Susan Mernit, who used to run product at Yahoo Personals, had this to say about deal where Match now powers Yahoo Personals.
During the time I was running product at Yahoo! Personals, we had at least 3 different SVPs the unit reported to. Not only did the group get switched around repeatedly, it was clear no one at the top had strong interest in managing this kind of transactional revenue, despite good ROI, strong team, etc.
…And it is a great idea if Yahoo’s best plan is to be an aggregator and make $3-4 MM a year in affiliate referrals via partner payouts for customer acquisition rather than manage greater revenue against greater cost.
But is a great idea?
Not really, But Yahoo! stopped having great ideas a long time ago.
More at Susan’s blog.
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I don’t think most people want to get into the Dating website business unless those owners are also single or really enjoy matchmaking. Most men aren’t interested in matchmaking even if there is a strong technology component, and even larger profit margin. Most men are interested in business technology and not emotional human psychology of creating a dating site, but a safer general social networking, etc. But Yahoo is a portal and it IS a Social Network for users who use their E-mail, Flickr, chat but they apparently don’t want to make actual profits from the sidetrack dating site that has recurring subscription revenues. In this case, they seem to be ignoring the “follow the money” strategy of consumer spending.