003, and then made a killing selling it to Fox, has bought a 20 percent stake in online dating network company Spark Networks (operator of JDate.com, among others).
Great Hills Partners has 1.2 billion under management. They purchased 6,000,000 shares, representing a 19.8 percent stake in the company.
As previously mentioned, Joe Shapira, one of the company’s founders and executive chairman of the company’s Board of Directors, has decided to resign from his operating role with Spark Networks.
I've got a call into Great Hill for more information, turns out their offices are right down the street from me.
[tags: great+hills+partners, spark+networks]
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December 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
What a day for the online dating industry. First Think, now Consumating.com announces a deal with CNET.
Over the past few months I've written and talked a lot about Consumating. The site caught my eye due to the use of dynamic profiles, tagging and other features not found on traditional dating sites. Perfect definition of a niche dating site.
The few times I complained to Ben that a must-have feature was missing or something was broken, he would code it up that night and the next day the new feature or fix would be in place. Nimble. They may not have 2 million profiles yet, and the site may be free, but looks like things are a-changing for the better for Consumating. CNET's backing, support and traffic will be of great importance if Consumating wants to join the big leagues. But remember, the site was started as a joke between friends.
I did an email interview with Ben to get his thoughts on the deal with CNET and what it means for Consumating and it's current members.
How did the deal with CNET come about?
A representative of CNET approached Adam and I about 6 months ago to discuss the possibility. The CNET folks are wizards at making this process go smoothly, so here we are.
Why is CNET buying your site?
CNET likes what Consumating is doing already - attracting geeks and bloggers and indie rockers and giving them something exciting and fun to do. They also like me - I've got good ideas about social networking and community. They're providing me with a lot of resources to do what *I* want to do, and I'm providing them with expertise that they can apply within their existing network of sites.
How is the deal structured? can you allude to how much/what you're getting? (Buy a new car, buy a house, buy an island?)
I can't really reveal the details of the deal, but it's a deal Adam and I are very happy with. I'm moving to San Francisco and will be living like 2 blocks away from CNET's HQ. I get a fancy desk with a nice view, and CNET even mentioned letting me throw a party or two in Consumating's name. I am so down with that.
Will the Consumating brand stick around?
Consumating will absolutely stick around. CNET is very in to the Consumating vibe, and wants us to remain independent and, you know, do our own thing. They are very hands off about it, which is exciting to me because I've been working on this virtually by myself for a long time and haven't stepped foot in a real office for 3 years!
Now what? Will you still drink beer and code up new features at night or putting on a suit to do business development deals at Bucks? How will your life change?
I'm moving to San Francisco with my gal and my dogs. I'll be going into an office. But I'll still be wearing my nose ring and my black teeshirts and I'll still stay up late furiously coding Javascript whenever I get an idea. That's just how it works for me - the mojo comes, and the code just flows out of my fingers. Getting paid to do it is certainly not going to hinder me!
Also, CNET is hiring me a developer! OMG. Like, someone else to do stuff on the site? INCREDIBLE.
Define how Consumating is "a different sort of thing." Are you saying less dating more social networking? CNET needs their own social networking site to tie together/communitize it's various properties?
It's not ONLY dating - What makes Consumating different than all the dating and social networking sites out there is that it is attempting to not just find COMPATIBLE people for you, but INTERESTING people -- people who share your weird, quirky interests. On Consumating, a guy who lives in the middle of nowhere who is in to D&D and anime and raising goats can find a girl who is ALSO into D&D, anime and goats. Where else are you going to find that?
How are you transitioning the site to it's new home? What resources have they made available?
Until yesterday, Consumating was running on 1 machine that I was borrowing from a friend - the code, the db, everything was running on 1 oldish machine. CNET's resources are obviously a bit deeper than that -- the app server serving the stuff now has 16 times as much Ram as the old box. Adding a tag is now instantaneous, whereas it used to take a second or two. It's so nice!
Anything else?
I am really excited about going to work for CNET. They have a philosophy about building web sites that really speaks to me, and is very much in line with the way I do things.
Congrats to Ben Brown and Adam Mathes!
Read the full Announcement.
Update: Rafat Ali wrote about CNET purchasing Consumating.com and linked to this blog several times, thanks Rafat!
Ben won’t say, but the rumor is that he got a big 6 figure check, an aggressive salary and great performance bonus opportuntity. I was not able to confirm the number, but I was told it was a low 7 figure number
More at Texas Venture Capital blog.
[tags: cnet, consumating]
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Posted by Dave Evans
Think Partnership (CGI Holding Corporation) is a cross between Barry Diller's IAC and Rupert Murdoch's Fox Interactive.
Today Think has announced additional acquisitions, finished the Vintacom deal and added a high-power executive to the team.
Think has acquired all of the stock of Vintacom in exchange for 1,095,618 shares of THK common stock and $2.75 million in cash, of which $465,000 was held back pending the resolution of certain potential liabilities. The shareholders of Vintacom will also be entitled to an earnout payment, half in cash and half in the form of THK common stock, if the average annual pre-tax earnings of Vintacom during the first twelve full calendar quarters following the closing exceed $1.1 million. The Company expects the acquisition to add at least $1.1 million to its pre-tax income annually, and to be accretive to earnings. The Company funded the cash portion of the purchase price using funds borrowed from Wachovia Bank, which has increased its line of credit for the Company from $5 million to $7.5 million, in anticipation of our $15 million facility being closed later this month.
Vintacom has hosted over 14 million dating profiles since 1999, has over 2 million current profiles in its database and adds, on average, 200,000 new profiles each month. Although most subscribers live in the United States or Canada, roughly 30 percent of the profiles listed on Relationship Exchange dating sites are international.
Press Release.
Also announced today: Think announced that Frederick P. Lyte has joined the Company's Board of Directors, current Director Xavier Hermosillo has joined the Executive Management team as Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations of the Company, and Steven "Pat" Martin is leaving his position as President and CEO of the Company's WebSourced subsidiary.
Press Release.
But wait, there's more. Think Partnership Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire iLead Media, an Industry Leader in Online Sales Lead Generation. Internet sales lead generation for home-based businesses. The Company expects iLead to add more than $3 million of pre-tax income to the Company during 2006. The letter of intent contemplates that THK will acquire iLead for an upfront consideration of $7 million in cash and $7 million in common stock.
Press Release.
Think borrowed the money to buy Vintacom and is closing a $15 million bank loan. Vintacom has pre-tax earnings of $1M and 100 employees, so revenue per employee is $10. No doubt the details of the financials will be held up to a certain amount of scrutiny and speculation in coming weeks.
Think's stable of 11 operating companies (search engine marketing, dating and several other un-related properties) are worth reviewing, disparateness and commonalities abound.
Barry and Rupert have regretted several seemingly straightforward acquisitions when shareholders cried foul. Is Think having an identity crisis or is it in the middle of executing a strategically sound growth period? THK is trading down 7% on today's news.
[tags: think+partnership, vintacom]
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November 18, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I came across a press release stating that "Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp., is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy."
H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit:
"This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in...Match promotes the policies of integrity to protect members, and yet they themselves, we allege, are misleading their entire customer base."
In a separate suit, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)'s personals service is accused of posting profiles of fictitious potential dating partners on its Web site to make it look as though many more singles subscribe to the service than actually do. Yahoo is accused with breach of contract, fraud and unfair trade practices.
Yahoo posting fictitious profiles? If they are responsible for all the fake Russian bride profiles on the site, they certainly deserve to be raked over the legal coals. But for some reason, I have a difficult time thinking Yahoo is responsible for the fakery.
The Match suit plaintiff claims a Match employee went out with him to make sure he didn't cancel his subscription. Talk about viral marketing! This is a classic, however I would be shocked if the allegations are true. Come to think of it, if I were a Match employee out on brand-oprtecting viral dating, I'd be asking for some serious overtime.
They would do better to leave the viral marketing to the experts and hire BzzAgent to have their bevy of "associates" out and about talking up the dating services instead of using company employees after-hours.
The news is sure to give legal counsel at major dating sites something to think about over the weekend.
The release mentions RICO, the organized crime-fighting tool as a possible legal tool.
[tags: match.com, yahoo personals]
Comments (53)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Legal
November 15, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
According to News.com, Investment firm Montegomery & Co. has been hired to find a buyer for Friendster. Again. Earlier this year they were asking $200 million, that price has been lowered to the $50 million range. Lack of a solid business model and the MySpace juggernaut have taken the bloom off the Friendster rose, to the point where Friendster is more of a dating site than anything else. Not often do we see a company squander such an opportunity, it's a shame.
Comments (3)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
November 14, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
My notes from the call.
No Q&A session due to Quiet Period
Full press release at Spark Networks News Room.
3rd amendment to S-1 filed today.
The company’s Registration Statement on Form 10, which will make Spark Networks an SEC reporting company, will be effective tomorrow, November 15, 2005.
Beginning on July 1, 2005, the company began accounting for share options in accordance with the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123 (R), Share-Based Payment ("SFAS 123 (R)"), which means the quarter ending September 30, 2005 is the first quarter in which the company reflected compensation expenses associated with share options in its generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) income statement.
Key Business Metrics
Total subscribers, 220,800 paying members, down 8%.
Compensation expenses reduced earnings by $1.4M.
3Q revenue $16.9M, down $1M
$605,000 compared to $2M loss last year
Net loss of $2.2 million, or $(0.08) per share
JDate
JDate is the largest religion focused site. Revenue of $6.5 million, an increase of 7%. Contribution margin
of 86%
$6.5M revenue for 3Q
69,600 Subscribers, up 2%
American Singles
Revenue down 23% to $7.2M
Subscribers, 98,600 down 30%
Other Businesses
Revenue up 86% to $3.3M. Results from MingleMatch, a recent Spark acquisition, drove 85% growth from the Other Business segment.
Subscribers up 72% to 52,600.
Subscriber acquisition cost (SAC)
Mention of new marketing management team and billboards in LA and New York.
Overall SAC
$30.23, a decrease of 19%
JDate
$15.84 up 79%
American Singles
$39.35 down 16%
Other Businesses
$28.08 down 30%
EBIDA performance up overall
[tags: american singles, jdate, spark networks]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | spark networks
November 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark 3rd Quarter 2005 financial results investor conference call is scheduled to take place on Monday, November 14, 2005 at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time.
Call Title: Spark Networks 3rd Quarter 2005 Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-800-370-0898
International: +1-973-409-9260
Is American Singles CPA still up in the stratosphere?
How is JDate performing?
When will the new look & feel launch?
And of course, when is the IPO?
[tags: spark networks]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | spark networks
November 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Bad boy Gary Kremen, original founder of Match.com, is slated to receive $65 million from Stephen Cohen, who has been arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana after being on the lam for four years after illegally taking over sex.com, a domain owned by Kremen. More at SiliconBeat.
[tags: siliconbeat]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Research
Posted by Dave Evans
Snapshot of details related to Match.com.
- Personals revenue up 33% (49.7M to 66M)
- Operating income up 472% (2.8M to 15.8)
- Paid subscribers up 19% (989.8M to 1.178M)
- International subscribers grew by 13%
Match is squeezing more money out of each subscriber and not by increasing subscription lengths. What they have done this quarter is increase pricing, spend a ton of money on advertising, and launched Chemistry.com. I wonder how much it cost to develop Chemistry.com?
There are a lot more online daters due to ongoing exposure, both through advertising and word-of-mouth. By picking up these subscribers, Match is getting into Yahoo Personals territory with these numbers.
Report
[tags: match, iac]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
October 25, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Details are thin, but it sounds like someone is trying to sue online dating companies that ignore 3-day cancellation notices. Over the summer a handful of lawyers contacted me to snap up copies of the Online Dating Industry Report. All within a two week period. Interesting.
Markus was on the LavaLife investor call and says: Acording to the press release, membership revenue declined by $400,000 during the same period last year it rose 600k. $60M ad spend this year. They make a lot more money on phone dating than web dating, that's for sure.
Spark's impending IPO remains just that.
[tags: finance, lavalife, spark networks]
Comments (3)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | spark networks
October 22, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Initial public offering was oversubscribed more than 12 times by institutional investors.
Story at Reuters chart from Yahoo Finance.
[tags: meetic]
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
October 21, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Happy birthday to me. Here are a few stock charts from various public dating company (via Yahoo Finance). I'll link them to individual research pages next week and add them to the sidebar.
[tags: finance]
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
Brad Greenspan, Intermix Media Inc.'s former chief executive, will pay $750,000 in penalties for his role in the company's bundling of hidden spyware that delivered pop-up advertising, the New York Attorney General's office said on Thursday. Intermix affiliate Acez Software has agreed to pay $35,000 in related penalties.
Press Release.
[tags: intermix, myspace]
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
October 14, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Shares in Meetic, which is active in 13 countries and boasts 14 million users, showed a 11.21-percent gain at 1200 GMT to 24.80 euros. The CAC 40 index of leading shares was 0.99 percent lower.
Meetic claims that 18,000 new users fill out their profile on the site each day by completing a brief registration form demanding personal details and preferences for a partner.
More than 3.9 million shares, the equivalent of 25 percent of the company, were sold by Meetic to finance future expansion.
Shares had begun trading on Thursday at 22.30 euros, at the top end of a trading range of 19.20-22.30 euros fixed during the preparation of the floatation.
The rise in the price of shares to 24.50 euros values the whole of the company at about 380 million euros.
Meetic is controlled by founder and chief executive Marc Simoncini, who controls 43.13 percent of the company and 55.42 percent of the voting rights.
Press Release.
[tags: meetic]
Comments (0)
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October 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Marc Simoncini's Eurpean online dating powerhouse, Meetic, next week will offer 570,387 existing shares and and issue up to 3.93 million new shares at between 19.20-22.30 euros. Meetic made a net profit of 2.7 million euros on sales of 21.3 million euros in 2004. The shares will be priced on Oct. 12, with first dealings on Oct. 13. Regardless of a somewhat-high 7x valuation of 2005 sales and 35 times 2005 earnings, fund managers are predicting the success of the deal.
