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Markus quotes IAC Barry Diller:
On social networking: Match.com is our play in social networking…a pure social network site–not that they are of value–no one has yet proved it is the easiest advertising medium. Pure social network is an upgrade from the princess telephone teenagers used to talk on for hours and hours. I do think, however, it is a great promotional vehicle.
Match.com got into trouble because it added social networking, that flirting element and that friend thing. We put all these bells and whistles on the service, and confused our audience…now we have had a turn around.
Diller is only seeing the face value of social nets as the advertising/promotional opportunities. And he’s not hot on user-generated content. Not many of his properties are very viral in nature, although the shift is happening, albeit slowly.
Match didn’t get in trouble for adding social networking, they never promoted the feature and the jump from “I’m singleâ€? to “I’m takenâ€? wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. It was another in a long line of here today gone tomorrow features Match has experimented with over the years. At least they kill off what’s not working.
It’s a lot easier to bring dating to social networking than it is to bring social networking to dating.
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