chaz4u
14 Jan 2015
love the change of name Love the change of Name --office near Edinburgh Castle as Neil Diamond once sung Love on the rocks....
nk1999
13 Dec 2014
FT comment "Cupid shares fell 31.4 per cent after the online dating company announced plans to turn into a cash shell by selling what remains of its current business for £3m, to three parties whose ownership it did not detail. Shortly after the news, Richard Griffiths, the founder of investment bank Evolution Securities, disclosed he had more than doubled his stake in Cupid to 10.3 per cent."
pyueck
09 Dec 2014
Re: Told u so The whole alleged 'fake profile' thing was just indicative of an outdated business model. For a paid model of online dating to work you need to make members think that the site is full of attractive an interested people and therefore it is worth handing over your payment card details to a site who will make it as hard as possible to cancel. Hence you need to hook people in to sign up and the more you sign up the better your site actually becomes.Issues with this model:1). Whatever you do don't have loads of sites for different types of people. You are cutting your pool of people and therefore making all your sites worse.2). You need to be 'the site' where everybody signs up. Not many, ok some, people will sign up for every paid dating site. If your site isn't the best people won't sign up.3). The business model was and proved to be very exposed to free operators. Free sites win hand over foot as people can sign up with no charge and therefore more people will join and actually will be better than the paid ones. The argument put forward last year was that paid sites will filter out the time wasters. Actually I think the opposite, the attractive people who were just curious would probably never have signed up for cupid, but will go on tinder.4) the whole profile model is cringeworthy and desperate. Ok people can call tinder a hook up site, but that depends on what people want from it. It's actually got rid of the stigma of online dating being desperate.5). Probably the big one, women! Ok let me tell you a little secret, women have all the power online dating. A pretty unattractive woman, with zero personality and no prospects will find it easier to get dates than a good looking guy with good prospects. Cupids model failed on this too, why would women pay the money to sign up? They won't and hence you have lots of men for every women. While tinder is still easier for women than men, it's actually much more likely that women will go for a free site.All in all this site was doomed, management should have focused on a free app years ago.
Owen Nobody
09 Dec 2014
Re: Told u so Agreed - Folks here need to go back to last year and see that others like myself warned from personal experience that fraud was genuine and were drowned out by the rampers or just the plain closed minds.Go back and note who those people were and be aware for next time. Don't ignore them but if they turn up on your investments be wary.We all make mistakes but its best not to repeat them.
pyueck
08 Dec 2014
Re: Companies that cheat their customers.. Horrid company. To be honest was amazed last year that more people couldn't see that Cupid's model of online dating was doomed to fail. They made four major errors:1) Too many sites, what consumers want is one site where everybody is, different sites for different people made no sense to me.2) The model of pay £30 a month on a rolling subscription, and then keep charging people until they ring up your expensive number is only going to work so if your product is great. If its not you will soon lose customers, and the more you lose the worst your product gets. Free sites on the other hands will always win as they attract more people and therefore end up with more people on them. Nobody wants to pay £30 a month for a product that has nobody near you on it.3) The future was simple apps, like tinder, not cringeworthy sites requiring you to make a profile. What happened to tangle, I assume another failure?4) The whole attitude of management was, err awful. That issue with the BBC investigation. Why did they just not sort it and focus on the product, could they not see that it was never the biggest challenge to their business, the biggest challenge was tinder. Where they failed was to arrogantly assume that customers would continue to pay for a second rate service, they wont and didn't. Tinder cleaned up.Also in this announcement today we finally see the truth about that £20m relating to the casual dating business i wondered about at the results. So we now see the truth, what was £20m in december 2016 has turned into £12.5m in december 2015. Why would you agree to this if you were cupid? Clearly they are worried about getting the money full stop, and therefore why should an investor be confident that even this money will come in december 2015?Quite frankly can't believe that the share price hasn't fallen more. It's only value is the £3m from the business and the £12.5m from grendall. But wait we have directors, who are still being paid, the closing down costs, the legal fees, and the fact that the company has clearly been burning money etc etc etc. And thats assuming they get the money owed. Do you really expect any money returned to shareholders? The company has a market cap of £18m. Would I be happier with £18m in my bank or £18m in this company, no brainer.
chaz4u
08 Dec 2014
Told u so This plc has to take the blame for where it is now, their dating company was not to be trusted l lost money from their site which they have had many when u have to phone ur bank in the middle of the night to cancel a direct debit then u know somethings up this was months a go thats what u get when u have customer services abroad
TX2
08 Dec 2014
Companies that cheat their customers.. About 16 months ago I posted after controversy regarding the behaviour of the running of certain dating sites that "Companies that cheat their customers.......may end up cheating their outside investors,if cheating is the ethos of the company".After todays announcement outside investors who believed this companys previous statements should take note to avoid such companies in the future....