Press release.
Update: Marc emailed to let me know that the funds raised (70-80 Million Euros) will be used "essentially to buy competitors" but would not comment on any sites specifically. You can be assured there are a lot of EU dating sites that are gearing up for acquisition mode right now. I'll have more on potential targets shortly.
[tags: meetic]
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 30, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
If all goes according to plan, Intermix will wed News Corp today at 6pm. More at PaidContent.
[tags: myspace]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 27, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Intermix has filed SEC documents detailing why they refused a proposal from Intermix founder Brad Greenspan which was based on complicated shareholder equity deal. According to PaidContent, the deal included prized social networking destination Myspace to be the sole company, with Greenspan at the head of the table. Here's the SEC filing.
Intermix CEO Richard Rosenblatt:
The board concluded that the proposed offer from Mr. Greenspan lacked credibility and did not constitute a proposal that was superior for our stockholders in comparison to the pending transaction with News Corporation. We found the proposal to be speculative and incomplete, creating obvious risks to our stockholders.
[tags: intermix, myspace]
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 26, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Staci @ PaidContent writes about Brad Greenspan, the disgruntled founder of Intermix Media precursor eUniverse.
Greenspan is leading an investor group called FreeMySpace LLC in a counter-offer for the company, which previously agreed to be acquired by News Corp. for $12 per share. Greenspan, who contends that price underestimates the company's value, says his group -- he's the only identified investor so far -- can offer $13.50 a share to shareholders for up to half of their shares; the shareholders would retain equity value. The Greenspan group also is asking for the Sept. 28 special meeting of shareholders to be moved back. FreeMySpace press release.
From Intermixed up:
Nielsen Netratings reports an almost doubling of online display advertising for Myspace from 6.3% of all ads in May up to 12.9% of all online advertising impressions delivered online in August.
[tags: myspace]
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 22, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark filed their Form 10, which is a general form for registration of securities, on September 16. I've been getting back into focus mode after a much-needed vacation and have tons of email to wade through, and respond to. In the meantime a quick overview, thanks Markus! Hopefully David at the Internet Stock Blog will weigh in with commentary.
The Offering
9 million shares given to directors at $3.81 as compensation.
ADSs offered by selling shareholders 33,269,160 ADSs (1)
Total ordinary shares outstanding after the offering, including ordinary shares underlying ADSs and GDSs 26,144,160 Ordinary Shares (2)
Use of Proceeds We will not receive any of the net proceeds from the sale of our shares by the selling shareholders. See “Use of Proceeds.”
Proposed Nasdaq National Market symbol SPRK.
Looks like they can raise around 40 million from the exercise of options.
- 8,997,750 ordinary shares issuable upon the exercise of outstanding options as of August 31, 2005, with exercise prices ranging from $0.90 to $9.74 per share and a weighted average exercise price of $4.16 per share;
- 530,000 ordinary shares issuable upon the exercise of warrants outstanding as of August 31, 2005, with an exercise price an exercise price of $2.57 per share; and
- 14,157,000 ordinary shares available for issuance under our share option schemes.
Update: Internet Stock Blog has more on the Spark IPO registration.
[tags: spark networks]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
September 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Match is charging $29.95 for a one-month trial subscription. Not sure how long this has been going on, last time I checked it was $24.95. In the past I have seen a $400 subscription fee, looks at though there is some price elasticity testing going on.
[tags: subscription cost]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
August 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Kreindler & Kreindler LLP (think $2.7 billion Vioxx settlement) has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders of Intermix Media, Inc., which includes MySpace, alleging that current directors, officers and controlling shareholders of Intermix designed a sale to News Corporation that benefited themselves at the expense of the Company and its public shareholders. The class action lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles.
The complaint alleges that instead of attempting to obtain the best terms for Intermix and its shareholders, the defendants structured the transaction to reduce their liability and maximize their gain.
Intermix at $12 a share does seem low (Disclaimer: I own MIX shares). I wonder what a more reasonable price would be?
Intermix Stockholder Meeting Scheduled For September 28.
Link to news release.
[tags: intermix, myspace]
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
August 30, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I missed the investor call this morning but judging from the press release, the numbers clearly show that JDate and American Singles remain the primary properties in the Spark portfolio.
Jdate revenue up 9% while it's Customer Acquisition Cost is up 90% and subsscriptions down 3%.
Overall, Customer Acquisition Costs were down.
American singles subscriptions down 18%.
"Other Businesses" subs up 106% and revenue up 54%.
Amazing to see that AmericanSingle acquisition costs were almost $54.
More to come on this as I have some time to digest the data.
SPARK NETWORKS REPORTS SECOND QUARTER 2005 FINANCIAL RESULTS
- JDate Revenue Grows 9% to $6.2 Million with 89% Contribution Margin in Q2 ’05
- Completes Acquisition of MingleMatch™, Inc.
- EBITDA1 Profit for Third Consecutive Quarter
- Launches Websites on New Technology Platform
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., August 30, 2005 - Spark Networks plc, a leading provider of online personals services, today reported second quarter 2005 financial results.
Second Quarter Highlights
“We are pleased to report that JDate continued its strong performance, with revenue increasing 9% and continuing to deliver exceptional contribution margins. This helped to generate our third consecutive quarter of EBITDA profit,” stated David Siminoff, Spark Networks President and CEO. “One of our primary goals for the past year has been to better manage our business so that we could quickly respond to changes, and our EBITDA performance over the past three quarters is evidence of that.”
Also among the highlights of the company’s quarter was the acquisition of MingleMatch, Inc. The MingleMatch portfolio of websites reflects a cross-section of religious, ethnic, special interest and geographically targeted communities. “A key component of our corporate strategy has been to complement JDate by launching businesses in other vertical affinity markets,” stated Mr. Siminoff. “The MingleMatch acquisition, which added ChristianMingle®, BlackSingles Connection™ and LDS Mingle™, among others, to our existing portfolio of websites, helped us to significantly accelerate that expansion.”
In addition, the company continued the development of its previously-announced new technology platform. The company expects the three-tier architecture, based upon distributed Service Oriented Architecture principles, to enable it to more rapidly develop new capabilities and enhance its ability to efficiently scale its websites. During the second quarter, three of the company’s websites, CollegeLuv™, Cupid® and Glimpse® launched on the new platform. The company expects to transition JDate and AmericanSingles® to the platform later this year, which will allow for the addition of new features and functionalities to those services as well.
Financial Results
The results for the second quarter reflect the company’s acquisition of MingleMatch, Inc., effective May 19, 2005.
EBITDA for the second quarter of 2005 was $368,000, compared to an EBITDA loss of $3.1 million in the same period last year. EBITDA for the six months ended June 30, 2005 was $3.4 million, compared to an EBITDA loss of $5.2 million, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Revenue for the second quarter of 2005 was $15.5 million, a decrease of 2%, compared to $15.8 million, from the same period last year. Revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2005 was $32.0 million, an increase of 4%, compared to $30.9 million, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
The company reported a net loss of $859,000, or $(0.03) per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2005, compared to a net loss of $4.1 million, or $(0.18) per share, in the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, the company reported net income of $1.1 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $7.1 million, or $(0.33) per share, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Segment Reporting2
The company reported second quarter 2005 revenue for its JDate segment of $6.2 million, an increase of 9%, compared to $5.7 million, from the same period last year. JDate revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2005 was $12.7 million, an increase of 10%, compared to $11.6 million, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Second quarter 2005 revenue for the company’s AmericanSingles® segment was $7.3 million, a decrease of 16%, compared to $8.7 million, from the same period last year. AmericanSingles revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2005 was $15.4 million, a decrease of 11%, compared to $17.3 million, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Second quarter 2005 revenue for the company’s Other Businesses segment was $2.0 million, an increase of 54%, compared to $1.3 million, from the same period last year. Other Businesses revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2005 was $3.9 million, an increase of 95%, compared to $2.0 million, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
“In the second quarter, we began to selectively increase marketing spending on AmericanSingles to capitalize on efficient marketing opportunities as they presented themselves,” stated Mr. Siminoff. “In the first quarter, we had re-oriented management of our marketing program and significantly cut spending, which impacted second quarter revenue results for AmericanSingles. We expect to continue to capitalize on efficient marketing opportunities as they arise.”
Business Metrics
Average paying subscribers for the company in the second quarter of 2005 totaled approximately 215,600, a decrease of 6%, compared to 228,400, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, average paying subscribers totaled 219,200, an increase of 1%, compared to 217,900, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the company’s JDate segment were 68,100, a decrease of 3%, compared to 70,100, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, average paying subscribers for the company’s JDate segment totaled 69,300, a decrease of 3%, compared to 71,200, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the company’s AmericanSingles segment were 109,000, a decrease of 18%, compared to 132,800, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, average paying subscribers for the company’s AmericanSingles segment totaled 115,300, a decrease of 11%, compared to 129,900, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Average paying subscribers for the company’s Other Businesses segment were 38,500, an increase of 51%, compared to 25,500, from the same period last year.
For the six months ended June 30, 2005, average paying subscribers for the company’s Other Businesses segment totaled 34,600, an increase of 106%, compared to 16,800, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost3 (SAC) for the company in the second quarter of 2005 was $31.11, a decrease of 23%, compared to $40.53, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, SAC totaled $27.35, a decrease of 20%, compared to $34.13, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
SAC for the company’s JDate segment was $13.82, an increase of 90%, compared to $7.26, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, SAC for the company’s JDate segment totaled $11.30, an increase of 76%, compared to $6.43, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
SAC for the company’s AmericanSingles segment was $41.30, a decrease of 23%, compared to $53.51, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, SAC for the company’s AmericanSingles segment totaled $32.68, a decrease of 26%, compared to $44.40, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
SAC for the company’s Other Businesses segment was $26.58, a decrease of 17%, compared to $32.08, from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2005, SAC for the company’s Other Businesses segment totaled $34.64, an increase of 8%, compared to $32.10, for the six months ended June 30, 2004.
Investor conference call:
The company will discuss its financial results during a live teleconference today at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time (US & Canada) and 6:30 p.m. Frankfurt time.
Call Title: Spark Networks plc 2nd Quarter 2005 Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-800-370-0898
International: +1-973-409-9260
About Spark Networks plc:
Spark Networks plc’s Global Depositary Shares trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) under the symbol “MHJG”. The Spark Networks portfolio of consumer websites includes, among others, JDate.com (www.jdate.com), AmericanSingles.com, BBWPersonalsPlus™.com, BlackSinglesConnection.com, ChristianMingle.com, CollegeLuv.com, Cupid.co.il, Date.ca®, Glimpse.com, JDate.co.il, and LDSMingle.com. The company was formed in England in 1998.
For More Information:
Investors: Mark Thompson
+ 1-323-836-3000
mthompson@spark.net
Media: Greg Liberman
+ 1-323-836-3000
gliberman@spark.net
1 EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
2 In accordance with Financial Accounting Standard No. 131, the company’s financial reporting includes detailed data on three separate operating segments. The JDate segment consists of the company’s JDate.com website and its co-branded websites. The AmericanSingles segment consists of the company’s AmericanSingles.com website and its co-branded websites. The Other Businesses segment consists of all of the company’s other websites and businesses and gives effect to the MingleMatch acquisition on May 19, 2005.
3 Direct subscriber acquisition cost is defined as total direct marketing costs divided by the number of new paying subscribers during the period. This represents the average cost of acquiring a new paying subscriber during the period.
[tags: finance, spark networks]
Comments (3)
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August 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Comments (0)
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August 26, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Given that they gave out 1,000,000 free memberships, one wonders what revenue numbers the staggering increase of 1000% are based upon.
This telling paragraph clearly compares how Eharmony and PerfectMatch market their services:
PerfectMatch's well funded competitor, Christian-oriented eHarmony, has turned to cable television with a reported $50 million ad budget. The PerfectMatch team, pioneers in the dating and relationship space, has picked up significant market share by acquiring premium brand partners and creatively leveraging the entertainment industry as a way to elevate its message above the online clutter.
Link.
[tags: eharmony, perfectmatch]
Comments (5)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
August 24, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Personals results were driven largely by a 13% increase in paid subscribers (997 million to 1.1 Million) and higher average revenue per paid subscriber. Personals profit growth was the result of higher revenue and lower operating expenses, including depreciation, partially offset by higher marketing expenses in connection with Match.com’s marketing campaign which began in Q1. Lower amortization of intangibles also contributed to higher operating income.
Link
[tags: match.com]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks plc will host an investor conference call to discuss its results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2005. The call is scheduled to take place after the close of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (US & Canada) and 6:30 p.m. Frankfurt Time.
Call Title: Spark Networks 2nd Quarter 2005 Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-800-370-0898
International: +1-973-409-9260
About Spark Networks plc:
Spark Networks plc’s Global Depositary Shares trade on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) under the symbol “MHJG”. The Spark Networks portfolio of consumer websites includes, among others, JDate®.com, AmericanSingles®.com, BBWPersonalsPlus™.com, BlackSinglesConnection™.com, ChristianMingle®.com, CollegeLuvTM.com, Cupid.co.il™, Date.ca®, Glimpse®.com, JDate.co.il, and LDSMingle™.com. The company was formed in England in 1998.
For More Information
Media: Greg Liberman
+ 1 323 658 3010
gliberman@spark.net
Investors: Mark Thompson
+ 1 323 836-3000
mthompson@spark.net
[tags: spark networks]
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
August 16, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From PaidContent:
No specific breakdown of revenues from MySpace was provided, but the division of which it was part of "Network segment" grew 106 percent to $12.7 million, up from $6.2 million for the same period last year.
