6 ms·

So IAC now owns Match.com, Tinder, OKCupid, and PlentyofFish. Are there any competition concerns there? I only looked briefly, but couldn't see any market share

by blowski 11y ago

So IAC now owns Match.com, Tinder, OKCupid, and PlentyofFish. Are there any competition concerns there? I only looked briefly, but couldn't see any market share figures. EDIT: and Chemistry.com, Meetic, and PeopleMedia.

yincrash 11y ago
They also acquired HowAboutWe exactly 1 year ago today. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/digital-love-consolidated-iac-buys-howaboutwe-dating-site/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/digital-love-consol...
adventured 11y ago
eHarmony and Zoosk are the only two majors left standing independently. It wouldn't surprise me if IAC has over 50% of the US dating market at this point. There's a blatant competition issue there, but the online dating market isn't likely to attract much anti-trust scrutiny at this point, for at least three reasons: there needs to be some evidence of consumer harm (I'm not aware of much in that regard); competitors would have to be getting Washington's attention; the dating market isn't considered to be very attention worthy, minus something egregious going on.
- jolan 11y ago
  Not sure how major they are but there's Coffee Meets Bagel as well. They got some traction from being on Shark Tank.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    May I shamelessly plug my friend's startup? http://www.jessmeetken.com/ http://www.jessmeetken.com/ is based on introductions from women to other women, which eliminated the problem that women's inboxes are filled with lots of low-quality (and occasionally vulgar) messages.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      The problem with that is that if I knew a girl I wouldn't need online dating. He is right that there need to be some kind of filtering though - the problem is that the men women want to date are also the girls most likely to put up with the filters.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        > The problem with that is that if I knew a girl I wouldn't need online dating. You don't know any women? I think that this differs from your scenario in that Jess is vouching for a guy for basically anyone, vs. Ken asking all of his female friends if they know anyone they'd be a good match with.
      - afarrell 11y ago
        Does the person in question not have any female friends? If not, then that is a problem they will want to solve first before getting into dating.
        kiiski 11y ago
        How so? I don't have any female friends (I don't have any male ones either). If I started looking for a girlfriend (which I currently don't), I would indeed be looking solely for a romantic relationship, so I don't see how having female friends would be a prerequisite. That said, I don't think that matters for the site in question. I'm just not a part of their target audience. Doesn't mean their idea doesn't work for other people.
        hluska 11y ago
        If you really love women, you'll love being friends with women just as much as you love being in romantic relationships with women. If you don't really love women, I'd likely suggest that you just don't date - loneliness or social proof of your value are shitty reasons to get into a relationship.
      - selimthegrim 11y ago
- brokentone 11y ago
  Bumble, The League and Happn are a few more.
- flycaliguy 11y ago
  In an attempt to avoid heteronormativity in discussing dating apps, Grindr seems worth mentioning.
sschueller 11y ago
What about Badoo? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badoo
- austenallred 11y ago
  The website built on spam to extract money out of desperate guys? (I could write a blog post on this - Badoo is legitimately deception across the board).
theseatoms 11y ago
From what I understand, dating sites typically experience a valuation headwind since the purpose of the site is a high userbase turnover (i.e. match making). Is there any reason to think that controlling market share can somehow offset this effect? (other than the standard price-setting power of monopolies)
- pkfrank 11y ago
  I think that that in addition to the price-setting / risk-spreading nature of the "monopoly," they're also trying to control new "experiences" as it relates to dating. OKCupid / Match offer a fundamentally different experience to Tinder or HowAboutWe. IAC seems to be making a macro-bet: we don't know what online dating will look like in 5-10 years, but we want to control it. Interestingly, they "incubated" Tinder via Hatch Labs (where I was an employee). Pretty impressive control of that vertical.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Erik816 11y ago
A factor in any antitrust analysis is barriers to entry for new competition. In this case, those barriers are extremely low. How much effort does it take to whip up a dating site/app? Not very much. So even if IAC were to own nearly all existing dating sites (and thus in theory charging monopoly prices for date finding), 5 other people could start up competitors to undercut them on price in the next month without much trouble.
- screwedup 11y ago
  A dating site is only worthwhile if other people are on it. Obviously it's possible, but you need people on it to attract more people.
  - rwmj 11y ago
    Apparently dating websites are notorious for having high churn. See: http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/ http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      Doesn't matter. No matter what your churn is, if you currently have a thousand times more members then your competitors it will be drastically easier to attract new members. In other words, your competitors have a much higher customer acquisition cost. It's still a big barrier.
    - vacri 11y ago
      Well, the whole point of most dating websites ('finding life partner' ones) is to have high churn.
  - jegutman 11y ago
    The churn is so high on dating sites that everybody is constantly re-acquiring customers. One test for anti-trust is also how they think the market would respond to a price increase. Yes, you need a critical mass of people, but what this means can be very different for different people. Some dating sites have a warm body approach where you probably need lots of people because the set of matches is terrible. However if you had a dating site for swedish people living in miami who only wanted to date swedish people even having 40 people on there might be plenty.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
izolate 11y ago
Happn, the French startup.
- nationcrafting 11y ago
  France: "Why use your internet when we've got our own minitel?"

