PlentyofFish Kills eVow.com

OPW - May 13 - POF has pulled the plug on its property eVow.  The eVow website was developed as a direct competitor to eHarmony in September 2010. But POF is sticking to its knitting and focusing on growing its core offering, their mobile apps and POF.com. According to WayBackMachine, the last recorded date that eVow was live was March 25th. So eHarmony has one less competitor to think about. I hear eHarmony is in growth mode and doing very well now. Chemistry and PerfectMatch are becoming less of a concern for them as well. I still think we're leaving money on the table. Serious singles want more service, are willing to pay for it, but we're just not delivering. I hope to learn more about how Zhenai and Baihe are outperforming the Western markets in this respect, at iDate Beijing. 

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Post by Mark Brooks @ 

Comments

[Anon]

Mark,
Can you elaborate on the opportunity you think there is where "we're leaving money on the table"?

[Mark Brooks]

I believe 10% of paying internet dating subscribers could be upgraded to higher service levels. They have limited time, and they need more service, feedback/guidance, handholding, assistance, concierge... We're myopic to memberships, but the matchmaking industry knows better. But they get to see a very small fraction of the iDating market. There's a middle ground that we're missing. In the $500-$5000 range. We've seen both eHarmony and Match try for this territory again recently. Its challenging territory, but I believe we can learn from the likes of Zhenai in China, and Matrimony.com in India, that are used to delivering more service using phone-based matchmakers and agents.

Also, if we had (clearly explained) higher tier offerings, we'd see better conversions on lower tiers. The higher tier services act as price build ups for the lower tier services.

[Jay]

evow is a weird sounding name, sounds similar to "evil" if you say it quickly. Not the best marketing strategy. eHarmony's hour long survey is really difficult to complete, probably weeds out the male users who are too impatient.