From the filing on MySpace acquisition: "In connection with the Merger, on July 18, 2005, the Company [Intermix] exercised its option to acquire the outstanding equity interest [47 percent] of MySpace that it does not already own for approximately $69 million."
Completion of the MySpace purchase is scheduled to occur on October 14, 2005.
Also in the SEC filing, a bunch of details about current and previous litigations against Intermix, the $7.5 million settlement with Attorney General of the State of New York related to adware settlement.
[tags: intermix, myspace]
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
August 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
According to the New York Times (reg req's) , instead of waiting for an IPO, Eharmony founders are cashing in on their recent $110 million fundraising efforts.
Supposedly, 116 people benefited financially when the company, which was started in 1999, announced last December that it had raised $110 million. The word within the venture capital community is that less than $30 million of that sum went into the company coffers.
This type of deal is happening more often. Pay out some raised capital to executives and early employees, and ease the desire to go public or worry about losing it all.
Who could buy Eharmony at this point? Yahoo is the only company out there with the resources available. Match could, but that money might be better spend fixing their site and attracting new members from cheaper properties.
[tags: eharmony]
Comments (18)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | eharmony
Posted by Dave Evans
Single Again magazine, an award winning website, on the web since 1997, receives an average of 1 million hits per year. High viewer survey and “stickyness” rating. Content driven site, with many regular contributors and authors, articles and archives. Over 200 quality links, with many live affiliate programs, including promotional merchandise site with ready to order items. All website design related files and images will be provided on disc and webmaster will upload files to buyer’s server upon completion of purchase. Purchase includes a confidential subscriber email list and small requester/subscriber list for accompanying hard copy newsletter. Also secondary domain names currently part of our business plan. Purchase includes rights to all back printed magazine information/copies, advertising files, all previous articles on disk, singles books for review library, advertising and editorial leads. Also surveys and results from a seven-year singles market/single again viewers in-depth survey. Webmaster and publisher will assist through transition, with terms.
Asking price on eBay (item # item number, 7536479230) is a million dollars.
[tags: ebay, singles]
Comments (6)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
July 30, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Lavalife flat at 600k members, and is a dispointment for Vertrue.
Projected 10% growth in 2006.
Advertising to be stopped in US market. (They were major major spyware advertiser).
Major shift to advertising and spending money in the canadian market and a push of mobile.
Lavalife starting to cross-sell with their other companies, such as their dieting company.
To listen to the audio replay, call (866) 347-5812.
Thanks Markus.
[tags: lavalife]
Comments (4)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
July 28, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
July 27, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
More rumors that True has been trying to sell itself to Yahoo and that Yahoo has turned them down. The rumors that True has lost a lot of money to date aren't difficult to imagine based on projected paying customers numbers, advertising spend and burn rate.
[tags: true.com]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
Word on the street is the SpringStreet was acquired by Friendfinder. More details to come soon. I'm guesstimating the asking price was $2-3M. It would be surprising if they paid any more than that. SpringStreet does not command the premium pricing of other services, it's been on the block for many moons and AOL recently dumped it for Match.
[tags: friendfinder, springstreet]
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July 20, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Bill Burnham blogs about how well VC's did in the Intermix deal. Starting with how Intermix went from a delisted stock to the # 1 social networking site in two years, Burnham goes on to detail the deals put together by Redpoint and Vantagepoint.
Rafat Ali's Paid Content has a good roundup on the Intermix/Newscorp, including a link to Corante's very own Danah Boyd, who blogs over at Many2Many.
Paid Content's latest buyout list includes Userplane and ton of leading social networking and RSS companies.
Things are heating up again, can't you just feel it?
[tags: intermix, many2many, userplane]
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July 19, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Staci Kramer at Paid Content interviews Fox Interactive President Ross Levinsohn about the Intermix acquisition. Lot's of great details here.
Fox will nearly double its traffic by adding 27 million-plus unique users for roughly $21.48 a piece.
The deals comes with pitfalls. Some people think MySpace may have already jumped the shark, others are waiting for it to follow Friendster as the next hot thing to go lukewarm.
Intermix has pushed in recent months to clear up its reputation. "All that stuff was related to previous management but they've cleaned up," says Levinsohn.
Don't look for a rebranding of MySpace to FoxSpace.
This isn't the last acquisition.
[tags: intermix, myspace, paid content]
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Posted by Dave Evans
CGI Holding Corp. announced that is has acquired Real Estate School Online for $4.4M.
Originally mentioned in April, from the news we can deduct that Vintacom was purchased for approximately $5.5M.
Tip of the calculator to Markus for this one.
[tags: cgi, webdate]
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Posted by Dave Evans
As part of the deal, Intermix exercised its option to acquire the 47 percent of MySpace.com that it does not already own.
MySpace.com and Intermix's more than 30 sites will become part of News Corporation's newly formed Fox Interactive Media unit.
Intermix attracts about 27 million users to its sites specializing in entertainment, humor, gaming and social networking, as well as sharing or sampling of pictures, music and video.
The site atttacts about eight percent of all ads on the Internet, putting it in the company of giants Yahoo, Google and America Online.
News Corporation announced that it entered into a voting agreement with VantagePoint Venture Partners, the largest stockholder of Intermix. The agreement provides that VantagePoint will vote its shares, representing approximately 22.4 percent of the outstanding shares of Intermix, in favor of the transaction.
Press release.
[tags: intermix, myspace]
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July 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Fairfax, publisher of the The Sydney Morning Herald, today said it had bought the privately owned online dating service RSVP.com.au for a whopping $38.92 million ($29M USD).
Fairfax group executive Alan Revell said RSVP had solid revenue growth, high margins and strong cash-flow generation.
RSVP's number one position reflects its approximately 600,000 members and a well-regarded, respected brand. As well as online dating, RSVP was the first site in Australia to offer mobile dating through 3, Optus Zoo and Telstra i-mode.
John Fairfax said the business was expected to generate earnings before tax of at least $4 million in the 2006 financial year.
Fairfax will offer RSVP the same way publishers in the US partnered with SpringStreetNetworks to offer online personals across media and publishing websites.
Full story.
[tags: fairfax]
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Finance
July 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Much ado about Alexa rankings lately. It's time to take a hard look at developing an industry standard for ranking dating sites. This is a first pass, hopefully it can be refined over time with feedback and turn out to be something helpful to the industry, advertisers and consumers.
The dating industry, and one could argue that website in general, need a ranking system that is resilient enough to react to changing traffic inflation tactics like spyware, toolbars, link farms and other more uncommon methods on the horizon.
One that takes into consideration the myriad sites out there, paid, free, inexpensive, credit-based, subscription based. Long duration members vs. short, high value vs. low. Getting nookie vs. getting married.
A question to you then. What are the metrics you would use to develop a ranking system that fairly and accurately represents the entire online dating industry?
Some example metrics:
# visitors
# members
# paying members (customers)
% conversion rate
membership duration
customer satisfaction
customer success
Before deciding on the metrics, we need to think about the overall goals of a ranking system. Why is a dating site's Alexa, Comscore or Hitwise rank so important?
An Excel spreadsheet from your CFO and another from the membership director can give you a good look into how your company is doing. Does it really matter if a competitor has N number more profiles than you do?
As long as you're making money and growing your business and delivering what the customer expects, what's the big deal? Consumers most certainly don't judge their decision solely on traffic ranking. They don't say, "this site is free, but it's large and I like the ads, so I'm going to join it." They watch tv, listen to radio ads, surf the Interweb and ask their friends for advice.
If the industry is infatuated with traffic rank, to what ends?
Pre-money valuation?
Preparing to sell your membership list?
Advertising?
Marketing?
Sale of company?
More eyeballs = more ad dollars. However, more members does not necessarily mean better customer experience.
Small niche site with high-value members = more ad dollars.
How would Userplane's ad network value different sites? If I understand correctly, at the moment it's a run-of-network deal, in the future it will be more targeted, at least one would hope.
As an advertiser, things are shifting. I used to think I wanted 50,000 eyeballs. What I really want are the 500 that matter most, that are ready to buy. The high-value eyeballs.
Free sites are made up of relatively low-value members. They are not so serious about dating, mostly giving it a try. Arguable point, yes. Let's have at it. Free dating sites rely on advertising, it's all about the eyeballs. Free sites like Plentyoffish and WebDate make decent money off of advertising, at least that is what I am led to believe.
What about geographic ranking? 500,000 members. Whatever. How many are in my aggregated zip code area? Dating sites would never publish this kind of information, it's too transparent. Consumers would love it. The old "N number of people online" is only useful if you have chat, otherwise who cares if/when people are visiting the site?
Mid-priced subscription-based sites are geared more towards serious daters, although a good portion are casual daters.
Some subscription-based sites try to undercut the competition on price. This hardly ever works. They end up with low-value members. A certain slice of the online dating demographic use price as a filter. Not enough sites leverage this. Price point is a metric as well. Value-per-dollar would be an interesting way to measure a site, but too much trouble to figure out.
If Site A charges $9.95 per month and has 500,000 member and Site B charges $24.95 and has 34,000, which site should be ranked higher? It's a quality vs. quantity argument.
How do you define satisfaction or success? Success for the dating site company is rarely aligned with the goals of it's members. Customer satisfaction is not something we hear about often enough in the industry.
If you're a top 10 site, your popularity is based on the total amount of active profiles and paying members and customer satisfaction. [Insert discussion about definition of active profiles.]
More members tends to attract more members.
High quality members bring additional high-quality members.
Define high-quality members. 450,000 free members means absolutely nothing to an advertiser, it's just a number, and they have no way of judging it past what you tell them about your membership demographics. You're never honest with them anyway, because you would never get their money if you were, and they know that.
Is a dating site "better" because people vote with their wallets and stick around longer?
"I've been on this dating site for 6 months and I can't find anyone decent."
You have extended the lifetime of the customer, yet have failed to satisfy their objective. The promise has been broken, unwritten or not. And your site gets the reward of getting ranked higher than a site that does it's job faster and more efficiently.
Is a higher-percentage of long term customers a good or a bad thing?
One would think from a consumer perspective that high churn rate is a good thing.
Do you think people actually enjoy the online dating experience? That number is probably a lot lower that we would like to think.
How can a dating site improve the experience for members and extend the duration of the membership? What metrics can we use to gauge how effective a dating site is? Relying on # of marriages is one way to look at it, but not the only way.
There's a lot more to this discussion, like I said, this is a starting point. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Maybe I'm way off on this, maybe all the industry need is Alexa and Hitwise, why air the dirty laundry or bother self-policing or becoming more transparent when things are going along just fine as they are?
Technorati Tags: alexa
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July 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
PayPal has launched it's own merchant processing/gateway product called PayPal Website Payments Pro. Customers do not need a PayPal account to pay with their credit cards.
$20.00 USD monthly fee No monthly fee until 10/31/2005
No setup fees
No cancellation fees
Transaction Fees
2.2% to 2.9% + $0.30 USD
(Thanks Edward!)
Technorati Tags: paypal
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June 30, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From TheDeal.com:
Beliefnet Inc. didn't look to the heavens for its latest round of funding, but rising spirituality across the country did help the multifaith online media company land $7 million in new venture capital in a funding led by the Boston office of Softbank Capital.
Beliefnet also has an online dating component, called Soulmatch, where people are matched based on "spiritual chemistry." Much of the site's content is free, though there are some paid products, including an e-mail-based course called "Search for Jesus."
With one bankruptcy under it's belt, BeliefNet continues to burn through funding, $33 million to date.
This is a great quote from Steven Waldman, CEO of Beliefnet,
People are waking up to spirituality and Internet advertising as a business model.
Amen to that.
Tags: beliefnet
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| Category: Finance
June 27, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
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June 24, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
$12 million over 12 months.
$3 million in 2005.
$9 million in 2006.
150,000 shares of Spark stock, worth approximately $1 million at time of transaction.
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| Category: Finance
May 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Criterion Capital Management, a San Francisco based Investment Firm further invested in shares of Spark Networks plc (MHJG: Prime Standard Frankfurt). Criterion currently holds 11.07 percent of Spark Networks' outstanding 25,540,982 shares.
Story
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May 24, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Two press releases about Lemontonic today. First is that Lemontonic will be acquired by Silverback Media. The second states that energy company Pioneering Technology is doing a reverse takeover of Lemontonic. Silverback release here, takeover release is here.
SILVERBACK MEDIA TO ACQUIRE LEMONTONIC BUSINESS
TSX VENTURE: LEM-X FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TORONTO, ONTARIO MAY 24, 2005 Lemontonic Inc.(Lemontonic or the Corporation) (TSX Venture: LEM-X) today announced details concerning its proposed reorganization (the Lemontonic Reorganization) involving the sale of its existing online dating business to Silverback Media Limited (Silverback Media).
The Lemontonic Reorganization will be a non-armís length transaction as Martin Doane, a director of the Corporation, is a director and officer of Silverback Media. Summary of the Proposed Transaction Lemontonic has entered into a letter agreement dated April 25, 2005 with Silverback Media, pursuant to which Lemontonic has agreed in armís length negotiations (Martin J. Doane represented Silverback Media and Mark Pavan, the President of Lemontonic, represented Lemontonic) to sell its existing online dating business to Silverback Media for a purchase price of CDN$15.2 million to be payable by the issuance of shares of Silverback Media with a value per share to be determined (the Lemontonic Reorganization) based upon the financing price of Silverback Media. As part of the Lemontonic Reorganization, Lemontonic may first transfer its existing online dating business to a wholly-owned subsidiary and then may dividend 80% of the shares of the subsidiary to the shareholders of Lemontonic as of a record date to be determined, subject to regulatory approval. Lemontonic intends to distribute 78.5% of the Silverback Media shares to the shareholders of Lemontonic as of a record date to be determined, and 20% will be retained by Lemontonic.
