Last year Friendster was on the block for a cool $200 million. Shortly after, an astute lottery winner could pick it up for around $20 million. Recently, Viacom performed due diligence on Friendster and came back with an offer for $5 million. Friendster has raised about $15 million from VC over the past few years.
Friendster’s eight million monthly visitors, 20 million profiles and an ad-supported revenue model are outweighed by yearly operating costs in the $5 million range which continue to scare away potential suitors. PaidContent has more.
A friend worked on the original sixdegrees.com website (precursor to Friendster circa 1997) and I remember asking what people did on the site, only to hear the big deal was that you could email people you didn’t even know were in your network. Big whoop.
MySpace decimated Friendster because they got the music angle and were hip to the kool kids from the get-go. A larger problem was that Friendster never had a concrete identity. In the dating space, I know that women on FastCupid are far more likely to be my type than on Yahoo or American Singles. I’m able to make a purchasing decision based on my experience on visiting many sites as someone in the industry.
What are dating sites doing to woo people that are coming to online dating for the first time? Often times I will ask people to tell me what kind of people drive Mercedes and Kia’s. Most say something about the quality of Mercedes and the affordability of a Kia.
When I ask them what type of people go on different dating sites, the only thing I ever hear is, “I’ve heard of Match” and far less, “I hear Eharmony is for Christians.” That’s the sum total of branding in the online dating space. I assume that Adult Friendfinder would be mentioned as well, but who’s going to tell a complete stranger they know about that site?
It’s been a while since I’ve visited the home pages of the top ten dating sites. I’m willing to be nothing has changed in a year or so. Most will have stock photos on the home page of happy couples and weak or no branding phrase. Pretty much exact same features and pitch on each.
A cup of coffee later, here’s what I found on the home pages of the top 10 dating sites from Hitwise.
1) Yahoo has a happy couple photo, and a permutation of a tag line I used at ProfileDoctor 3 years ago, “Better first dates, more second dates.” Home page looks like a person who learned HTML last week designed it.
2) Match touts iteself as the largest and seems to have wrestled Dr. Phil from PerfectMatch. Someone in the search marketing group must have gotten promoted, because the top of the page is devoid of any branding and the bottom is hundreds of SEO-friends words and phrases.
3) Eharmony doesn’t have a tag line on the home page. It touts a Free personality profile and has the usual happy couple photo.
4) Gay.com has no tag line, just sexy pix.
5) True.com says Live Love Learn and has the couple photo and another of a couple who are about to, or just have, completed a intimate act.
6) American Singles has great-looking people, “Where people Connect.”
7) SinglesNet has a hot babe and the tag line “Dating made easy.”
8) Plenty Of Fish’s home page is a design atrocity, although Markus says that’s going to be fixed soon. The pitch is “we are free.”
9) Mate1 has a hot babe who’s all about intimate dating and free for women.
10) MSN Match has no tag line, but does have a happy couple photo.
Interestingly enough, several sites list their patents on the home page. So consumer research showed that people are more likely to shell out cash if they see a patent number on the home page?
Overall, I was underwhelmed by what I saw. Poorly designed, lame stock photos and weak tag lines.
As a guy, cleavage may get me to a site, but it takes a lot more to keep me there. Where is the excitement and the mystery we associate with meeting people for the first time?
Each of these sites should market themselves different from the others, although this is clearly not the case. I’ll be talking about this more in the coming weeks.
[tags: branding]
