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I'm not sure if I'm on track, but I think Match.com's acquisitions are of the kind I'm a little sad to see, "competitor squash" kind. A lot of acquisitions are

by netcan 11y ago

I'm not sure if I'm on track, but I think Match.com's acquisitions are of the kind I'm a little sad to see, "competitor squash" kind. A lot of acquisitions are cool. EG, Google bought youtube and they run it well. You might not agree with everything, but it's hard to say youtube suffered. Google just wanted to get into video and youtube knew how to do it right. BWhen FB buy instagram or match.com buy everyone, it feels like an unfair avenue of competition. I'm not sure if "fair" or "competition" are the right words, but hopefully my point gets across. Part of the issue is (ironically) well illustrated by OKcupid's blog post.^ In it, they basically said that paid dating sites work worse, because they are paid. It's a fun pick-a-fight blog, so read it if you're interested. Implied (IMO) is that a massive dating site can be run with much lower revenue and be better for users. Doesn't matter if they were right. OKcupid had a working unique, effective model and their product was different. Then Tinder do it a totally different way and we have more diversity. The difference are cultural, not just a different feature-set. I think that's awesome. But, one business model generates way more money. The others are profitable too and can actually do their job perfectly well (OKcupid anyway) with less revenue. There's no inherent reason not to continue existing and letting a thousand (or like six) flower bloom. The problem is that removing company A as a threat is worth more (in dollars) to company B than company A costs. So company B buys OKcupid, Tinder, POF and anything else. The wheels of the market are removing choice. OKcupid still exists. It's fine, but it's doesn't have the same cultural uniqueness. They removed that blog post, for example. ^http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dat...

maxtaco 11y ago
For the record, no one ever asked we take down that post. We did it just to be polite. By contrast, when we sold TheSpark.com to iTurf.com in 2000, we spent several man-months of company time making the parody AyeTurf.com, which pissed a lot of people off.
- netcan 11y ago
  Awesome to hear feedback from the source. I don't think there's anything terrible about taking down the post to be polite. I also don't think that OKCupid (or match.com) are to blame. I'm just kind of musing about this sort of tiny-giant paradox generally. The internet lets people make great things on small budgets, which means big thing can exist with small business models. Magnitude of revenue does not necessarily equal magnitude of impact, but if the first is a lot smaller then the second, they're a target for these neutralising acquisitions.
- forscha 11y ago
  "polite"? I'd always supposed it was something more like "unprincipled".

by netcan 11y ago

maxtaco 11y ago

For the record, no one ever asked we take down that post. We did it just to be polite. By contrast, when we sold TheSpark.com to iTurf.com in 2000, we spent several man-months of company time making the parody AyeTurf.com, which pissed a lot of people off.

netcan 11y ago
Awesome to hear feedback from the source. I don't think there's anything terrible about taking down the post to be polite. I also don't think that OKCupid (or match.com) are to blame. I'm just kind of musing about this sort of tiny-giant paradox generally. The internet lets people make great things on small budgets, which means big thing can exist with small business models. Magnitude of revenue does not necessarily equal magnitude of impact, but if the first is a lot smaller then the second, they're a target for these neutralising acquisitions.
forscha 11y ago
"polite"? I'd always supposed it was something more like "unprincipled".