Pursuant to the employment agreement of Mark Pavan, the President of the Corporation, he is entitled to a bonus of 1.5% of the sale price of the online dating business of Lemontonic. Pursuant to the Lemontonic Reorganization, the parties have agreed Mr. Pavan will be paid his bonus by the issuance of 1.5% of the total share consideration being paid by Silverback Media to Lemontonic, or the subsidiary of Lemontonic, as applicable, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval. After completion of the Lemontonic Reorganization in August 2005, it is expected Lemontonic will have net cash assets of approximately $850,000 and no material liabilities.
Lemontonic has also announced a proposed business combination with Pioneering Technology Inc. (the Business Combination). See the press release dated today of Lemontonic entitled ìPioneering Technology Inc. to Complete Reverse Takeover of Lemontonic Inc.
About Silverback Media
Silverback Media is a private company recently established to accumulate various interactive online media businesses, with an international reach and an emphasis on the social networking space.
Silverback Media has entered into a letter agreement to acquire a private online dating business with revenue of CDN$5 million per year (the Silverback Media Acquisition).
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May 23, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks plc, a leading provider of online personals services, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of MingleMatch, Inc., a company that operates religious, ethnic, special interest and geographically targeted online singles communities.
MingleMatch's brands, which include, among others, Black Singles Connection, Christian Mingle, LDS Mingle, BBW Personals Plus, Military Singles Connection and Single Parents Mingle
David Siminoff, president and chief executive officer of Spark Networks:
Singles identify with communities which revolve around specific needs and interests. This acquisition reflects our commitment to creating affinity-focused online personals that provide the highest quality experience for our members.
press release
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May 6, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
More on this on Monday, I've got to go find my seersucker suit for tonight's Derby party.
Revenue for the first quarter of 2005 was $16.5 million, an increase of 10%, compared to $15.1 million, from the same period last year.
The company reported net income of $2.0 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2005, compared to a net loss of $3.0 million, or $0.14 per share, in the same period last year.
EBITDA(1) for the first quarter of 2005 was $3.0 million, compared to an EBITDA loss of $2.2 million in the same period last year.
Segment Reporting(2)
The company reported first quarter 2005 revenue for its JDate segment of $6.5 million, an increase of 10%, compared to $5.9 million, from the same period last year.
First quarter 2005 revenue for the company's AmericanSingles segment was $8.1 million, a decrease of 5%, compared to $8.5 million, from the same period last year.
First quarter 2005 revenue for the company's Other Businesses segment was $2.0 million, an increase of 196%, compared to $663,000, from the same period last year.
Business Metrics
Average paying subscribers(3) for the company in the first quarter of 2005 totaled 222,700, an increase of 7%, compared to 207,400, from the same period last year.
Average paying subscribers for the company's JDate segment were 70,400, a decrease of 3%, compared to 72,300, from the same period last year.
Average paying subscribers for the company's AmericanSingles segment were 121,600, a decrease of 4%, compared to 126,900, from the same period last year.
Average paying subscribers for the company's Other Businesses segment were 30,700, an increase of 274%, compared to 8,200, from the same period last year.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost(4) (SAC) for the company in the first quarter of 2005 were $23.84, a decrease of 14%, compared to $27.82, from the same period last year.
SAC for the company's JDate segment was $9.01, an increase of 58%, compared to $5.71, from the same period last year.
SAC for the company's AmericanSingles segment was $25.61, a decrease of 28%, compared to $35.75, from the same period last year.
SAC for the company's Other Businesses segment was $46.97, an increase of 46%, compared to $32.14, from the same period last year.
Press release is here .
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May 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Personals revenue grew by 11% to $54.2 million, driven primarily by a 6% increase in paid subscribers and higher average revenue per subscriber. International subscribers grew 24% excluding declines at uDate.
Personals Operating Income Before Amortization declined by 14% to $5.4 million, resulting mainly from higher customer acquisition costs relating to the company’s new marketing campaign. Operating income grew by 54% to $4.4 million, reflecting lower non-cash distribution and marketing expense and amortization of intangibles.
Revenue: $54.2M, up 11% from Q1 04 (48.8)
Operating Income: $4.4M, up 54%(2.8)
Operating income before amortization: $5.4M, down 14%(6.3)
Paid subs (000's): 1,074.5, up 6% from 1,011.7
Higher acquisition costs were expected. For perspective, eHarmony is spending upwards of $5M a month on marketing. Only 63,000 new paying members, talk about a company ripe for a conversion marketing program. 30 dating sites, which averages out to 2,000 new members per site over 12 months. That's 175 new members per month per service.
Full report is here.
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May 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks will host an investor conference call to discuss its results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2005. The call is scheduled to take place after the close of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Thursday, May 5, 2005 at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (US & Canada) and 6:30 p.m. Frankfurt Time.
Call Title: Spark Networks 1st Quarter 2005 Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-877-241-6722
International: +1-706-634-2477
Conference ID: 5883826
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Posted by Dave Evans
Shares of Lemontonic have been halted on the Canadian stock exchange. LEM was trading at $.15 when the delisting occurred. Chart here.
4Q report is here.
Ironic banner ad found above delisting information:
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May 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Singlesburg.Com emailed to say they are still trying to find a buyer for their website. Actually, they have a few hundred dating site domain names, which they are trying to unload for $150,000. They are open to any reasonable offer based on market fair value of domain names, not database or software. Domain names are about $1k a piece. The website is free. Localized domains are useful, but a lot of the names are of dubious value IMHO.
workingsingles - who's single and not working?
vanuatusingles - have you ever bee to vanatu?
bassassingles - ???
Mergernetwork has 25 dating sites for sale. Reading the descriptions of the dating sites is like deciphering apartment rental ads.
"Superb front-end and back-end design" means they hired their cousin to build the site from scratch and he did the graphics too. Hardly any customers.
"Recession proof ind. in stress free fun wrkng environ. For $75k investor will get 17.5% of co. or receive interest on $60k @ 8% pd out over 5 yrs (int only for 1st 3 yrs.) Currently 250 members in DB."
Let me get this straight. $75 grand gets you 17% of the company, which has 250 members. Sounds like a bargain.
I'm sure there are a few values to be had if you did enough due diligence, but with no way to easily measure the quality of the membership database, most of these sites seem like a real crap shoot.
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April 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Marc Simoncini, chairman of Meetic, is planning on taking the company public in the fall. Marc sent me some of the French press release, which I've run through Google Translate. Marc made sure to personally translate that they are shooting for a $300-450M USD valuation.
PARIS, April 8 (Reuters) - the site of meetings on Internet Meetic envisages to at least put a quarter of its capital out of Stock Exchange, for raising between 50 and 75 million euros, reads one Friday in the daily newspaper the Echoes. Marc Simoncini, chairman of Meetic, quoted in the financial daily newspaper, plans to conclude this operation between September 15 and next 15 October. The financial establishments selected develop the company, which counts 11 million registered Net surfers, between 200 and 300 million euros. Meetic intends to carry out this year a sales turnover ranging between 40 and 50 million euros, is the double of that of 2004, for a rough surplus of exploitation from 8 to 10 million.
Paris-based analyst Olivier Beauvillain of consultancy Jupiter Research predicts revenues of the leading European dating Web sites will more than double over the next five years, from $200 million to $450 million. Meetic will book around $55 million in sales this year.
More details from TheDeal:
Meetic, owned by Ilius SA of Boulogne-Billancourt, has raised $8.7 million in its first round of venture capital financing from Paris-based AGF Private Equity, owned by Allianz AG of Munich, in October 2004. The investment gives AGF a minority stake in the profitable Internet business, Simoncini, the French entrepreneur who sold his last online venture to Vivendi Universal SA four years ago for €274 million. CEO Simoncini told French news site Le Journal du Net that he maintains 80% of meetic.fr after this round. The startup will use the new funds to expand in the coming year into six new countries in Asia and boost its marketing in Europe. The multilingual site has about 1 million paying subscribers in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. The company posted net profit of €4.5 million on sales of €16 million in 2003.
Click here to view all ODI posts on Meetic.
[ UPDATE: Meetic is not supposed to communicate figures about our IPO before the IPO. Reuters wrote the article without any confirmation from Meetic.]
From Marc:
What I can confirm is: we plan an IPO for S2 2005. Meetic, owned by Ilius SA of Boulogne-Billancourt, has raised $8.7 million in its first round of venture capital financing from Paris-based AGF Private Equity, owned by Allianz AG of Munich, in October 2004. The investment gives AGF a minority stake in the profitable Internet business, Simoncini, the French entrepreneur who sold his last online venture to Vivendi Universal SA four years ago for €182 million. CEO Simoncini told French news site Le Journal du Net that he maintains more than 50% of meetic.fr after this round. The startup will use the new funds to expand in the coming year into six new countries in Asia and boost its marketing in Europe. The multilingual site has more than 1 million cumulated paying subscribers in 16 countries. The company posted EBITDA €4 million on sales of €22 million in 2004 (January to December) and plan €40/50 million of sales and €8/10 million of EBITDA.
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April 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
AdvancedTele.com has purchased Spark Network Services, a provider of interactive, non-traditional revenue sources to media affiliates, in an all-cash transaction. Spark is a division of Infinity Broadcasting, with over 400 affiliates.
Advanced Internet’s first online dating product, WebFriends, was introduced in 1998. In 2001, WebFriends was sold to industry-leader, Match.com.
Bob Bentz, co-owner and director of marketing and sales for AdvancedTele.com:
This is a very strategic acquisition for us in that it expands our voice personals base of accounts, gives us a direct MCI 900 deal, and allows us to sell additional products to its broadcasting customers.
Spark Network Services admits that their online database of singles is still small and growing and that their conversion rate is 14.4%! Currently, MatchLink® Web is the focus of their product development effort.
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March 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
TheKnot, the wedding resource site and company, is getting out of the backwaters of the over-the-counter trading and listing on Nasdaq national market, under the stock symbol KNOT.
The company has made some good moves into broadband content and diversifying beyond just the wedding market, with TheNest.com. Press release
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March 25, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Cheryl Meyer at The Deal has an in-depth look at the online dating industry financials and investment. This is a must-read article with lots of new information about funding and new market entrants.
Best quote by far is from David Simonoff, CEO of Spark Networks:
If Yahoo! or Match bought us, we would be the swing vote that would give them bragging rights to be the online mass market Internet personals company.
The acquiring company would also be saddled with all the financial, marketing and branding baggage that Spark brings to the table.
Simonoff, who took over at the company last year, says Spark has been approached by suitors for two years and this year will make its own acquisitions or consider "other scenarios," such as an expansion into other verticals, or a possible sale. San Francisco equity management firm Criterion Capital Management took a 7.4% stake in Spark last fall.
The article goes on to mention opportunities in Europe, new features such as anonymous contact through mobile phones, new market entrants and a great overview of funding that has occurred in the dating industry during the last year.
It closes with a quote from eHarmony's CEO Greg Forgatch, who says, for now, his company is staying focused on its main goal: lowering the divorce rate:
We are about one thing: building lifelong relationships for serious-minded singles," he says. "We're not a date for Friday night.
Companies who target serious daters continue to raise the most money, land the best deals and have the best cross-marketing deals. When are the value-added service providers going to get in there an raise the bar, plug the holes and offer the features and services that daters will use, whether through their dating site or as standalone services?
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March 18, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
A little over a year ago Cardservice International decided to stop offering merchant accounts to dating sites. The change in terms of service came after Visa changed its regulations regarding online dating sites. Since January of 2004, dating websites have been required to register as a high-risk merchant with Visa at a cost over $1,000. The registration process takes 4-6 weeks on average. This effects more than just Cardservice International, many other payment processors are cracking down on dating sites and other high-rick merchants. Mike Jones is compiling a list of dating site friendly payment processors. Learn more at the Userplane blog.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Legal
Posted by Dave Evans
Internet Stock Blog talks about rising marketing costs at a number of companies, including Spark Networks and Planet Out.
LGBT - PlanetOut.com
Sales and marketing was $2.6 million versus $1.5 million. Revenue of $7.1 million was up 34%, in line with consensus. Noted: Yet another Internet company with rocketing marketing costs. From the press release: "The company increased marketing activity in 2004 as part of its strategy to provide long-term benefits to its brands, particularly Gay.com. As a result, sales and marketing costs for full year 2004 were $8.8 million, compared to $6.6 million for full year 2003. Sales and marketing costs were $2.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2004, compared to $1.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2003." And later: "Guidance for first quarter revenue, Adjusted EBIDTA, and net income (loss) reflects several factors, including seasonality in advertising revenues.
SPRK - Spark Networks
JDate accounted for less 2004 revenue than AmericanSingles.com ($24 million versus $35 million) but much more gross profit ($22 million versus $10 million). The reason? Direct marketing costs for JDate were only 7% of revenues, versus 71% for AmericanSingles.com. Subscriber acquisition costs were dramatically lower ($8.09 versus $43.29) and monthly revenue per subscriber higher ($28.42 versus $22.16).
From the S-1: "In general, the costs of online advertising have recently increased substantially and we expect those costs to continue to increase as long as the demand for online advertising remains robust. If we are not able to reduce our other operating costs, increase our paying subscriber base or increase revenue per paying subscriber to offset these anticipated increases, our profitability will be adversely affected."
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March 14, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
David Jackson, over at Internet Stock Blog, has taken a fascinating look at the Sparks Network IPO filing. He makes the point that Sparks will be closely watched by investors since its filings and earnings results should cast light on the online dating businesses run by Yahoo! and IAC.
Some of the key stats he mentions:
- Operating expenses (excluding direct marketing) were 70% of revenue, down from 80% in 2003.
Net loss was $11.6 million.
- Revenue mix: JDate accounted for $24 million, AmericanSingles.com for $35 million, and other web sites for $6 million.
