
Match.com no longer top dating site, sends in the lawyers - tortilla
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/match-com-no-longer-top-dating-site-sends-in-the-lawyers/
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macrael
> Match than demands that we enter into a confidential agreement where we show
> them how we are able to generate more relationships and dates than they do,
> and how we got so much bigger along with a lot of other things they want to
> know.

If you read the letter Match.com sent to him, you will see that he is
misrepresenting it here. All they ask him for is proof that the claims he is
making are true.

From Match.com: > We demand that you immediately cease and desist from making
these false claims. If your position is that these claims are substantiated,
please promptly provide me with substantiation for each of these claims...If
disclosing the substantiation data concerns you, Match.com is open to entering
into a confidentiality agreement.

I don't know why Match.com would be the people to follow up on a possible
false advertising claim like this. I assume they could sue plentyoffish if
they don't provide Match with evidence? As plentyoffish points out, it is
likely that Match.com (also?) makes false claims, so this could definitely be
bluster. But they definitely don't ask for plentyoffish to reveal their
processes.

~~~
jdrock
I can't see how Match.com could possibly defend their case in court if they
tried to sue. They'd essentially be asking a competing firm to reveal their
trade secrets.

~~~
macrael
Again, it really doesn't look like they are doing that at all. They are just
asking them to prove their marketing claims. My guess (IANANANAL) is that
Match could sue for false advertising charges? Or bring evidence to the FTC?
Dunno. But they aren't asking for their trade secrets.

False advertising _is_ illegal.

~~~
MrMatt
True, but the burdon of proof is on the prosecution. If they have proof, the
they could sue, but this looks more like a flimsy attempt to gain information.

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oakenshield
A recent blog post from OkCupid dissects Match.com (and eHarmony, to a lesser
extent) to bits: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-
should-...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-should-never-
pay-for-online-dating/)

~~~
capedape
Nice chart. I love when they break things down like that and can confirm that
the graph with the girls is authentic (been out with 2 of them) One thing
these numbers don't take into account is that when people pay for something
they're more likely to take it seriously. It's anecdotal, but my experience
with hundreds of dates over the years is the women are less flaky on Match vs.
OKcupid. It's a case of having to develop a good flake-dar, such is the price
you pay for free. Saying that, I'd never want them to go pay, I hope OK and
the like destroy Match, they're just better companies with better ideas.

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jeremymcanally
This reminds me of the Intuit/Mint exchanges, pre-acquisition.

"What you say!??! You can't be more popular then we!! We demand that you prove
this to us."

~~~
brown9-2
I'm curious about how common this is with big corporations?

Do they really think someone will be fooled by their demands which have no
force behind them?

~~~
patio11
Lawyers routinely resolve almost all of their work with nastygrams (sternly
worded letters demanding that someone take action on behalf of their client).

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Mostly because it usually works. A huge proportion of all people would get
quite scared from that letter and comply, simply because it looks so
threatening.

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fname
_Match than demands that we enter into a confidential agreement where we show
them how we are able to generate more relationships and dates than they do,
and how we got so much bigger along with a lot of other things they want to
know_

Would anyone in their right minds consider this?

~~~
ciscoriordan
Acquisition opportunity?

------
ulvund
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win. –Mahatma Gandhi

~~~
javery
This is on the wall above the front desk in the lobby of Red Hat headquarters.
Always love reading it every time I go in there.

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seiji
Thanks for reminding me we need to decimate all the horrific dating sites out
there. Who's in?

~~~
gaius
Why the downvotes? A better dating site is on YC's list of things they want to
fund.

~~~
jrockway
What's wrong with okCupid, other than being written in C++?

~~~
philwelch
It doesn't have the best revenue model and it hasn't fixed the fundamental
gender imbalance problem yet.

These two problems have the same solution: charge men for membership, women
join for free. Every college keg party has figured this out, I'm surprised
online dating sites haven't.

~~~
cabalamat
Dating sites run on the network effect: they are useful in proportion to the
number of people on them. If they charge money for members, they will have
less people on them. Therefore someone interested in a dating website should
join one (or more) that don't cost anything. Oh, and they are less likely to
be scams that way too.

~~~
jseliger
But the _quality_ of dating sites matters too: is a site with 1,000 flakes or
200 people seriously looking for a date better? One thing that charging, even
very small amounts, can do is weed out people who don't care. For example,
Love Lab:
[http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals...](http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals/)
through Seattle's The Stranger seems to work pretty well because a) it's
already oriented in the community and b) charges, which keeps out spammers and
flakes.

You might be right, but I 'm not sure which element is more important: sheer
numbers or the quality of the people who have joined.

~~~
gaius
Exactly.

