Category: The Meet Group
The Meet Group Updates Its Flagship App With Industry-First Safety Practices
BUSINESSWIRE – July 11 – "Today we unveiled a number of safety-related features on MeetMe," said CEO Geoff Cook, "including the Report Abuse button we have seen in any major livestreaming app. When a user taps this button, a screengrab will be sent to our 200+ person moderation team for rapid review of both the screengrab and the active livestream."
Dating Industry Executives Discuss Best Practices in Safety
The webinar, "Online Safety in the Dating and Social Entertainment Market", was hosted by Northland Capital Markets. Participating from the dating industry were Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group, Casey Burton, Director and Senior Counsel at Match Group, and Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO of Spark Networks.
Representing the panel from various safety and online standards organizations were Larry Magid, CEO of Connect Safely, Stephen Balkam, CEO and Founder of the Family Online and Safety Institute, and George Kidd, CEO of the Online Dating Association.
"We put safety at the core of everything we do," said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group. "Our users are here to interact and connect – and we think the goal of a safety operation is to promote a safe environment free of bullying, hate speech, and abuse to encourage making meaningful connections."
Topics covered during the discussion included: the current state of online safety, content moderation and law enforcement, working with the app store partners, how technology can help users feel safer, and strategies for building a safer online community.
While safety will always be a major focus in the dating industry, Larry Magid, CEO of Connect Safely, wanted to set the record straight in two specific areas.
"One observation is that between the early 1990s and the mid-2010s, while Internet usage was on a steep rise, violence, both against children and sexual violence in general, has gone down," said Magid. "So anybody who wants to correlate online dating with increased sexual violence is actually looking at the numbers in exactly the wrong way. So while I can't claim data that shows that online dating has made things safer, I can say that during the period that online dating has risen, violence has gone down."
"The other thing to understand is that nobody can guarantee 100% safety on anything, whether it's food safety or transportation safety, or safety using tools," he added. "Nobody can ever say with absolute certainty that nothing bad is going to happen. What we can do is have best practices in an industry (like online dating) – and we can have consumer education."
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The Meet Group to Participate in Safety Panel Discussion
The Meet Group Joins the Online Dating Association
BUSINESS WIRE – July 1 – The Meet Group, a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions, has joined the Online Dating Association (ODA), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to safety and standardizing best practices in the online connection space. "The ODA is a pioneer in standardizing best practices in online dating and we are proud to be joining forces with their team," said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group. The Meet Group is also an active member of the Family Online Safety Institute.
Growlr: What the New Owners Have in Store for the App?
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.
The Meet Group Announces New $30M Share Repurchase Authorization
BUSINESS WIRE – June 14 – The Meet Group, a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions, today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program that enables the company to purchase up to $30M of its shares of common stock from time to time in the open market or through negotiated transactions through 2021. The Company expects to fund purchases with cash from operations.
The Meet Group Reaffirms Its Commitment to Industry Leading User Safety
The Meet Group Is an Incredible Growth Stock: 3 Reasons Why
ZACKS EQUITY RESEARCH – June 7 – The Meet Group not only has a favorable Growth Score, but also carries a top Zacks Rank. Studies have shown that stocks with the best growth features consistently outperform the market. And returns are even better for stocks that possess the combination of a Growth Score of A or B and a Zacks Rank #1.
- Earnings Growth
Nothing is more important than earnings growth, as surging profit levels is what most investors are after. For growth investors, double-digit earnings growth is highly preferable. While the historical EPS growth rate for Meet Group is 17.3%, investors should actually focus on the projected growth. The company's EPS is expected to grow 28.7% this year. - Impressive Asset Utilization Ratio
Also known as sales-to-total-assets (S/TA) ratio — is often overlooked by investors, but it is an important indicator in growth investing. This metric shows how efficiently a firm is utilizing its assets to generate sales. Right now, Meet Group has an S/TA ratio of 0.72, which means that the company gets $0.72 in sales for each dollar in assets. Comparing this to the industry average of 0.7, it can be said that the company is more efficient. - Promising Earnings Estimate Revisions
Investors should consider the trend in earnings estimate revisions. A positive trend is a plus here.
Podcast: CEO of The Meet Group, Geoff Cook, Talks the Future of Video
SOCIAL NATIVE – June 5 – Geoff Cook, CEO & Co-Founder at The Meet Group, talks the future of video, the development of one-to-one live streaming and the rise of audio. The company has grown a live streaming business from zero to an 80M+ run rate due to the addition of Live. The primary way they've grown their audience from a million daily active users in 2016 to 4.5M today is through acquiring new companies and providing live stream capabilities to amass more users and increase revenue. The Meet Group spend ~13% of its revenue on marketing (20M). You can listen to the Q&A podcast here.