- Average monthly subscriber churn for JDate.com was 25.8% and for AmericanSingles.com was 35.6%.
- 226,100 average paying subscribers, up 79.7% over 2003.
- Subscriber acquisition costs: JDate $8.09 (versus $4.39 in 2003), AmericanSingles.com $43.29 (versus $45.70 in 2003).
David has done a fantastic job of deciphering the filing documents. This is an absolute must-read article if you're interested in PPC rates, customer acquisition costs and online dating site marketing costs.
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March 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
David Ehrlich at TheDeal writes more about the Spark IPO filing:
The Beverly Hills, Calif.-based owner of AmericanSingles.com, JDate.com and CollegeLuv.com filed Thursday for a $75 million IPO of American Depositary Shares. The offering from Spark Networks plc, formerly MatchNet plc, is underwritten by Piper Jaffray & Co. as lead manager and sole book-runner and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC and ThinkEquity Partners LLC acting as co-managers. The company withdrew plans for an offering in August 2004, citing a faltering market for Internet-related IPOs, but said at the time that it would reconsider a U.S. offering in 2005 if market conditions improved. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spark said it plans to use the money from the IPO to expand marketing efforts and for general corporate purposes, including a potential rescission offer. Spark used Los Angeles-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP as counsel, with London's Steptoe & Johnson for advice under English law. Latham & Watkins LLP, also based in Los Angeles, acted as counsel for the underwriters. The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPRK. It already trades Global Depositary Shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under MHJG, which closed at €7.80 ($10.47) a GDS on Wednesday. New York hedge fund Tiger Technology Management LLC holds a 26.7% stake in Spark.
Did you catch the part about the rescission offer? A rescission offer is basically the cancellation of a previous exercise of an incentive stock option, generally because of a substantial drop in the price of the stock acquired through the exercise. Rescission results in the employee surrendering stock in exchange for money that was paid for the stock. Google went through a similar situation before it's IPO.
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March 10, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark has cut their net losses considerably but taken a big hit settling legal issues. Read more in the press release:
Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2004 was $17.1 million, an increase
of 46%, compared to $11.7 million, over the same period last year.
Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2004 was $65.1 million, an
increase of 76%, compared to revenue of $36.9 million, for the year
ended December 31, 2003.
Including $2.1 million of charges related to the settlement of two
legal issues, the company reported a net loss of $1.6 million, or
$(0.06) per share, for the fourth quarter of 2004, compared to a net
loss of $6.8 million, or $(0.35) per share, for the same period last
year.
For the year ended December 31, 2004, the company reported a net loss
of $11.6 million, or $(0.51) per share, compared to a net loss of
$10.9 million, or $(0.57) per share, for the year ended December 31,
2003. The loss for 2004 included charges totaling $7.7 million.
These charges were related to costs associated with settlements of
legal disputes, costs related to an impairment charge, costs related
to severance payments and costs related to the postponed initial
public offering of MatchNet.
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Posted by Dave Evans
IPO attempt, round two. As expected, Spark Networks announced that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering of up to $75,000,000. Piper Jaffray & Co. is serving as the lead manager and sole book-runner for the offering, and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC and ThinkEquity Partners LLC are acting as co-managers.
In the last several months Spark has made additions to their board, undergone a re-branding and several executives have left the company.
Press release.
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March 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From Yahoo! Finance:
Paul Widisky, sole shareholder of recently purchased PPI is receiving a base salary equal to $169,000 per annum and other benefits that are generally available to the vice presidents of Cherish. Mr. Widisky received $2,262,500 in cash and 426,244 shares of Company common stock. In addition, the Company issued to Mr. Widisky warrants to purchase an aggregate of 60,000 shares of Company common stock. Further, Mr. Widisky may receive an aggregate earnout payment of up to $450,000 based on the pre-tax earnings of the PPI Surviving Corporation for the first eight full calendar quarters following the closing.
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Posted by Dave Evans
The American Stock Exchange® (Amex®) today listed the common stock of CGI Holding Corporation under the ticker symbol THK.
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March 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Today's Motley Fool Rule Breaker (reg req'd) is Interactive Corp:
IAC is such an intriguing company because the cash flow makes the businesses it acquires less risky and more likely to succeed. These businesses have virtually unlimited access to the capital they need to grow and compete.
Sobering words to smaller sites struggling with cash flow problems who are better off letting Match and Yahoo! duke it out and focus on your core offering, niche or stupendous marketing tactics.
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February 23, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From Yahoo! News:
CGI Holding Corporation has acquired privately-held Personals Plus, Inc., the owner of several online dating and relationship websites. The acquisition is expected to significantly expand CGI's customer base in the area and to provide synergies between the websites that the combined companies will offer. The Company estimates that Personals Plus will add approximately $1 million per year in pre-tax earnings to the Company, and expects the merger to be immediately accretive to its earnings. The purchase price was $2,262,500 in cash plus 426,244 shares of the Company's restricted common stock. The Company has also issued warrants to purchase an aggregate of 60,000 shares of the Company's restricted common stock at $5.30 per share to the stockholder of Personals Plus.
CGI Holding Corporation also owns Websourced, which in turn owns Cherish.com. I spoke with Cherish GM Steve Winkler a few weeks ago and will share some of our conversation in the near future. CGI is quite an interesting company, up to few years ago was known as North Star Petroleum and also has ties to the adult site biz through their acquistion of Webcapades last summer.
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February 16, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From Yahoo! News:
IAC/InterActiveCorp, an online travel and retailing company, swung to a net loss of $46 million in the fourth quarter as the company recorded charges to write down the value of two of its businesses. The New York-based company, which is run by the former entertainment mogul Barry Diller, earned $153 million in the same quarter a year ago. On a per-share basis, the net loss in the fourth quarter was equivalent to 7 cents versus the year-ago profits of 20 cents. Without the charges, the company, which owns Expedia, Home Shopping Network, Hotels.com and Match.com, had earnings of $250 million, up 10 percent from $228 million a year ago. Per-share earnings rose to 33 cents, up from 29 cents a year ago and beating analysts expectations of 27 cents, as reported by Thomson First Call. Two charges weighed down the company's results in the fourth quarter: a $185 million write-down of the value of its call center services business, which lost two key clients amid an increasingly competitive business climate; and a $33 million write-down in the value of a travel channel in the United Kingdom.
Word on the street is that Match is shedding additional executives. Some are voluntary departures, others are not.
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Posted by Dave Evans
The Internet Stock Blog blogs The Knot's recent analyst call:
We syndicate our content in 70 newspapers nationwide. Our TV series… now reaches over 50 million U.S. homes… also available on Comcast... Augmenting our website's reach are our national and local magazines. We do not spend money advertising our brand or website. .. our target market and membership replenishes itself each year with a fresh audience without advertising or customer acquisition costs.
We acquired the assets of GreatBoyfriends… referral based e-dating services that gives singles access to pre-approved potential... Over the past few years, we witnessed brides on our message boards become matchmakers for their single friends. They were essentially referring their single friends to each other. We felt a referral-based on-line dating service where the referrals were coming from engaged women would be a refreshing and innovative take on an on-line dating service.
(Thanks, Dave!)
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February 15, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks announced the appointment of Laura Lauder, a general partner at Lauder Partners, to its Board of Directors. Interesting that they focus on her philanthropic initiatives, which is not the real reason she was brought on board. Not by a long shot.
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February 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Contracts Blog has a posting from August 12, 2004 which contains links to sample employment contracts for several Spark Networks executives. Historical context for those interested in these things.
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February 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Mike Jones mentions that Intermix, the parent of MySpace, has posted corrections on it's 3rd quarter revenues. I'm too exhausted to regurgitate financials, take a look if you're so inclined.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Alon Carmel, Spark Networks' co-founders and co-chairmen, has resigned his positions with the company. Mr. Carmel has agreed to continue to serve the company, as a consultant, and Joe Shapira, the company's co-chairman, will become chairman of the company's board of directors. Carmel has been with the company for 8 years, originally launching JDate, a cash cow of the network of sites which includes American Singles.
After leaving Spark Networks (then MatchNet) in March of 2004, Carmel was asked to come back six months later to help management right the wayward ship after the IPO was pulled. Undoubtedly he received a larger stake in the company, adding to his significant holdings. I'm sure he held their feet to the fire during the negotiations.
Carmel is off exploring "other entrepreneurial and philanthropic interests."
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February 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From a Bella Online:
...They had secured a few financial grants to help get them started and had lined up investors to help them afford the initial launch costs. The equipment and technology alone for eHarmony web site cost more than $3.1 million. They had no clients. When they first opened for business in August 2000, it cost more than $300,000 per month in overhead merely to keep the company going.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Finance | eharmony
February 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
This report is for historical purposes only. MatchNet with a $17M market cap, $8 million in cash on hand. Match (TicketMaster!) has 3M members when it acquired oneandonly.com and Matchmaker had 45% growth numbers. A testatment to the speed this industry has expanded, and how quickly fortunes can change.
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| Category: Finance | Research
January 12, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
MatchNet plc announced that the company has changed its corporate name to Spark Networks plc.
The company said it believes the word "Spark" possesses imagery that makes it particularly relevant to the online personals business, and that it expects the Spark Networks name to more sharply distinguish the company in the marketplace. The company has launched a new corporate Web site at www.spark-networks.com.
Rebranding as Spark Networks is due in part to MatchNet doing what they can to get investors to forget last summers unsuccessful IPO attempt. Consumers have no idea what MatchNet was, they are only familiar with the individual brands like JDate and American Singles. Same thing goes for SpringStreet Networks. People with a profile on Nerve, Salon or Boston.com have no idea they are part of a shared database of singles.
Link to press release.
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January 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Mike Jones at Userplane talks about Matchnet 3Q financials. I hear that MatchNet have snail-mailed postcards to iDate attendees stating they are looking to buy up dating sites.
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January 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Pure play online dating sites tend to sell at 4x earnings.
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January 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I'm getting tired of hearing how great Friendster is. Like the usual Silicon-valley startup, they ejected the original management and brought in so-called superstars to take over the reigns. Now these greybeards are leaving in droves. The Frienster-killer is supposedly MySpace. I'm not as huge a fan of MySpace as people like Mike Jones, but that's because he's selling them something. I think MySpace is great for the 20-something set but once you hit 30 the look and feel, user experience and demographic just don't do it for me. They'll raise some cash and make money selling ad space to the indie music labels (MySpace now hosts sites for 110,000 musicians, and the rock group R.E.M. is among the bands that have used the site to pre-release new albums.)
I'm amazed Frienster had so many problems with scalability and infrastructure. Haven't we figured this stuff out already? Three CEO's, three strategies, no wonder. Supposedly Frienster will announce a partnership in February. Will it be as off-the-mark as the deal with eHarmony?
Snip from the NYT article. If you don't have a login go to Bugmenot to get one :
Friendster can boast more registered users - 16 million - than the 7.6 million who have registered at MySpace. But data provided by Nielsen/NetRatings and comScore MediaMetrix, two firms that measure domestic Internet traffic, tell a different story.
More than five times as many people visited MySpace as Friendster in December, according to Nielsen/NetRatings - and they spent far more time there. The average visit to Friendster was less than 17 minutes, the rating service found, compared to 78 minutes at MySpace. And MySpace logged more than 2 billion page views last month, according to MediaMetrix, compared to 152 million page views at Friendster.
Now that the online dating industry is finally starting to understand the link between social networking and dating, the next few months should be interesting.
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December 22, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Are you sitting down? Pasadena-based EHarmony sold $100M preferred stock to 14 investors including Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures.
Chief Executive Greg Forgatch:
This sends a signal that the venture capitalists who are funding the company have faith that they can have a very successful initial public offering in the next couple of years — or that they expect it to be a very attractive acquisition target. The company has identified 10,000 marriages linked to its service, but believes there are more. A goal for 2005 is to track 100,000 marriages linked to the service.
I'm taking note of that, 100,000 marriages next year. EHarmony plans to use the $110 million for working capital and advertising.
EHarmony supposedly converts registered members to full-time subscribers at a rate that's six to 10 times the industry average, Forgatch said. The service has 6 million registered members. A privately held company, EHarmony does not disclose its annual revenue or say whether it is profitable.
The funding spigot is definitely flowing more freely these days, this is not the only big ticket deal I've heard about recently.
More on this monumental event and the implications it will have on the industry coming your way.
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Posted by Dave Evans
The New York-based Internet conglomerate said Tuesday it will move its extensive online travel holdings, including reservation services Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Hotwire, into one venture, which will do business under the Expedia moniker.
The company's other operations, including its Ticketmaster business and online retailing divisions, will go forward under the name IAC.
The company said that media entrepreneur Barry Diller, its highly visible leader, will remain as chairman and chief executive of IAC and also serve in the role of chairman at Expedia. Dara Khosrowshahi, who was previously announced as the new president and chief executive of the firm's travel unit, will become CEO at Expedia. Victor Kaufman will remain as vice chairman of IAC and will fulfill the same role at Expedia.
In a letter to shareholders, Diller explained the reasoning behind the split, citing rapid growth in InterActiveCorp holdings such as Ticketmaster and online personal classifieds company Match.com, as well as the continued development of the company's travel interests. The executive also said the reality that InterActiveCorp has grown to be perceived primarily as a travel specialist has hurt its overall growth prospects.
Under the terms of the deal, the transaction will consist of a reclassification of InterActiveCorp shares, with stockholders receiving a proportionate amount of Expedia stock in a tax-free transaction. InterActiveCorp said that any outstanding stock options held by its employees will be converted into options or restricted stock in whichever of the two new companies the employee remains with following the transaction.
The effect of the deal on Match seems negligible at first glance, especially after the massive layoffs this fall, thorough re-org, and the rumored major changes coming to the Match.com website during Q1.
