Did you know that FriendFinder operates 28,000 websites? At least 5,000 of these sites are private, or white-label sites, which are in the process of being shut down.
This doesn’t surprise me given the gigantic hole FF has continued to dig for themselves over the years. They have laid fallow any number of previously top-notch dating sites over the years while thinking something along the lines of “We’ll figure this all out while we increase our debt load until someone is crazy enough to buy us.”
And someone did. FriendFinder sold to Penthouse for $500 million, which is how much debt FriendFinder has at this time. An adult dating network with half a billion dollars of debt! And this is stale debt. FriendFinder is way past the “crank up the losses to get big” mode. Someone forgot to optimize their customer acquisition costs and now its just a jumble of p0rn sites behind some generic NicheName FriendFinder brands.
Here’s what I know about offering white label services. Either you are all-in and making lots of money, or you decide in some board meeting that since you run a bunch of popular sites throwing off a lot of cash that you might as well take on a technical and customer-service nightmare and try to extract additional revenue out of people who are basically using you for illegal and spammy purposes.
“It has become clear that our primary brands, which account for a majority of our revenue, are more manageable, profitable and ultimately offer the greatest opportunity for growth going forward,” FriendFinder CEO Anthony Previte said.
Another way to say “We gotta bail on this boat anchor of a market segment.” Turns out that most of the private label sites weren’t dating, but neutraceuticals, which equals nightmare amounts of chargebacks.
The list of companies offering white label services today is long, and thats just the ones we know about. After a few years, some of them are finding out that offering white label dating services isn’t as easy as they thought.
This is a smart: Following FriendFinder’s announcement of the closure of the 5,000 co-branded dating sites, WhiteLabelDating.com, are offering ex-FriendFinders’ 100% revenue share for 6 months for those looking for a new dating solution.
I wonder who else will offer a refugee package?
On the political front, which has nothing to do with the financial performance of Friend Finder but I still find interesting…
In a May article, FriendFinder CEO Marc Bell was said to be stepping down as FriendFinder’s CEO and was considering running for Congress. Just what we need, and in Florida no less… never mind.
Here’s more at Gawker about the racy behind the scenes world of FriendFinder. Can’t make this stuff up.
FriendFinder quarterly revenue was down $7.4 million to $81.1 million. The webcam girls segment is up to $23 million last quarter. More at Seeking Alpha.
Can’t link to the press release, too many naked women on the page.