by blowski 11y ago

yincrash 11y ago

They also acquired HowAboutWe exactly 1 year ago today. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/digital-love-consolidated-iac-buys-howaboutwe-dating-site/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/digital-love-consol...

adventured 11y ago

eHarmony and Zoosk are the only two majors left standing independently. It wouldn't surprise me if IAC has over 50% of the US dating market at this point. There's a blatant competition issue there, but the online dating market isn't likely to attract much anti-trust scrutiny at this point, for at least three reasons: there needs to be some evidence of consumer harm (I'm not aware of much in that regard); competitors would have to be getting Washington's attention; the dating market isn't considered to be very attention worthy, minus something egregious going on.

jolan 11y ago
Not sure how major they are but there's Coffee Meets Bagel as well. They got some traction from being on Shark Tank.
- afarrell 11y ago
  May I shamelessly plug my friend's startup? http://www.jessmeetken.com/ http://www.jessmeetken.com/ is based on introductions from women to other women, which eliminated the problem that women's inboxes are filled with lots of low-quality (and occasionally vulgar) messages.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    The problem with that is that if I knew a girl I wouldn't need online dating. He is right that there need to be some kind of filtering though - the problem is that the men women want to date are also the girls most likely to put up with the filters.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      > The problem with that is that if I knew a girl I wouldn't need online dating. You don't know any women? I think that this differs from your scenario in that Jess is vouching for a guy for basically anyone, vs. Ken asking all of his female friends if they know anyone they'd be a good match with.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      Does the person in question not have any female friends? If not, then that is a problem they will want to solve first before getting into dating.
      - kiiski 11y ago
        How so? I don't have any female friends (I don't have any male ones either). If I started looking for a girlfriend (which I currently don't), I would indeed be looking solely for a romantic relationship, so I don't see how having female friends would be a prerequisite. That said, I don't think that matters for the site in question. I'm just not a part of their target audience. Doesn't mean their idea doesn't work for other people.
        hluska 11y ago
        If you really love women, you'll love being friends with women just as much as you love being in romantic relationships with women. If you don't really love women, I'd likely suggest that you just don't date - loneliness or social proof of your value are shitty reasons to get into a relationship.
    - selimthegrim 11y ago
brokentone 11y ago
Bumble, The League and Happn are a few more.
flycaliguy 11y ago
In an attempt to avoid heteronormativity in discussing dating apps, Grindr seems worth mentioning.

sschueller 11y ago

What about Badoo? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badoo

austenallred 11y ago
The website built on spam to extract money out of desperate guys? (I could write a blog post on this - Badoo is legitimately deception across the board).

theseatoms 11y ago

From what I understand, dating sites typically experience a valuation headwind since the purpose of the site is a high userbase turnover (i.e. match making). Is there any reason to think that controlling market share can somehow offset this effect? (other than the standard price-setting power of monopolies)

pkfrank 11y ago
I think that that in addition to the price-setting / risk-spreading nature of the "monopoly," they're also trying to control new "experiences" as it relates to dating. OKCupid / Match offer a fundamentally different experience to Tinder or HowAboutWe. IAC seems to be making a macro-bet: we don't know what online dating will look like in 5-10 years, but we want to control it. Interestingly, they "incubated" Tinder via Hatch Labs (where I was an employee). Pretty impressive control of that vertical.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Erik816 11y ago

A factor in any antitrust analysis is barriers to entry for new competition. In this case, those barriers are extremely low. How much effort does it take to whip up a dating site/app? Not very much. So even if IAC were to own nearly all existing dating sites (and thus in theory charging monopoly prices for date finding), 5 other people could start up competitors to undercut them on price in the next month without much trouble.

screwedup 11y ago
A dating site is only worthwhile if other people are on it. Obviously it's possible, but you need people on it to attract more people.
- rwmj 11y ago
  Apparently dating websites are notorious for having high churn. See: http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/ http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    Doesn't matter. No matter what your churn is, if you currently have a thousand times more members then your competitors it will be drastically easier to attract new members. In other words, your competitors have a much higher customer acquisition cost. It's still a big barrier.
  - vacri 11y ago
    Well, the whole point of most dating websites ('finding life partner' ones) is to have high churn.
- jegutman 11y ago
  The churn is so high on dating sites that everybody is constantly re-acquiring customers. One test for anti-trust is also how they think the market would respond to a price increase. Yes, you need a critical mass of people, but what this means can be very different for different people. Some dating sites have a warm body approach where you probably need lots of people because the set of matches is terrible. However if you had a dating site for swedish people living in miami who only wanted to date swedish people even having 40 people on there might be plenty.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

izolate 11y ago

Happn, the French startup.

nationcrafting 11y ago
France: "Why use your internet when we've got our own minitel?"