In an interesting move, one of the biggest players in the online dating business has agreed to sell its “casual dating” business to a company that was set up by one of its own co-founders. The deal is worth around seventy four million Australian dollars.
Cupid say that they are selling that side of the business, which includes sites like Benaughty.com and Flirt.com, so that they can focus more on what they call mainstream and niche sites. This means that they will be focusing more on general dating, as well as sites specialising in people who like, for example, people in uniforms.
Apparently, casual dating sites do not fit in with what Cupid calls its “long term strategy” – which really is begging for some kind of joke about commitment right there. They believe that casual dating is moving towards needing to provide more adult-orientated content which they don’t believe is compatible with the sort of investment they’ve been making in the wider range of companies that they’ve been buying up over the last few years.
The move comes after recent accusations of fake profiles being used to boost its membership figures. While an independent report by KPMG did not support the accusations, it did find that Cupid’s staff were not clearly identified online, which was leading to confusion for its customers. This has led to Cupid replacing its “motivation team” with “dating advisors”.
We think that this is an opportunity for newer and more energetic companies like ourselves. At the same time we also disagree that casual dating is necessarily tied to being explicitly more “adult” in tone – and that this is a misrepresentation of the type of relationships and expectations common among casual daters. We also don’t think there’s anything short term about casual dating as a trend, so we won’t be going anywhere.
Come have a look around and meet the folks who are already here – whether you are casual or committed, there’s someone here eager to meet you.