GAYSTAR NEWS – June 21 – Gay entrepreneur Coley Cummiskey launched men's dating app Growlr in 2010 in Columbus, Ohio. In March, it was revealed he'd sold it in a $12M deal to tech company, The Meet Group. The app says it has 10M members and ~200K daily users. Growlr is aimed very much at the 'bears' market – men who are bigger, hairer and heftier, plus their admirers. TMG is a publicly owned business headquartered in New Hope, Pennsylvania. TMG was founded in 2005 as MyYearbook, but has grown and changed its name in the intervening years. It was founded by current CEO, Geoff Cook with his siblings, Catherine and Dave Cook, and specializes in dating apps. Its other brands include MeetMe, LOVOO, Skout and Tagged. They launched live streaming on MeetMe in April 2017, and have now embedded it into LOVOO, Tagged and Skout. "What we saw with Growlr was a very active, and a pretty sizeable community sending many millions of messages every single day. We saw the potential to roll out live streaming video into that community," said Mr Cook. One thing that won't change is the app's focus. The team realize that's its strength. Growlr does have a very distinct sense of community. Its users are very loyal and very engaged.
Category: Skout.com
Why The Meet Group Has Strong Growth Potential
GURU FOCUS – Apr 5 – Even though the The Meet Group's stock price has surged 170% higher in the last year, further growth could be ahead. The company is focused on improving user experience through the introduction of innovative new products that may improve its monetization potential. It is also expected to expand into new territories and niches, while further acquisitions could enhance its overall performance. The launch of Battles could drive monetization, as well as attract new users and enhance the user experience. Battles bring together two live streamers in a competition, with users being able to give gifts to support their favorite streamer. The streamer with the most votes is named the winner. Battles were recently launched on the company's Meet Me, Skout and Tagged. The Meet Group is also set to launch a new product called Levels. This adds a gamification element to live streaming through establishing aspirational ranks for users to achieve, as well as exclusive benefits for them to unlock.
by Robert Stephens
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Mobile Growth Summit: Catherine Cook Connelly, Co-Founder & VP Brand Strategy, The Meet Group
OPW – Mar 21 – The Meet Group grew its live-streaming product – Live – to a $48M business in less than a year. Live, which monetizes through in-app purchases, is one of the most engaging features the company ever launched. Users spend ~25M minutes in Live each day. In her presentation, Catherine Cook Connelly talks about how they built Live, why it monetizes so well, and how it enables meaningful connections for their users on MeetMe, Skout, Tagged, and LOVOO.
Q&A With Catherine Cook Connelly, Co-Founder and VP Brand Strategy, The Meet Group
MARKETING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTS – Feb 15 – Catherine Cook Connelly, the co-Founder and VP Brand Strategy at The Meet Group spoke at the Mobile Growth Summit 2019 this week. Her session is about how they built Live, their live streaming video feature and why it works so well for their portfolio of apps. "It is the most successful product we have ever launched in the company's history, reaching a $71M annualized revenue run rate in just 15 months of being active," she said.
Q: What was behind your decision to build Live?
A: From watching MOMO and other popular Chinese dating apps, we began to see how live streaming can fill a core product gap in dating apps. We've always thought of our apps as the neighborhood bar, and video is the live entertainment meant to keep people engaged and give them something more to talk about. Our apps – LOVOO, MeetMe, Tagged, and Skout – have ~25M minutes of live video every day, and we have not experienced cannibalization of our core text-based chat. Instead, live video fills the product gaps.
Q: Did you have a monetization model in mind prior to its launch?
A: Yes, we used the monetization model popularized in Eastern live streaming apps that rely on viewers to send gifts to the broadcaster. The model has taken off with our users because streamers have an incentive to make interesting streams. We're introducing new products such as Battles, which brings an exciting competitive dynamic to Live. The feature brings together two live streamers for a live competition, whether it be for best dancer, musician or comedian. Each battle lasts just a few minutes, and the winner is the streamer who earns more diamonds from the audience. On a larger scale, we expect to bring Levels to the platform this year. Levels adds a gamification element to Live by establishing aspirational ranks for users and exclusive benefits to unlock.
Q: It seems like being a "live streamer" is now a formal occupation that can be quite lucrative… can you discuss this phenomenon as you are seeing it unfold firsthand?
A: A few of our streamers have said they plan to quit their jobs or have taken a step back from their previous job to build themselves up as streamers. 20% of our streamers consider themselves full-time live streamers.
by Sudipto Ghosh
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The Meet Group Begins to Rollout Battles
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The Meet Group to Raise $10K for Action Against Hunger
PRESS RELEASE – Nov 15 – The Meet Group's members (MeetMe, Skout and Tagged) have been successful in raising $10K for Alex's Lemonade Stand in September and $10K for Ryan's Well Foundation in August. This month, the Meet Group is partnering with Action Against Hunger. The campaign is set to launch today (Nov 15) to raise an additional $10K to fight global hunger. The company will offer a limited edition virtual gift in its MeetMe, Skout, and Tagged mobile apps. For every gift sent to broadcasters, The Meet Group will donate $0.25. Action Against Hunger has led the global fight against hunger for ~40 years. The organization is committed to doubling the number of children who receive urgent hunger care, from 3M to 6M by 2020.
