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Swimming In The Virtual Community Pool With

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SWIMMING IN THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY POOL WITH PLENTYOFFISH

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908M15

Wilfred Cheung, Chris Ellison, Prarthana Kumar, Jeremy Kyle and Stacey Morrison wrote this case under the supervision of Professor Michael Parent solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Ivey Management Services prohibits any form of reproduction, storage or transmittal without its written permission. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Management Services, c/o Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail cases@ivey.uwo.ca. Copyright © 2008, Ivey Management Services Version: (A) 2008-03-06

On a Monday morning in January of 2008, Markus Frind, chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of PlentyofFish.com, was undoubtedly the topic of many conversations as people grabbed their morning coffees from a local vendor. The New York Times had just published an article about the Vancouverite’s free, online dating site, PlentyofFish (PoF). Now that the world was watching and salivating at the $10 million per year that the site was generating, one had to question whether its business model could be sustained. Could Frind maintain his strong foothold in the virtual world of social networking sites? Could PlentyofFish continue to maintain its financial success with advertising as its only source of revenue? If the concept of offering a free, online dating site was so fatally flawed, PoF would not have experienced the success that it had. Frind did not spend the $10 million a month on marketing that some of his...