On a site that men pay but women join for free you're going to find a lot of
women who expect men to pay for everything for them, and the only men on that
site are going to be the kind who expect to get what they pay for.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, everyone's a grownup
after all. But that isn't the demographic that match.com et al are after -
they measure their success in how many marriages they produce. Marriage-
oriented people are also more likely to be at the point in their lives where
they have money to spend to, they're a highly desirable market.

~~~
philwelch
In other words, you're saying women _don't_ look for a husband with the
ability to provide resources.

~~~
gaius
No, I'm saying that golddiggers and sugardaddies are catered for elsewhere.

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petercooper
Good luck to Match.com - not. Any company could try and use this as
justification to find out things about their competitors. For example,
37signals claims: "Over 3 million people use our web-based apps to get things
done the simple way." Sending them a letter saying that you don't believe them
and that they must substantiate the claim by return mail would, I suspect, be
met with much laughter.

~~~
staunch
37 signals line is genuinely horseshit though. They're quite clearly counting
people who signup as "people who use our web-based apps". That's a truly false
and misleading claim. It's beneath them.

~~~
patio11
The great thing about user numbers is that you have so many to choose from!

There are straightforward, well-used definitions of "user" for which I have
60, 1.5k, 2.9k, 50.0k, and "well over a hundred thousand" users. They're all
equally true and none of them singly or in combination tell you a thing about
the health of my business unless you're intimately acquainted with it.

~~~
staunch
The problem is that 37 signals qualified the statement. They're claiming there
are 3 million "people who use our web-based apps". That pretty explicitly
means active and current users of their products. If they said they had 3
million registered users that'd be an entirely different thing, and, ya'know:
true.

~~~
run4yourlives
_That pretty explicitly means active and current users of their products_

It does? Says who? This is _your_ definition of a user. That's fine, but it
doesn't extend to being a common one.

Unless of course you delete all the accounts of people that have registered
for your service but aren't using it as often as you'd like.

~~~
staunch
The question is not about what the _lone word_ "user" means. That's obviously
not specific enough to have a single definition.

The question is what does "3 million people who use our web-based apps" mean.

A simple truth test: Are there "3 million people who use [their] web-based
apps"? Absolutely not. Not under even the most remotely reasonable definition.

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benashkan
Traction really scares competitors.

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pavs
Plentyoffish needs to hire a designer. Assuming the number he claims is true,
how many users is he loosing because of the site layout?

I might sound like a snob, but I have a hard time taking a site designed like
this seriously, I don't care how many users or traffic he claims to have.

As far as dating site designs go, OkCupid looks great.

~~~
chime
> Plentyoffish needs to hire a designer.

I'd say he knows his target audience well enough to make that decision
himself. There is indeed such a thing as being too polished. The reason late-
night TV commercials are cheesy and loud is not because the director lacks the
skills but rather because it suits the target market. If POF redesigned their
site to look like a glamor magazine website, he might indeed lose a lot of
users because they might be intimidated by the design.

~~~
pavs
Its doesn't even need to look like a glamor magazine website (none of the
dating websites do). Even if he doesn't need to make the site look half
decent, the design itself is broken. Thumbnails doesn't seem to be properly
scaled, they seemed compressed in to a smaller version (I could be wrong but
the thumbnails are screwed up for some reason) and what is this in ever
profile? <http://i.imgur.com/Knicz.png>

Its less than 5 minutes worth of work to fix that.

~~~
shib71
[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-
rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-
in.html)

On page 4 it discusses exactly that.

~~~
iamdave
I wonder where he got that old version of Risk, that still uses the figurines.
This new version with the arrows completely sucks.

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kyro
I'd like to hear what grellas has to say about this. Does Match have anything
to stand on here? Do they have any sort of case?

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sosuke
Match.com has been bloating numbers for a very long time, they just seem
pissed that throwing money at downtoearth.com didn't pay off. I'd love for
them to be forced to be truthful about their numbers for a change too.

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kadavy
From the comments: _Yeah, 15% sounded high to me, too. But, from my Commission
Junction account:

23 leads 3 sales —– 13% conversion ratio – about right._

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TotlolRon
Lawyers. What will we do without them?

~~~
jjs
_Lawyers. What will we do without them?_

<http://images.google.com/images?q=champagne+popping>

<http://images.google.com/images?q=fireworks>

<http://images.google.com/images?q=parade>

~~~
MichaelApproved
Until you need one

~~~
nitrogen
You only need one because someone else uses one against you, and the law was
written by lawyers in language only they can understand ;) Thus, in the
hypothetical scenario of no lawyers having existed, either they would be
replaced by some other ruling and representative class, or the problems they
solve wouldn't have been invented in the first place.

~~~
noonespecial
Instead, the Hatfields and the McCoys just kill each others sons for a couple
dozen years.

The problems are human nature. Lawyering is often childish, uncivilized and
brutish, but we are making progress.

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jarin
Hahaha that is hilarious. As someone who has a dating site as a client
(<http://setformarriage.com>), the numbers are especially funny to me :)

