IEEE SPECTRUM - Aug 24 - Andrew Conru is the reclusive founder of FriendFinder, the largest network of dating sites, with more than $300M in annual revenues. He wants to build the virtual-reality restaurant inside an empty retail space in a trendy part of Seattle. Diners would eat in a real train car, with changing scenes from exotic locales projected on the windows—videos of Kyoto with your sushi, for example—as the train shakes and shimmies to simulate forward motion. "When Conru sees inspiration, he’s very quick to react,” says Mark Brooks, a social networks analyst for Online Personals Watch. In 1994 Conru built Dining.com, one of the first Web sites based on collaborative filtering. User reviews and preferences were used to recommend restaurants to other users. Later in 1994, Conru decided to apply collaborative filtering to a problem in his own life—getting a date. The result was Web Personals, the first dating site, which he sold in 1995. This became the basis for the FriendFinder network, which he launched in 1996. Penthouse Media Group bought FriendFinder in 2007 for $500M and renamed itself FriendFinder Networks. In 2008, FriendFinder filed for an IPO, hoping to raise $460M. By 2010, that amount was down to $220M. Finally, earlier this year, FriendFinder ”indefinitely shelved” the IPO. FULL ARTICLE @ IEEE SPECTRUM
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