Burried in this press release from Classmates.com is a section stating the FTC is investigating Auto Renewals and if Classmates.com is forced to change this practice it could have a material impact on the business. This will be a case to watch.
http://www.lovesites.com/47-truecom-going-out-of-business
Rumors going around for months that True.com doesn’t have the money to pay affiliates. Check out the blog post from a pissed off affiliate owed thousands.
Sarah Lacy does a story on online dating and says that dating sites are dead. She also says more people are looking to digg and yelp to hook up.
nice quote from the article here.
“ComScore does show some names like Plentyoffish.com growing, but these are new sites with far smaller user bases. Many of them go at online dating in a new way. Plentyoffish, for example, allows you to browse profiles for free. I doubt they’ll ever get to the size or valuation of a Match.com. The Web and the way people use it have just changed too much since then. “
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc20071120_688300.htm
I see the same comscore stats and plentyoffish is number 1 in north america when looking at Pageviews, visits and other engagement metrics. I must admit its been a few years since someone called plentyoffish a small site that won’t get anywhere.
Rumors in the past few months have suggested that AFF sold for around $500 million to penthouse. Looks like the latest rumor says its gone for a Billion. Revenues are around 200 to $300 million as reported in the media but I bet a much of that is coming from their web cams sites and not adult dating.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/17/whoa-adult-friendfinder-may-have-been-acquired-for-1-billion/
