AFP – Apr 7 - AshleyMadison has launched in South Korea where marital infidelity is a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. Within a week, 46K people had signed up. South Korea’s adultery law is not much of a deterrent, and conviction usually results in a suspended sentence rather than actual jail time. Whereas 216 people were given prison terms under the law in 2004, that figure had dropped to 42 by 2008.
by Giles Hewitt
See full article at Business Insider
THE DAILY BEAST – Apr 2 – Japan is a country where ~$19.3B are spent each year on the legal sex industry. AshleyMadison launched in Japan in June 2013 and signed up ~120K members in just ten days. As of March 27 of this year, that membership had grown to 1M people. Japan was the fastest counry to reach one million members. The ratio of women to men is about two to one. According to AM survey, Japanese women lead the world in their rush to have affairs, and 55% of them have an affair because they’re not having enough sex with their husband.
by Angela Erika Kubo & Jake Adelstein
See full article at The Daily Beast
OPW – Apr 2 – Avid Life Media, the company that operates AshleyMadison.com, recently settled a 16-month lawsuit against Digisec, the Swedish company that runs competitor VictoriaMilan.com, over the alleged violation of Avid’s intellectual property rights. The primary complaint of the suit, filed in October 2012, involved Digisec’s alleged trade dress violations for use of Ashley Madison’s “shush image,” which depicts a woman with her finger pressed against her lips. Digisec later filed a counter suit during deliberations.
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WINDSOR STAR – Mar 23 - AshleyMadison.com has slapped Doriana Silva with a countersuit after she accused the company of making her type up hundreds of fake profiles of sexy women. AshleyMadison says the profiles were created to test the new Brazilian version of the site for "consistency and reliability." Doriana Silva sued Ashley Madison, saying she had damaged her wrists typing up 1K "fake female profiles". She is seeking $20M for what she calls the company's "unjust enrichment'' at her expense.
The full article was originally published at Windsor Star, but is no longer available.
CHICAGO SUN TIMES – Feb 26 - AshleyMadison.com takes its publicity where it finds it, even from a murder case. Allan Kustok is accused of shooting his wife in 2010. In an effort to establish the motive, prosecutors have introduced evidence of two extramarital affairs Kustok pursued with women he met through AshleyMadison.com. AM CEO Noel Biderman acknowledged the Kustok case is helping his website “reach an audience that we probably aren’t able to reach otherwise."
by Mark Brown
The full article was originally published at Chicago Sun Times, but is no longer available.
NY DAILY NEWS – Feb 21 – “Infidelity is part of the landscape,” says Noel Biderman, CEO of Ashley Madison, a controversial dating site for cheaters. AM has 25M members in 35 countries. Cheating is also the theme of his new book, “Adultropology,” which provides a statistical understanding of who is “cheating” and why.
BLOOMBERG – Feb 20 – Last week, Noel Biderman, CEO of AshleyMadison.com, appeared on Bloomberg TV where self-made billionaire and leading fund manager, Howard Marks, expressed interested in investing in AshleyMadison.com.
LE MONDE – Jan 24 – Gleeden, an infidelity site created by and for women, has reached 800,000 users in France, with 1.8 million members across all regions. In comparison, Ashley Madison boasts 22 million global members, though their French membership is only 400,000. A survey commissioned by Gleeden in 2010 revealed that 37% of the 500 people interviewed “had cheated or may have cheated.”
by Gaelle Dupont
The full article was originally published at World Crunch, but is no longer available.
HUFFINGTON POST – Jan 3 - AshleyMadison experienced record sign-ups on New Year's Day, as 27,511 married Americans logged on for the first time to look for an affair partner. The traffic was up 20.7% from New Year's Day last year and 344% higher than a typical day.
OPW – Jan 3 – Here are the Courtland Brooks rankings of the top 10 and the worst 4 performing idating sites for PR in 2013. We used Meltwater News and our qualitative analysis.
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