Sometimes, when two companies love each other very much...
▲ PlentyOfFish
Match meets its match
Match Group, which already owns Tinder, Match.com and OkCupid, further cemented its near-monopoly on love (or hook-ups, at least) with the purchase of Vancouver’s PlentyOfFish Media for $575 million. Founder Markus Frind is the biggest winner in all of this. He’s the sole equity owner in the company, so the profits are his. The newly moneyed Frind, who could now put together an online dating profile to rival this one, started the site in 2003 with no funding, no employees, and no business plan. He did all the work himself, and streamlined everything for maximum efficiency. In the past, he’s said he only needed to work on it about an hour or two each day. It wasn’t until 2009 that he hired his first employee. PlentyOfFish has since ballooned to 100 million registered users, 85% of whom are on mobile devices, can’t spell, and are men taking selfies in the bathroom while lifting up their shirts to expose their abs. The platform’s appeal is due in part to its simplicity, and the fact that it’s free to use. As for Frind, the hyper-efficient entrepreneur plans to use part of his wealth to invest in startups to bolster the country’s tech scene, which he figures is about an hour-a-day job.
▼ Adobe Flash
More like Adobe Crash, amirite
Flash, the software platform used to run animation, video, and games inside of web sites, is quickly becoming as dated as the animated gif. Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos called for the death of Flash this week, tweeting that its creator, Adobe, should “announce the end-of-life date” for the software platform. Two days later, Google and Mozilla announced they would suspend the use of Flash owing to security concerns. Articles popped up instructing users on how to uninstall Flash from their systems. Adobe released a fix for the security flaw, but the damage was done: Nerds hate Flash, ever more than they did before. Steve Jobs, always ahead of the times, hated it back in 2010. He refused to support Flash on Apple products. The knocks against Flash are plenty: it drains resources, it’s a favourite target of hackers, and much better tools are available. But for Adobe, the furor is unlikely to have an impact beyond embarrassment. The company earns revenue through a suite of professional software products—not Flash. And, for all of its ills, it must be said that at least some good has come from Flash.
Blogs & Comment
Winners & Losers: PlentyOfFish commits, Adobe crashes Flash
Sometimes, when two companies love each other very much...
By Joe Castaldo
▲ PlentyOfFish
Match meets its match
Match Group, which already owns Tinder, Match.com and OkCupid, further cemented its near-monopoly on love (or hook-ups, at least) with the purchase of Vancouver’s PlentyOfFish Media for $575 million. Founder Markus Frind is the biggest winner in all of this. He’s the sole equity owner in the company, so the profits are his. The newly moneyed Frind, who could now put together an online dating profile to rival this one, started the site in 2003 with no funding, no employees, and no business plan. He did all the work himself, and streamlined everything for maximum efficiency. In the past, he’s said he only needed to work on it about an hour or two each day. It wasn’t until 2009 that he hired his first employee. PlentyOfFish has since ballooned to 100 million registered users, 85% of whom are on mobile devices, can’t spell, and are men taking selfies in the bathroom while lifting up their shirts to expose their abs. The platform’s appeal is due in part to its simplicity, and the fact that it’s free to use. As for Frind, the hyper-efficient entrepreneur plans to use part of his wealth to invest in startups to bolster the country’s tech scene, which he figures is about an hour-a-day job.
▼ Adobe Flash
More like Adobe Crash, amirite
Flash, the software platform used to run animation, video, and games inside of web sites, is quickly becoming as dated as the animated gif. Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos called for the death of Flash this week, tweeting that its creator, Adobe, should “announce the end-of-life date” for the software platform. Two days later, Google and Mozilla announced they would suspend the use of Flash owing to security concerns. Articles popped up instructing users on how to uninstall Flash from their systems. Adobe released a fix for the security flaw, but the damage was done: Nerds hate Flash, ever more than they did before. Steve Jobs, always ahead of the times, hated it back in 2010. He refused to support Flash on Apple products. The knocks against Flash are plenty: it drains resources, it’s a favourite target of hackers, and much better tools are available. But for Adobe, the furor is unlikely to have an impact beyond embarrassment. The company earns revenue through a suite of professional software products—not Flash. And, for all of its ills, it must be said that at least some good has come from Flash.