Sunday, June 5, 2011

PlentyOfFish on sale

As predicted, PlentyOfFish is going to be on sale soon.
Before Legislation kills free online dating proposals

The last innovation from Match was during 2005, when the IAC launched Chemistry.
If the IAC can not innovate any more; I think the best strategy for Match is acquiring PlentyOfFish and then destroy it as it is destroying OKCupid (IMHO).
With USD 10 million you can launch a free (or paid) online dating site better than PlentyOfFish.  Why paying more than that? The database is useless at all, because:
1) Joining PlentyOfFish is like joining the army. You can not expect to find the most beautiful and intelligent women there for serious dating. Any man will see over 95% of women looks fat, ugly or not his type at PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is mostly for casual daters, for fun, for flirting, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification and not for serious daters looking for a long term relationship with commitment.
2) Mr. Markus Frind is the one & only person who exactly knows how PlentyOfFish is constructed/developed. There is no technical / operating manual, software documentation of its proprietary algorithms. PlentyOfFish performs as a behavioral recommendation engine based on past actions.
3) More than 30% of PlentyOfFish users, paid regularly to a paying online dating site. They want to use PlentyOfFish for free, paying with precious time, but they paid with money to other sites.
4) The 2010 annual revenue of PlentyOfFish was in the range of USD 30 million but more than 90% of the ads displayed at PlentyOfFish are from .. guess .. paying online dating sites like Match.
5) There is no need to sign any NDA to check PlentyOfFish's numbers. Mr. Markus Frind thinks PlentyOfFish is worth than USD 1,000 (one thousand) million, but if you (honestly) value a dotcom company with the 1.5X revenue rule, it is not more than (luckily) USD 45 million.

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