CHRON – Feb 12 – The Texas Lawbook and the DFW Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel announced Thursday night that Jared Sine is the winner of the 2018 Outstanding Corporate Counsel's General Counsel of the Year Award for a Large Legal Department. During his 30 months as general counsel and corporate secretary at Match, Sine has tripled the size of the legal department.
by Mark Curriden
See full article at Chron
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NEWSER – Jan 18 – For the last decade, Romeo had been the last known frog of his kind, but that has since changed thanks to an online dating stunt. Researchers put up a profile for Romeo on Match, and the resulting attention raised $25K, enough to fund a search expedition in Bolivia. Researchers found three more males and two females, including an adult who has been named Juliet. Once the frogs are out of quarantine, Juliet will be matched with Romeo in the hope that offspring will result.
OPW – Jan 13 – Every day we review the news and bubble up what we think are summaries of the most important intell in the most important news items. All year, every day. Then in January we like to do an annual review of the news and let you know who got the most coverage on OPW.news for the prior year. Subscribe here for daily updates.
Here's the rankings for who got the most press coverage on OPW.news in 2018.
OPW 'BLAST FROM THE PAST' – Jan 3 – This month, 10 years ago, Match.com launched a free dating site DownToEarth as an answer to ever growing threat from Markus Frind's free dating site – PlentyOfFish. DownToEarth only lasted 10 months when Match.com decided to relaunch it as Stir.com, a service that would recommend the best places to go and meet like-minded people. Mandy Ginsberg, back then GM of Match.com, commented: "It became obvious that DownToEarth resonated with 18-25 years old. Based on feedback, we are evolving the site experience to be more relevant for that audience which includes suggestions for places to hang out as well as people to go there with." Match needed to create a product to draw in and warm up a new generation of Match.com users. Stir seemed like a good idea at that time but little did they know that the real game changer (Tinder) was yet to come. In the meantime, money kept on rolling in for PlentyOfFish.com. The site was bringing in $10M annual revenue with 50% profit. "Yahoo is a complete joke, Google is a cult, and Match is dying," said Frind in an interview with INC. in January 2009. Fast forward 10 years, Match Group is an $11B dating empire which owns 50+ dating brands including PlentyOfFish which Frind sold to Match for $575M in cash in 2015. Meanwhile, Markus Frind, happy to keep every single penny from the POF sale, is venturing into the wine business by opening Frind Estate Winery in West Kelowna, Canada. So what will the online dating world look like in another 10 years? Your comments please…
WEBPRO NEWS – Nov 3 – Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia, recently reflected on the relative youthfulness of the Internet and areas which are still ripe for entrepreneurs. IAC owns Tinder and Match. People forget that the Internet revolution is still really young, only 22 or 23 years. It took 10-15 years just to get up enough bandwidth to actually have rich media being served through it. We are really at the very earliest stage of this.
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ADWEEK – Oct 19 – 72andSunny said its first work for Match is slated for an early 2019 release. Match spent ~$52M on measured media in the U.S. last year and $42.5M just in the first half of 2018, according to Kantar Media.
THE MOTLEY FOOL – Sep 15 – Match Group CEO Amanda Ginsberg highlighted some key aspects of the dating company’s growth strategy during its Q2 earnings call.
THE MOTLEY FOOL – July 24 – The latest service to join Match is Hinge, a site that once billed itself as the "anti-Tinder" because it focuses on relationships instead of hookups. The purchase leaves Bumble as the only major dating app not owned by Match, and the two are currently suing each other. Match has acquired dozens of services over the past nine years and in the past three years spent $610M acquiring different brands, about equal to its cumulative operating earnings for the same period. While none of the deals have seemed to have gone like a bad date, the rise in Match's cost of revenues has outpaced its revenue increases due to acquisitions like POF and Pairs. Last year, revenue from North America, which contributes 56% of Match's total, grew 9% as a result of more people signing up for Tinder. Yet North America ARPU was flat. The deal for Hinge gives Match a 51% stake with the right to purchase the rest of Hinge within the next year. Though Hinge doesn't disclose the number of users it has, undoubtedly individuals using dating apps have accounts at multiple sites, so Match is paying for members it likely already owns. Match's total subscribers hit 7.43M in the Q1, up 26% YOY, and some of them have to be Hinge members, too. Making another acquisition might put another dating app into Match's diverse collection, but it doesn't really do anything to bolster what is making money for it, namely Tinder.
by Rich Duprey
See full article at The Motley Fool