Link to press release.
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December 15, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Way back in May, Meetic became premium dating partner of LYCOS Gütersloh/ Paris. They had 4 million members, the deal with Lycos is what got them to the nine million member mark I mentioned earlier. According to comScore, Meetic has 2.2 million visitors.
I receive an email from Meetic just now. Their comments:
Meetic is owned by Marc Simoncini founder. AGF-ALLIANZ have few percent of the company since Meetic has raised 10m$ this summer.
Paid members- this is confidential but we have had 9 million of registrations since our launch (3 years ago), we’re now launched in 19 countries. Our turnover will be around 34m$ in 2004 and our ebitda around 7m$.
Visitors- Nielsen has certify Meetic is the leading dating website in Europe (meetic 1.5 million of visitors in October, ilove : 1.3 million, match.com : 1.2 million) . We have around 40 partnerships with major European portals (see example http://yh.es.meetic.com/ , http://it.meetic.yahoo.net/ , http://asia.yahoo.com/meetic/ , http://meetic.web.de )
Details from Lycos press release:
Within the scope of a two-year co-operation agreement concluded by LYCOS Europe, one of the leading European internet portal providers, and Meetic, the biggest dating-community in Europe with 5 million members, LYCOS Europe will integrate the Meetic database as an additional service for the online dating-platform Love@LYCOS and meetic will become the premium dating partner of Lycos. With more than 4 million registered users, Love@LYCOS is among the most prominent dating-platforms in Europe.
Search queries within the dating-service Love@LYCOS will also show consistent profiles of the Meetic database additionally to the Love@LYCOS search results. These search results will be marked as so called “sponsored links” and will provide highly relevant results for users. Direct marketing measures, e.g. newsletters, and the opportunity to co-register when registering for Love@LYCOS, will inform the users about the new service. Besides a co-branded dating service an online-media campaign will promote the new service-offering by means of target group specific addressing of the users on the Lycos portal.
Too bad Lycos US couldn't get the same sort of marketing strategy going for MatchMaker.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Get out your Euro calculator. Meetic, with the support of its new shareholder AGF Allianz, is busy strengthening its leadership before its listing on the stock market, planned for 2005.
The French dating site launched in early 2002 by Marc Simoncini will open up to 4 additional countries in the coming weeks: Poland, Ireland, Greece and Portugal. This comes after achieving the same success in 11 European countries, the dating site meetic thus continues to develop with the same resources and the same strategy and will now be present in 15 European countries.
Cécile Moulard, Europe Marketing Manager:
Over the past 3 years Meetic has proved its ability to develop its model both via the web and the mobile, and to form strategic alliances with numerous major European players in these sectors (Free.fr, Virgilio.it, France Telecom (Voila.fr), M6.fr, TF1.fr, Web.de, Lycos Europe, Yahoo Spain and Yahoo Italy, Bluewin.ch, SFR, Vodafone Germany, Bouygues Telecom, Telefonica (i-mode ©), Lastminute Europe, Eurosport Europe, etc). The advertising campaign launched in mid-November reinforces our strategy and enables us to envisage a 2005 which will meet our objectives and our ambitions.
According to Nielsen, Meetic is today the leading dating service in Europe. Over 9 million European singles are already registered and there are almost 20,000 new registrations each day.
Meetic members connect to each other via the interweb, SMS, telephone, Wap and i-mode. A team of some forty moderators of 9 different nationalities manually validates each profile to ensure optimum quality of service. Today Meetic employs almost 80 people.
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December 10, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
The only people I heard talking about Myspace before last week were dating industry executives busy pontificating that social networking will experience a popularity explosion as online dating has, only bigger.
How omnipotent of them. Things are certainly looking good at Myspace these days. If you remember, Intermix recently hired chief operating officer of Buy.com, Sherman Atkinson. Atkinson will take the same position at the Los Angeles-based online media and entertainment group. A clear sign they were getting their house in order.
This week, Myspace parent Intermix Media turned its star property into an independent subsidiary with fresh venture-capital backing.
Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com (reg. req'd):
The stock is up nearly 28 percent since the company was first profiled in this column Monday.
Intermix, which owns a number of Web properties that are expected to generate $70 million to $72 million in annual sales, announced Wednesday that Redpoint Ventures invested $4 million in the online media company. At today's prices, Redpoint appears to have gotten a bargain at $4 a share. But again, Intermix traded below that level just last week.
Mark Pincus, who started Tribe Network:
MySpace could be worth about $50 million. That's assuming the 3 million unique visitors go to the site 100 times, on average. That would be 300 million page views.
If an advertiser pays $2 per CPM (cost per thousand), MySpace would get $600,000 per month or $7 million a year. Maybe that's worth $50 million. Or the cost to someone else to get that audience at $20 per user might get $60 million.
Bill Martin, founder of Ragingbull.com:
Intermix is expected to generate about $70 million to $72 million for the fiscal year ending March 2005, up as much as 26 percent from this year. MySpace contributes very little of that revenue pie.
MySpace may likely incur larger losses as it builds its business. Since Intermix will own a majority stake, it will still have to consolidate those losses on its books. Martin thinks MySpace can go to Wall Street and spin this tale: "They can explain that they have a core business that's growing nicely, and say they have a venture investment [MySpace] with an outside investor. Intermix can separate the two."
For investors who might get carried away, keep in mind that Intermix is barely profitable. The company said it expects to earn about $5 million to $6 million in fiscal 2005, ending in March. But much of that profit, or about $5.3 million, comes from the sale of an asset.
Bambi talked about MySpace last week, which we covered here.
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December 7, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com:
Venture capitalists embraced Friendster and lavished it with a $53 million market valuation, when Friendster had negligible revenue but a lot of promise. Now there's MySpace, a very similar site to Friendster in that MySpace lets people come together and network, learn about each other, find dates and whatever else people do in a networking environment. The difference is that MySpace seems to be the place with all the promise today. MySpace surged to 3.4 million users in October, up from 1 million in June, according to comScore Networks. By comparison, Friendster has fewer than 1 million unique visitors each month since June. This compares with 1.75 million unique visitors in October 2003. MySpace is clearly adding users. And unlike privately held Friendster, MySpace can be invested in through Intermix Media (MIX: news, chart, profile), which operates MySpace and other Web properties.
Some investors seemed to have noticed this tiny company already. Shares of Intermix rose nearly 15 percent Monday to $4.60.
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November 30, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
U.S. consumers spent $853 million on online content in the first half of 2004, led by growth in entertainment content -- a 14 percent increase in spending over the same period last year, according to the Paid Content U.S. Market Spending Report, conducted by comScore Networks.
Entertainment/lifestyles -- the fastest growing category -- overtook business/investment content as the second largest paid content category, driven largely by growth in online music spending. Spending in the entertainment category grew to $182.8 million in the first half of 2004, a 78.3 percent increase over the same period last year.
Personals/dating held its position as the leading paid content category, with U.S. consumers spending $227.9 million in the first half of 2004. Spending in the business/investment category dropped 8 percent to third place, with $154.9 million this year from $168.5 million in the first half of 2003. Both of these categories have seen slight declines in each of the last three quarters since peaking in Q3 2003.
The declines in personals/dating reverse a two and a half year period of rapid category growth, signaling a maturing of the market and a normalizing after a period of intense publicity, according to the report. Approximately 16.8 million U.S. consumers paid for content in the second quarter, up from 16.0 million in the year-ago period. The report found that the growth in paid content revenue is based on the addition of new content buyers rather than any change in dollars spent per consumer.
The report is chock-full of interesting facts about the industry and definitely required reading.
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November 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Lemontonic sent out a press release stating that they have 600 new members a day and made $7,000 last quarter. Lemontonic recently crossed the 90,000 member threshold and will shortly complete its first month of paid service. Operating costs for the quarter ended September 30, 2004 increased to $2,066,385 from $82,052 in the same period in 2003 due to the costs related to developing the application and web service, brand development and customer acquisition costs, and website costs including hosting and ad serving.
The Lemontonic members use Microsoft's Instant Messenger technology to communicate with each other, similar to how AOL's Love.com leverages AOL Instant Messenger.
Lemontonic is looking for an additional $5 million to stay afloat, thats a lot of lemonade for a company in it's first month of paid subscriptions. I wonder how much of that will go to Microsoft as opposed to marketing costs.
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| Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
I belong to several dating site affiliate programs. The extra beer money is great, and more importantly, I've found that dating sites that are good at managing relationships with their affiliates usually have an effective marketing strategy in place.
Many large dating sites have lackluster affiliate programs. Outdated revenue share numbers and incorrect contact information drive me crazy, and most services fail Affiliate Marketing 101 by not even sending out a monthly email telling me about my performance and offering ways to help me make more money.
This week, Yahoo! bucks the trend with seasonal Affiliate incentives. Yahoo! affiliates who generate 3 subscriptions in December earn a $75 bonus. Generate at least 30 subscriptions in a calendar month and they'll pay an extra 75% per subscription. Affiliates can earn up to $70 per subscription on top of the December bonus.
What is your company doing to bring in new affiliates and keep existing ones happy? Where are the special holiday ads and text links? Do all your ads have too much flashy bling-bling or do you go the extra mile and give your affiliate lots of choices between static, (tastefully) animated and compelling, call-to-action text links? Keep your affiliates happy this holiday season. Take care of them and they'll take care of you.
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| Category: Finance | Marketing
November 24, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Plucked from the blog headlines, Cupid.com a leading online dating service, today announced its acquisition of PreDating, America's largest speed dating company. This just crossed the wires so details are thin, more to come.
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| Category: Finance
November 23, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Details about MatchNet from Alyce Lomax at the Motley Fool:
Since 1999, MatchNet's sales have grown 460% to $36.9 million, mirroring the upward trajectory of online dating. Last year, its net revenues increased 125%, with a 61% increase in "active members" and a 138% boost in paying subscribers.
However, MatchNet also disclosed a sharply wider net loss for the year -- $10.9 million, or $0.57 per share, from a loss of $0.5 million, or $0.03 per share the year before. Revenue per subscriber decreased by 17%, while subscriber churn increased by a few percentage points.
The company's swelling expenses are largely a result of increased marketing costs -- up 233% last year -- because of competition. Partial justification for the IPO was to fund additional marketing and advertising.
Then there was the little disclosure that MatchNet's co-chairmen received 265% bonus increases in 2003, giving each a $1.4 million payout -- in my opinion, overly lavish compensation for a company poised to drum up public funds.
An IPO withdrawn just eight days after filing gave me the creeps. MatchNet's press announcement also disclosed the resignation of CEO Todd Tappin (formerly of Overture and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)), who has been on board since only February, and the fact that it now plans to cut 40 positions to trim costs.
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| Category: Finance
Posted by Dave Evans
Just a month after Daum Communications bought Lycos, Matchmaker is on the block. No details about the asking price yet. I posted a timeline of events leading up to the Daum acquisition here. Daum plans to introduce blog-based social software service with more bells and whistles using Lycos platform and its user base.
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| Category: Finance | Rumors
November 17, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Match.com, already embedded in 32 countries with 15 million active members, is offering a virtual solution for the maritally challenged in the world's second-largest economy.
Chief Operating Officer Joe Cohen:
Of our members, 80 percent said they're looking for a serious relationship or marriage. 400,000 test members, mainly in their late 20s and early 30s, had signed up for the Japanese service, which costs 3,200 yen (16.50 pounds) monthly to contact other posted lovelorn.
Cohen estimated Japan's online matching business will exceed $200 million (108 million pounds) in total revenues in four years.
Link
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Posted by Dave Evans
Buried in the press release about Mark Brooks joining Cupid.com is this interesting tidbit:
Cupid.com expects to announce a significant acquisition very shortly. This acquisition will further Cupid.com's promise of uniting local singles in the real world.
Sources close to Cupid are mum on the details.
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Posted by Dave Evans
From ClickZ:
Personals/dating held its position as the leading paid content category, with U.S. consumers spending $227.9 million in the first half of 2004. Spending in the business/investment category dropped 8 percent to third place, with $154.9 million this year from $168.5 million in the first half of 2003. Both of these categories have seen slight declines in each of the last three quarters since peaking in Q3 2003. The declines in personals/dating reverse a two and a half year period of rapid category growth, signaling a maturing of the market and a normalizing after a period of intense publicity, according to the report.
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November 8, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Vertrue Incorporated (Nasdaq: VTRU), a leading marketing solutions company, announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized a self-tender offer for up to 500,000 shares of its common stock, which represents approximately 5 percent of its outstanding shares. The tender offer will be in the form of a "modified Dutch auction tender offer" in which stockholders will be given the opportunity to sell part or all of their shares to the Company at a price of not less than $30.00 per share and not more than $35.00 per share. This price range represents a 5.9 percent discount to a 9.8 percent premium when compared to the November 5, 2004 closing price of $31.874 per share. Based upon the minimum and maximum offering prices specified in the offer, the aggregate purchase price, if 500,000 shares are purchased, would range from $15.0 million to $17.5 million.
Link
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Posted by Dave Evans
Following it's acquisition of Landmat, Enpocket (previous mention) has raised 9.5 million in a Series C round of financing. The financing was led by new investor Straumur Investment Bank and its subsidiary Bru Venture Capital, with all of Enpocket’s existing investors including Nokia Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital and Dolphin Equity Partners also participating.
The new funding round will be used to expand the company’s sales and marketing initiatives across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Funds will also be used to support Enpocket’s ongoing acquisition of key technologies and products. Enpocket recently merged with Landmat, and had previously acquired SkyGo, an early leader in mobile internet ad serving technologies and Mobicus, an innovator in the development of mobile messaging software.
Enpocket has also announced that Peter Larsen, previously Enpocket’s Managing Director for Europe Middle East & Africa, has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer.
