New Industry Jobs Section on Online Personals Watch

Jan 21 -- Links to job postings at Community Connect, Cupid, Friendfinder, Friendster, Hi5, Lavalife, Match, Mate1, MySpace, PerfectMatch, PlanetOut/Gay, Shaadi, Spark Networks, Webdate, are now listed under INDUSTRY JOBS on Online Personals Watch.  See lower left.  Email [email protected] to add your company or advise me of a better link.  - Mark Brooks

Comments

[Markus Frind]

Looks like spark wants to build a advertising system from the ground up and go after brand advertisers.

http://www.spark.net/career_diradvertising.htm

They also want a Christian Vertical Producer.

The other big guys seem to be focused on building up competitive intelligence. Guess they are all trying to figure out where the traffic went, and where future growth will be.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Re: Christian Vertical Producer

I like this part on: http://www.spark.net/career_prod_la.htm under "Primary Responsibilities:"

Create business plans including ROI analysis and competitive research.

ROI analysis? You mean like make profit? What a novel concept!

[Markus Frind]

They are just hiring someone to keep and grow their leadership position in christian personals. Spark has always made a lot of money, but it was being diverted to the founders personal pockets.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1314475/000095012905010972/v12591a3sv1za.htm

The 2 founders, took a salary with bonus of 2 million each in 2003, gave themselves 30 million in stock options. Those are in the money options. The laywer who quit was given $2.4 million That was just in one year. Its insane how much money they pillaged from the company.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

JDate.com has always made a lot of money (a fortune, actually) for Spark. However, in addition to exorbitant salaries and stock options taken out by the principals, as well as settling lawsuits, paying out termination cash for senior staff, e.g. their former CEO, the company has also lost heavily on its AmericanSingles.com site. It is hard to tell how much they were making or losing on their "Other" category (all their little niche sites) as they don't break this out (they talk about revenue growth in this segment, but that is *not* profit).

The point is that Spark has not "always made a lot of money". Au contraire. This has been a major impediment to them trying to go public on the NASDAQ (twice). Why buy the stock of a company that has yet to demontrate that it can actually make money overall? Yes, JDate.com makes money, but so what? That site is not selling stock. And, investors want more than just profitability; they want decent return, esp. in a company that is saying that this (online singles) is a growth market (it isn't anymore).

It remains to be seen whether they can successfully integrate and make profitable the niche sites they bought from Mingle Match. Keep in mind that the latter couldn't do it (they had an accumulated loss of $1.78M upon their purchase, including a $500K loss in 2004). So, you had one money-losing company buying another money-losing company. That doesn't bode well for outside investors.

I also take issue with the statment that they have a "leadership position in christian personals". Based on what? Hitwise saying they have more traffic to their homepage than ChristianCafe.com? When you bid $2.00/click, of course you will get that. But, that is meaningless. It is what happens to that traffic once it gets there (stickiness).

Alexa claims we are ahead currently (our current 1 week average is 6,098; their's is 11,193). Of course, Alexa is not the best guage of traffic, but neither is Hitwise or anything else out there.

I am sure they can get to be more active - just throw money at promoting it - but only at the cost of profitability. This is apparently a foreign concept to both Spark and the former Mingle Match.

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Here's an interesting comment from Spark's filing to the SEC on Nov 14, 2005

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1314475/000095012905010972/v12591a3sv1za.htm

Page 6: RISK FACTORS

We have significant operating losses and we may incur additional losses in the future.
We have historically generated significant operating losses. As of September 30, 2005, we had an accumulated deficit of approximately $44.7 million. We had net loss of approximately $1.0 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2005 and a loss of $11.6 million for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004. We also had negative operating cash flow in 2004. We expect that our operating expenses will continue to increase during the next several years as a result of the promotion of our services, the hiring of additional key personnel, the expansion of our operations, including the launch of new Web sites, and entering into acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint ventures. If our revenues do not grow at a substantially faster rate than these expected increases in our expenses or if our operating expenses are higher than we anticipate, we may not be profitable and we may incur additional losses, which could be significant.
---------------------------------------

I think that says it all.

[Fernando Ardenghi]

1) All knowledge-based companies always need Intangible-assets to put in the balance as part of company's valuation.

2) There are two groups of Directors, CEO's and Chiefs Officers:
-The ones who are FOUNDERS & OWNERS: They are more involved with innovations, and could be more involved with the Industry, as the online personals company is part of their own projects.
-The ones who are only EXECUTIVE EMPLOYEES (mean time 2 years?). They are more involved in developing their OWN CAREERS; they are more interested in their BONUS & STOCK OPTIONS than their engagement with the company. They know they will last 2, 3 years. They received a previous heritage and they will leave another.

3) It often happens at many Public Companies that Directors, CEO's, Chiefs Officers and Preferred Shareholders receive the CAKE and Common Shareholders receive portions of a BISCUIT.

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]