See full article at The Meet Group website
Fascinating Interview With Geoff Cook, CEO Of Meet Group
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 3 – Meet Group has acquired Skout, Tagged and Lovoo, and has added video, in similar fashion to Momo, in the last year. Fascinating! I asked Geoff how the integrations are coming together, and monetizing.
Meet Group is ahead of schedule for enabling video, and are finding that audiences across their various geographic markets are very similar in terms of their behavior around video. Livestreaming really fits the dating context well, and actually helps solves a particular core problem with Internet dating. Many males and females are left out with Internet dating apps. They come to a dating platform to feel less lonely, and end up feeling more lonely. However, on Meet Group dating services, “livestreaming video enables them to replace feelings of loneliness with feelings of entertainment where they can actually engage with the broadcaster.” But its not all about entertainment. 56% of video users report that they meet in real life.
“Video monetizes extraordinarily well.” Meet Group went from zero revenue from ‘gifts’ to video broadcasters to a $37 million run-rate business from video gifts by July 2018. This is mainly from MeetMe and Skout. Meanwhile, Lovoo has been experimenting with bitcoin, but this is very fledgling and not a huge contributor to revenues yet.
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The Meet Group Q1 ’18 Financial Results
BUSINESSWIRE – May 3 – Q1 total revenue was 37.6M, up 88% YOY. Mobile revenue was $30.7M, up 63% YOY. GAAP net loss was $4.2M. "Video revenue grew ~120% from Dec '17 to Mar '18, which we attribute to momentum on our MeetMe app, the launch of livestreaming monetization on Skout, and our focus on strengthening our livestreaming community and the quality of our livestreams. Our annualized video revenue run rate now exceeds $29M based on April's results, up 53% from February's run rate," said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group. The Average revenue per paying video user grow to $76 in March.
See full article at The Meet Group website
The Meet Group’s Update On Livestreaming Video Progress
BUSINESSWIRE – Apr 9 – "We see momentum in video building," said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group. "We have begun the rollout of Tagged livestreaming on our shared video platform, and we expect to launch enhanced video monetization on Tagged next month. Additionally, we are ahead of schedule with our plans to bring live video to Lovoo, and we now expect to begin rolling out the feature in a phased approach starting in May." The number of monetizing users continues to increase on MeetMe and Skout. The number of paid gifters increased 36% in March over February. Gifters buy virtual gifts for livestreamers.
See full article at The Meet Group website
The Path To Greater Profits For Meetme + Skout + Tagged Is Paved With Video Creators
The Meet Group (formerly Meetme) acquired Skout in 2016 and if(we) which operates Tagged, in 2017 and has been working to merge the platforms so members can interact between all three apps: Meetme, Skout and Tagged.
I spoke to Geoff Cook yesterday about the integration projects and he said it was going quite well. He had previously mentioned that Skout was on track for doing $7.5m in adjusted EBITDA in their first year and almost one year later, he said they're on track for that. They just launched live streaming video on Skout last week, using the same engine as Meetme. Now their intention is to add gifting in another month and then combine user-bases between Skout and Meetme.
Ultimately, this adds to the membership density, but Skout is more International. Skout is 80% international, whereas Meetme is 40%. What is common is that people on both platforms are looking to connect with new people, and not just for dating. That's a key distinction that really separates these platforms from the likes of Facebook and Match.
So what of Tagged? Geoff described Tagged as an African American app inside the USA. "That's what we found so attractive about it. It has similar features to Skout and gives The Meet Group the opportunity to create a live streaming app for African Americans. Video is now available to all of Tagged and is being well adopted and used."
By early next year, Geoff said they will have Tagged, Skout and Meetme on one video platform and they're working on adding some interesting new video features like the ability to add guest videos into a stream.
Just where does Meetme fit in the market now? Is it a social discovery service? Not so, said Geoff. Ultimately, the social discovery descriptor really faded out. He'd describe Meetme's services as belonging to "one big meeting category," which makes sense really. Facebook, Match and The Meet Group all seem to share a common cause in helping people meet. But the nuances of these services differ in that Facebook helps people stay in contact with people they already know, Match helps people within the context of wanting to meet a mate, and "Meetme and Tagged are the neighborhood bar, stated Geoff. "Video is the live entertainment at the bar."
"Meetme has always had a mission of helping users meet the universal need for human connection." Meetme's live streaming video is different from dating apps. Live streamers can ask and answer questions and receive gifts and the whole experience is more about "social entertainment." It's not really fundamentally about dating. "Meetme is the social graph of the people you want to know," stated Geoff.
Geoff described the distinction with Facebook further. Zuckerberg talks about connecting with communities and helping the world become less fragmented but Facebook doesn't want you to make a bunch of friends with people you don't know. That would just complicate the product and change the context too much.
The Meet Group will continue to be focused on live streaming. In fact, Geoff believes the entire live streaming video category to be fledgling. "Video has the potential to be as disruptive as mobile was to the web," Geoff believes. What do you think? Your comments, please.
(Full Disclosure: Mark Brooks owns shares of The Meet Group)
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