Link
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November 5, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
- 10.1 million members up from 8.5 million a year ago
- 235,000 paying subscribers
- Average revenue per subscriber was $75
- Average subscriber acquisition cost was $41
Revenue in the third quarter of 2004 was $17.1 million, an increase of 8%
compared to $15.8 million for the second quarter of 2004. Compared to the
third quarter of last year, revenue increased 74%, from $9.8 million. The
increase in revenue was primarily due to an increase in subscriptions.
The net loss in the third quarter was $3.0 million, compared to a net loss
of $4.1 million in the second quarter of 2004 and a net loss of $2.7 million
in the third quarter of last year.
On an adjusted EBITDA(3) basis, the loss in the third quarter was
approximately $200,000, compared to a loss of $2.4 million in the second
quarter and a loss of $2.1 million in the third quarter of last year.
In order to provide a more accurate depiction of its membership,
during the first quarter of 2004, the company changed the way it
accounts for active members to include those members who were active
in the 12 months preceding the period end date. Previously, the
company reported members during the subject period regardless of their
last date of activity.
The company also announced several key hires, including Mark Thompson as
chief financial officer, Phil Nelson as chief technology officer, Greg
Liberman as general counsel, and Sherry Willhoite as director of product
development.
The company also announced the appointment of Benjamin Derhy to its board
of directors. Mr. Derhy is a private investor and entrepreneur with a
particular focus on the Internet and consumer products sectors. He replaces
Todd Tappin, who resigned from MatchNet's board in August.
Read the Press release.
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November 4, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Personals grew revenue by 3% to $49.7 million, driven primarily by a 9% increase in paid subscribers, partially offset by a decrease in average revenue per subscriber. International subscription growth was strong, with paid subscribers up 68% over the prior year, excluding declines at uDate.
Operating Income Before Amortization declined 54% to $4.5 million and operating income declined 37% to $2.8 million, driven primarily by higher customer acquisition costs and charges relating to the elimination of certain non-core business lines. The company expects Q4 revenue to be flat and operating margins to be adversely impacted versus the prior year due to higher operating expenses including increases in customer acquisition costs.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Standard Payments, LLC, the majority-owned merchant services subsidiary of Dallas-based payments services company Transactional Technologies, LLC, has enabled its proprietary JetPay™ real time BIN blocking utility for Beverly Hills, CA-based MatchNet plc.
"The rapid development and deployment of real time BIN blocking for MatchNet is an ideal illustration of our unique business model," said David L. Tepoorten, President of Standard Payments. "We build and manage custom payment acceptance solutions; MatchNet demonstrated a specific need and we acted quickly to provide a solution."
BIN Blocking is a fraud prevention service that permits the establishment of unique business rules to allow or deny by BIN (Bank Identification Number), or by country or by combinations of both. Because the merchant holds liability for fraud-related chargebacks in the card-not-present payments acceptance environment, BIN blocking is a valuable risk mitigation and chargeback reduction tool.
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| Category: Finance
October 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Quest Personals affiliates now earn commissions for the life of a Quest member. Quest boasts of over 100,000 unique visitors.
"The advantage to dating affiliates," explains Susan Arts, Product Manager for Questpersonals.com, "is that new members often buy the most cost-effective subscription available, just to test the waters. Members will invest in larger (and more expensive) subscription packages once they've made a few connections. Most affiliates miss out on the bigger purchases, since they traditionally earn commissions only on the smaller initial purchase. Our affiliates earn on everything."
Quest is owned by First Media. "First Media is an established industry leader, and one of the largest North American providers of interactive technologies for the personals market. In operation for over 15 years, our focus is on providing our customers with fun, easy-to-use tools for meeting or chatting with others in their local, or global communities at great value."
The Quest Partner Program is powered by the Heart2Heart Network.
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October 26, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Vertrue Incorporated (Nasdaq: VTRU), reported revenues of $135.6 million, compared to $113.8 million reported in the fiscal 2004 first quarter, and $133.2 million reported in the fiscal 2004 fourth quarter. Revenues from Lavalife Inc., which was acquired on April 1, 2004 were $18.3 million in the fiscal 2005 first quarter and $17.7 million in the fiscal 2004 fourth quarter.
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October 19, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Enpocket, the leading mobile media solutions provider, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Landmat, a global provider of mobile community and content applications. Enpocket provides applications and services to more than 50 mobile operators and 400 brands in the US, Europe and Asia. Landmat is a global leader in providing dating, chatting and mblogging applications to the world's leading operators such as Vodafone, Cingular, Verizon, Telefonica, T-Mobile and Singtel. Landmat has also succeeded in mobilizing brands such as Match.com, Discovery Channel and Time Out across multiple networks and territories.With these combined resources and experience, Enpocket can now enable its clients to build their own loyal communities by accelerating mobile subscribers' understanding and use of the mobile medium.
I've tried, and been disappointed by, various mobile phone-based dating services in the past. Perhaps these companies can improve the experience to the point where people over 25 will actually see them as worthwhile. No phone-based app beats checking out dating site search results on a 21" monitor, but they are great for Location-based services like Toothing.
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October 14, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
A Detroit-area It's Just Lunch franchise is making up to $125,000 a month. "Detroit has been ranked one of the worst places to date because people spend so much of their lives in cars", says Paula Komar, who invested $150,000 last year. The article also mentions that Match.com has 99,000 subscribers in southeast Michigan alone.
I wonder how well IJL does in LA.
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October 12, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Yahoo! earned 53 million, or 17 cents per share in the third quarter. Excluding a net impact of $129 million related to the sale of its investment in Google and a tax benefit, the company earned $124 million, or 9 cents per share, up from 5 cents last year. Analysts pegged Yahoo's earnings to come in at 9 cents a share. The online media company said sales grew 154 percent to $907 million. Excluding the cost it pays to Web distribution partners, revenue grew to $655 million from $357 million in the comparable period a year ago.
Fees from Yahoo mail, personals and the Internet access business rose 31 percent to $104 million, driven by strength in a growing number of subscribers. The company said it ended the quarter with 7.6 million paying subscribers, bringing it closer to having 8 million by year's end. Last quarter, Yahoo generated the same amount of fees, but it had 6.4 million paying subscribers.
It's too bad they don't break out their Personals unit performance like Match. There could be some gotcha's in there that we can't identify. Mail is free, not sure about internet access except that they have a deal with SBC.
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October 5, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
MemberWorks' management will host a conference call at 9:00 a.m. EDT on October 26, 2004 to discuss the Company's first quarter results. To listen to the conference call, please dial (800) 369-3147 five to ten minutes before the scheduled start time. Callers will need to enter pass code "MBRS". The conference call will also be available live on the investor relations page of the Company's web site at www.memberworks.com. Please go to the web site at least fifteen minutes prior to the call to register and download any necessary audio software. For those who cannot listen to the live broadcast, an audio replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the completion of the call and will remain available until November 6, 2004. To listen to the audio replay, please call (800) 839-1170. A web cast replay of the conference call will also be available on the investor relations page of the Company's web site approximately 2 hours after the end of the call and remain available until November 6, 2004.
Memberworks acquired Lavalife in April 2004.
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Posted by Dave Evans
IAC/InterActiveCorp. Chief Executive Barry Diller said Tuesday he would not rule out taking the Internet conglomerate private, but has no immediate plans to do so. "If, in fact, there were an opportunity to do so that was overwhelmingly compelling, we would do it," Diller said at the Goldman Sachs media and technology conference in New York. "There is some compulsion but it is nowhere near overwhelming," said Diller, whose company's holdings include travel site Expedia.com, mortgage broker LendingTree and dating service Match.com. Shares of IAC fell 95 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $21.21 in morning trade on Nasdaq. The shares had risen last month on speculation that Diller would take the company private for $29 a share. The shares are down 21.5 percent from early August when the company cut its 2004 earnings forecast due to stiffer competition in the travel market.
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September 28, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Incode Corporation today announced its plans today to acquire VanityDate, a special interest online dating service devoted to match-making for exceptionally successful and attractive singles. We covered this recently. Incode expects to close the acquisition of VanityDate in line with the completion of Incode's proposed acquisition by BIB Holdings, Ltd. ("BIB")(OTC Bulletin Board: BIBO). Here's more. Incode believes that community-centric niches are inclined to higher rates of conversion and retention and are therefore capable of lower subscriber acquisition costs and higher rates of return relative to generic services.
Go check out Vanity Date's website. It's "alpha", branded "survival of the prettiest" and of course no dating site should be without the usual photos of tight abs, tattoo'd lips(ouch!) and side cleavage.
In what is obviously a first for a dating site, the home page clearly states, "You must be of legal copulation age" and goes on to say "you most be good looking or you will be rejected." Talk about lowering subscriber acquisition costs, they'll have to pay people to sign up.
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September 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Care Concepts I, Inc. (AMEX:IBD) announced today that it has rescinded the closing of its acquisition of Media Billing Company, LLC and its wholly owned subsidiary Internet Billing Company LLC ("iBill") that was purchased from Penthouse International, Inc. (Pink Sheets:PHSL) in August 2004. We mentioned the original deal righthere last month. On September 20, 2004, the Company received a notice from the AMEX of its intention to de-list the Company's Common Stock from trading on the exchange, pending a hearing requested by the Company. By agreeing to rescind the closing of the iBill acquisition unless and until the Company has satisfactorily resolved all listing eligibility issues and receives all necessary AMEX approvals related to the iBill transaction, the staff of the AMEX has agreed to withdraw its notice of intent to de-list the Company's securities.
IBill is a payment option on many personals sites and is included in several CGI payment gateways. In March 2004 Penthouse acquired iBill from InterCept, Inc., a NASDAQ NMS company.
Link
This story is juicy, read on for more:
After first telling investors that porn comprised just a minor amount of iBill's business, $259 million (2003 revenue), Intercept finally confessed that porn was actually responsible for 85% of iBill's annual credit card transactions, which once amounted to as much as $720 million.
Adultfyi (not quite worksafe!)
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August 30, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Non-branded apparel, foreign trade zones in Las Vegas, innovative subscription-based eBusinesses, and above-average operating margins, sound interesting? BIB Holdings Ltd. is buying Incode Corporation is what it boils down to. How many outsiders have tried to buy into the technology space and failed? What does a clothing company know about online dating that they didn't read in the Journal? Unless they have 10 million to spend on a marketing budget, this smells like a "Be Like Barry" business model. Someone in on this deal contact me with details.
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August 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Between July 2003 and July 2004, the number of members on PerfectMatch.com has grown from 250,000 to more than 1 million.
Linked marketing deals with high-volume portals such as MSN, Yahoo, Google Inc. and Lifetime Television, whose target audience is women. Getting into television advertising.
Former Glamour Magazine relationship columnist Dr. Pepper Schwartz helped develop the Duet system -- a series of questions that focus on an individual's personality and psychological traits, relationship history and relationship goals.
CEO Dahl is no newcomer to the online dating segment. In early 1999, he took over as CEO at Seattle-based Kiss.com Inc. and sold it to United Kingdom-based uDate for $23 million in March 2001.
He stayed on as CEO of uDate until it was sold to Match.com owner IAC/InterActive Corp. in December 2002.
A few months later, Dahl reassembled the Kiss.com team in March 2002.
They're a bit late to the party, but with their experience and depth of the team, the 7 million in VC should last them a lot longer that in would a less experienced group.
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August 26, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Internet dating firm Lemontonic Inc.'s quarterly loss soared to $1.7 million on increased operating costs, the company said today, adding it has sufficient cash to continue its current operation to the end of September. Revenue, which was comprised of interest income, fell to $32 from $4,639.
Soar was a bit too strong a word to describe Lemontonic's losses. $1.7 million is nothing, thats a 3 month advertising blitz at a healthy dating site. And wait, revenue of $32? Someone tell me what that means. One last thing, Lemonheads, please fix your home page, it still doesn't like Macs.
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Posted by Dave Evans
MarketRange, Inc., a leading provider of online lifestyle and entertainment communities, today announced the company and a syndicate of premier institutional investors have completed a Series B round of funding for more than $7 million. Led by Ignition Partners with additional funding from Mellon Ventures, this funding will be used to accelerate growth for PerfectMatch.com the fastest growing service in the online relationship category.
Founder, President and CEO Duane Dahl formerly served as the CEO of Kiss.com and uDate.com, leading up to its acquisition by InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) for $150 million.
PerfectMatch.com, recently surpassed competitor eHarmony.com, to lead the online relationship category with women making up an unrivalled 65% of members -- compared to the 30 to 35 percent female membership found at more traditional online dating sites.
PerfectMatch uses DUET, a unique matching method that utilizes a Myers Briggs-type 'compatibility' indicator allowing consumers to meet potential mates based on personality types. This proprietary formula has proved highly successful with our more than one million members to date."
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August 24, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Not sure how they are going to sustain a viable revenue model with this but I thought it was interesting as a loss-leader type service. I guess they focus on the upsell. Is anyone else out there giving away coaching and MakeOvers?
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Posted by Dave Evans
Motley Fool mentions the little disclosure that MatchNet's co-chairmen received 265% bonus increases in 2003, giving each a $1.4 million payout. Since 1999, MatchNet's sales have grown 460% to $36.9 million, mirroring the upward trajectory of online dating. Last year, its net revenues increased 125%, with a 61% increase in "active members" and a 138% boost in paying subscribers. The company's swelling expenses are largely a result of increased marketing costs -- up 233% last year -- because of competition. Partial justification for the IPO was to fund additional marketing and advertising.
More at the Fool.
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August 23, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
CGI Holding Company will acquire WebCapades, which is based in Clearwater, FL, for stock and cash. CGI was incorporated in 1987, and was formerly known as North Star Petroleum, Inc. From 1993 until 1997, CGI had essentially no operations until it was taken over, in a merger, by a group led by Mr. John Giura of Oak Park, Illinois.
