Sex sells… again and again
Strange how when you’ve got something on the brain, you start to notice like-minded materials more, and join a few dots.
This past weekend I was talking to a friend about ideas and a road map for AreYouMyPartner, and he showed me this month’s cover of Wired magazine. It features the founder of “hook-up” website Badoo.com, Andrey Andreev. My friend asked; “Isn’t this what you’re doing?”
I smiled. Firstly, I don’t own a poka-dot bow tie. Secondly, I’m more than aware how saturated the dating space is online, and how many gimmicks (but also big winners) can come and go. “How I built a billion pound social network… on sex” runs the cover title. And we all know that sex sells.
Badoo’s business model is Freemium: You can sign up and create a profile for free, but then you need to pay to raise your profile on the network. To my mind, it’s a bizarre mix of eBay meets Google Adwords meets Facebook: a bidding war race where you bankroll yourself against an exponentially increasing set of other racers. And it has all the requisite mobile bits and apps to boot with venture capital investors think Badoo is worth “Billions.”
To be sure, Badoo is not the only Freemium site out there (the article also mentions other hook-up/sex sites like Ashley Madison (“The most recognised name in infidelity”), Flirtomatic and Grindr (gearing up to target the straight market as well.)) Not mentioned in this article (but that I’ve heard a lot about in conversation on this topic) are other sites that shirk the dating label and brand themselves as networking and relationship sites.
Naturally where there is supply, there must be demand, and the Wired article made me think of some articles I read years ago about free classified listing sites (such as Craigslist and Gumtree) having a problem with their personal classified ads section becoming the regular haunt of the sex industry. (A few of my friends who used above mentioned classifieds sites lamented that they seemed to find more call girls than real girls, and the article mentioned that this phenomenon seemed tipped to potentially plague Badoo as well.)
The day before my friend showed me Wired, I happened to have read an article by Zachary Karabell in Time magazine about the valuation of (and speculation around) various social networks, many of them will be known to you: Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, etc.
It certainly is an interesting time to be running a blog like this with a personal mission to make a positive difference in the online dating space. Chapter 5 is about having think before the next move, and I am reminded that you don’t have to be the first to do something, just the one that does it the best.
Supply vs. demand is one thing, but so too is another discussion dear to my heart: Quality vs. quantity.
Tags: Andrey Andreev, Ashley Madison, badoo, Craigslist, Flirtomatic, Grindr, Gumtree, magazine, time, wired
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I used Badoo once and was amazed by how many “working girls” were on there. I also read the Wired article and in the interview the guy says that he always sets things up and then moves on to the next thing. He’s a self described serial entrepreneur.
He also looks and sounds like he belongs in some dark alley somewhere in a shiny car.
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