WebCapades produced revenues of $3.26 million in the first half of 2004 with a pre-tax profit of $1.53 million. CGI said the acquisition should add between 20-25 cents a share to its earnings. Scott Mitchell will assume the duties of Cherish.com. Mitchell is a former chief technology officer of the Home Shopping Network and Tunes.com. As part of the deal, CGI issued just over 2 million shares of stock at $2.05 per share to raise capital.
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August 16, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (Dow Jones/AP) -- On the same day it withdrew its initial public offering, online matchmaker MatchNet PLC's president and chief executive resigned Thursday and the company said it plans to cut 40 jobs, effective immediately.
The Beverly Hills-based company, which owns AmericanSingles.com and Jewish dating site Jdate.com, said chief executive Todd Tappin resigned to pursue a new business opportunity, but will remain on the company's board.
The company named David Siminoff, who has served on MatchNet's board since February, as its new chief executive.
MatchNet said it withdrew plans for the IPO because of a faltering market for Internet-related IPOs, and said it would reconsider a U.S. offering next year if market conditions improved.
The company originally filed for the IPO on Aug. 4, offering to sell up to $100 million in common stock.
Net proceeds would have been used to expand the company's marketing efforts and for general corporate purposes, including working capital and capital expenditures
MatchNet also reiterated its 2004 full-year forecast of revenue between $65 million and $70 million and the achievement of positive adjusted earnings.
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August 12, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
NEW YORK (Reuters) - MatchNet Plc., which offers online personals service, on Thursday said it has withdrawn plans for its initial public offering in the United States, citing a faltering market for Internet-related IPOs. The Beverly Hills, California, company said David Siminoff, a director of the board, will replace Todd Tappin as chief executive. Tappin has resigned to pursue other opportunity, the company said.
Send in your thoughts, especially if you listened to the conf call they did today.
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Posted by Dave Evans
MatchNet plc, will host an investor conference call to provide a business update and discuss its results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2004. The call is scheduled to take place after the close of trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Thursday, August 12, 2004 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (US & Canada) and 6:00 p.m. Frankfurt Time.
Call Title: Business Update and Q2 2004 Financial Results
Toll-Free (United States): +1-877-241-6722
International: +1-706-634-2477
Confirmation number: 9346552
One-Week Replay:
Toll-Free (United States) +1-800-642-1687
International +1-706-645-9291
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August 5, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Online dating provider MatchNet filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of as much as $100m in common stock. The company, which operates Internet dating sites such as AmericanSingles.com, MatchNet.co.uk and JDate.com, did not say how many shares it plans to offer, or determine a share price, as those details are usually disclosed later. MatchNet, whose global depositary shares are traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, said it is seeking a Nasdaq listing but did not propose a symbol. The company filed a preliminary offering document with the SEC with details about the company and its operations, including financial data, which shows its net revenues jumped to $30.9m in the first two quarters from $15.5m the year before. It posted a net loss of $7.1m in the first two quarters in 2003, compared with a net loss of $1.3m in the same period in 2003, according to the document. As of 30 June, it had about 9.8 million active members, who have posted a personal profile or who have logged at least once in the last year.
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Posted by Dave Evans
By now you know that IAC tanked 16% yesterday after the Street reacted to the reported steep drop in net income. Mostly attributed to travel segment, Match didn't look so hot iteself. It's August and I've got sand in my hair, read more about Barry's troubles as Motley Fool.
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August 4, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Revenue grew 1% from 48.2 to 48.5 million. Operating income grew 2% from 7.6 to 7.8 million. Paid Subscribers up 16% to 997,000. international subscribers up 90%
Personals revenue was flat, on a 16% increase in paid subscribers which was offset by a decrease in the average monthly pricing due to the introduction in Q2 2003 of lower monthly pricing for long-term subscriptions and an increase in long-term subscriptions as a percentage of total subscriptions. Paid subscribers were down slightly sequentially due to seasonality. Repeat subscribers continue to contribute strongly to performance. The international business excluding uDate was a significant growth driver, with subscriber growth of 90% over the prior year. Operating Income Before Amortization declined 7% due primarily to higher product development costs, increased spending on international operations and Match.com's new domestic ad campaign that was launched in June. The company expects revenue in Q3 and Q4 to be higher than Q2 driven by growth in paid subscribers, although Q3 operating margins are expected to be adversely impacted by expenses associated with the new marketing campaign.
Only new feature of note over the last year is Intuitive Profile Flow ("IPF"), which takes the user through a path of registration, completion of basic profile, completion of the personality test, uploading of photos and finally the completion of the physical attraction test.
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August 2, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Care Concepts I, Inc. (AMEX:IBD), a media and marketing holding company, announced today it has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of Media Billing, LLC and Internet Billing Company(R) (collectively "iBill") from Penthouse International (Pink Sheets:PHSL).
iBill provides online payment technologies enabling the purchase and sale of content and other downloadable services over the Internet. Currently, approximately 78% of its revenues are from adult entertainment content. Through a registered iBill account, more than 27.0 million online consumers have used iBill to purchase restricted access to various online content and services. In 2003, iBill averaged 1.2 million transactions per month and completed approximately $330.00 million in gross transactions.
More recently, the company has focused on various growing Internet content categories such as online subscriptions, music, dating and video games and is implementing an expansion into categories like online travel and online auctions.
Penthouse International will receive for the sale of iBill, Care Concepts securities valued at approximately $55.0 million paid through the issuance of a newly authorized Series D convertible preferred stock and 3.89 million common shares of Care Concepts. As a result of the transaction, Penthouse will initially own 19.9% of Care Concepts. The percentage of the fully-diluted Care Concepts common shares into which the Series D preferred stock may be converted will depend upon the EBITDA of the iBill subsidiary in fiscal 2004 or 2005, and the maximum number of Care Concepts common shares issued and issuable to Penthouse in the transaction will not exceed 49.9% of the fully-diluted Care Concepts common stock. The day-to-day operations of iBill will be continued by its current management.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Terra Lycos is selling its Lycos assets to Daum Communications. Lycos represented about 16 percent of its total earnings in 2003. Terra originally purchased Lycos, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, in May 2000 in a stock deal worth $12.5 billion.
How will this affect Matchmaker? Will Daum pump some marketing dollars into it or leave it alone? Perhaps spin it off and rebrand, or market to Asian demographic?
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July 19, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
After campaigning to ban fund raising during the budget writing season, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has accepted $20,000 from the co-chairman of MatchNet. Contracostatimes.com has more. (reg. req'd)
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July 5, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Lemontonic Inc., now developing an online dating service through Microsoft Instant Messenger, is trimming its private-placement financing to $1.5 million from $2 million.
In a deal with Wellington West Capital Inc., Lemontonic (TSXV:LEM) said Monday it is cancelling plans to sell about 4.4 million units at a price of 45 cents each and will instead sell $1.5 million worth at a price based on the value of class-A shares. Each unit will consist of one class-A share and half of one warrant, with each full warrant entitling the holder to buy one share at 45 cents within 18 months. Press release here.
Lemontonic also announced an advertising agreement with the Toronto.com web portal. "We were faced with the challenge of finding an online vehicle through which to connect with singles in Toronto, our largest Canadian market," CEO Mark Pavan said in a release. "We are delighted to be able to enter into such an enhanced and multi-faceted agreement with Toronto.com, Canada's largest local city portal." More here.
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June 7, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Last July, Spring Street Networks raised $6 million from Battery Ventures. The company raised a $1.5 million angel investment in 2001 as part of its spinout from Nerve.com. Some of Spring Street Networks' more than 200 media company partners includeBoston.com, Cox Newspapers, selected Real Cities affiliates, Primedia/NewYorkmagazine and SF Gate, the San Francisco Chronicle's Web site. Spring Street serves more than 2 million registered members through those partners. I don't see any of the traffic sites measuring them, which of course would be difficult due to their distributed nature. 200 partners is amazing, I wonder how many members they have?
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June 2, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Reuters UK article covering eHarmony's media expenses, membership stats and ranking information.
In eHarmony's radio and television ad campaign, the marriage counsellor and author is joined by couples who found their "soul mates" with help from his company's compatibility test that asks everything from religious preferences to whether a person is dominant or submissive.
That ad campaign cost the company more than $10 million (5.4 million pounds) last year and is just one example of how eHarmony stands alone in an industry where its competition tries to keep things casual, inexpensive and in participants' control.
4 million members and 3,000 confirmed weddings,
Membership, which runs nearly $100 for three months or almost $250 for a year, is about 2 1/2 times that of rival services.
During February, eHarmony led the personals category in new subscriptions by grabbing nearly 38 percent of total U.S. subscription sales generated by the top 12 dating sites, comScore said.
Hitwise.com, which tracks Web traffic, said eHarmony was the sixth-most-visited dating site for the week ending May 1, after Yahoo Personals, Tickle (formerly eMode), MatchNet's American Singles, Match.com and Friendster, a free site that introduces friends of friends and was just a hair ahead of eHarmony.
EHarmony says women account for 60 percent of its members and that it is not suffering from the man shortage seen at high-end matchmaking services and other more serious dating outlets. Nevertheless, user data from Hitwise tells a somewhat different story. It said about 73 percent of the visitors to eHarmony's site are female.
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May 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
More info on Match.com founder Gary Kremen in WIRED.
In 1994, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers offered to invest in the online classifieds business that Match.com was part of, but the VCs wanted to merge it with Architext, which would become Excite.com. Kremen said no, because he wouldn't be made CEO of the new company. Instead, he accepted money from a group of investors led by Canaan Partners.
Match.com was sold for $8 million in 1997 to Cendant, a Connecticut consumer services company. (A year and a half later, Cendant sold it to Ticketmaster Online-CitySearch for $50 million.) All Kremen got was $50,000 and a lifetime account on the site - his login is "The Founder."
The rest of the article is about the famous domain name scandal over sex.com.
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May 25, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
According to a new report from the Online Publishers Association, consumer spending on online content grew to nearly $1.6 billion in 2003, an increase of 18.8% over 2002.
The organization’s “2003 Paid Online Content U.S. Market Spending Report,” conducted in partnership with comScore Networks, found that Personals/Dating sites reaped the most revenue, with U.S. consumers spending $449.5 million on Personals/Dating content in 2003, up almost 50% from 2002.
The top three paid content categories, Personals/Dating, Business/Investment and Entertainment/Lifestyles, accounted for 64% of total online content spending in 2003, up slightly from 62.6% in 2002. Online Personals/Dating remained the leading paid content category in 2003, accounting for 28.8% of all paid content spending. The Personal Growth category grew by 104.5% from $44.3 million in 2002 to $90.7 million in 2003. Download full report.
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May 12, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Snip... Personals/Dating, Business/Investment and Entertainment/Lifestyles - accounted for 64.0 percent of total online content spending in 2003, up slightly from 62.6 percent in 2002. Online Personals/Dating remained the leading paid content category in 2003, accounting for 28.8 percent of all paid content spending. U.S. consumers spent $449.5 million on Personals/Dating content in 2003, up a robust 48.8 percent from 2002.
The 2003 Paid Online Content U.S. Market Spending Report can be found at the Online Publishers Association Web site at www.online-publishers.org.
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May 4, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Tidbits for now from InterActiveCorp Q1 2004 results. Full report is here.
Match.com was named the world’s most popular dating site by industry-leading independent measurement firm comScore Media Metrix. In January 2004, Match.com personals sites, which include uDate.com, had 29.6 million unique visitors – nearly three times as many as its nearest rival.
Personals had a $2.8M Operating Income, a 369% gain.
Revenue growth in Personals was driven mainly by growth in paid subscribers, which increased 32% to approximately 1 million, offset partially by 9% lower revenue per subscriber. Excluding the results of uDate, which was acquired on April 4, 2003, paid subscribers grew 23%. The international business contributed 25% of paid subscribers in Q1, versus 15% in the prior period. Repeat subscribers grew nearly 100% over the prior year, a strong testament to the significant role the business plays in making personal connections in the lives of consumers. Personals margins increased primarily due to lower domestic marketing spend, margin improvement from international operations and the inclusion of uDate results.
...continue reading.
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| Category: Finance
April 11, 2003
Posted by Dave Evans
USA Interactive (USAI), the owner of 500-lb gorilla Match.com, is buying all remaining shares of hotel.com in an all-stock transaction worth a reported $1.1 billion. Now you can find a date on Match.com, buy tickets to an event through Ticketmaster and book a hotel room at hotel.com, all from one company. Talk about cornering a market! Read more at WIRED.
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January 13, 2003
Posted by Dave Evans
Is Ticketmaster Your Perfect Date? Business Week did a piece a while back covering match.com's finances. If you follow this sort of thing this article gives a good review of their 2001 numbers.
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| Category: Finance
November 25, 2002
Posted by Dave Evans
uDate owns uDate.com and kiss.com. they reported that Net income before tax for the three months ended September 30, 2002 rose to $3.4 million, representing growth of 554% year on year and 18% quarter on quarter. Subscriber numbers fluctuate with marketing initiatives and other factors, but September 2002 paying subscribers* rose to 237,000, an increase of 5% from 225,000 in June 2002. September 30, 2002 current subscribers# rose to 191,000, an increase of 5% versus June 30, 2002 current subscribers. Gross new subscriptions added in the quarter fell by 6% quarter on quarter to 144,851, mostly due to seasonal factors.
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| Category: Finance
November 24, 2002
Posted by Dave Evans
From the match.com website, we read that "during 2001, Match.com generated $49.2 million in revenue and $16.5 million in EBITDA with more than 382,000 paying subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter."
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| Category: Finance
November 14, 2002
Posted by Dave Evans
USA today article states that according to Yahoo the on-line dating industry will be a $250M in 2002. Based on what I've read this number seems about right, and showing no signs of slowing.
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