Adult FriendFinder

All you want to know about Adult FriendFinder

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Adult FriendFinder (AFF) is an online sex and swinger personals community website. It allows members to meet friends or sex partners.

The site was founded by Andrew Conru (aka Andrew Conreux). It is consistently ranked between the 40th and 60th most visited website on the internet,[1] and claims to have over 20 million members.[2] Originally started as FriendFinder, a more traditional online dating site, Adult FriendFinder was spun off when members began uploading more risque photos than were appropriate. FriendFinder has since spun off several other communities focusing on more specific segments.

The parent company had difficulty finding venture capital due to the adult nature of its signature property.[3] In December 2007, the company was sold to the Penthouse Media Group for $500 million.[4] The acquisition is the subject of a 2008 lawsuit by Broadstream Capital Partners, a merchant bank that assists with mergers, alleging that Penthouse breached a 2006 contract in order to purchase the company, a claim that Penthouse denies.[5]

Contents

Overview

Anyone can join and post a profile for free, but cannot respond to any emails from other members unless they pay a membership fee. Paying users can view others' profiles, and access communication services such as anonymous email, chat, webcam, a webzine, and blogging. Members can purchase a higher membership level for benefits such as higher search rankings. Members can broadcast their webcam publicly to each other.[6] chat room viewers can page the broadcasting member in an attempt to initiate a chat session.

The website has an affiliate progam, whereby webmasters refer users to the site and are compensated up to $1.01 per unique click.

Criticism

There is some controversy over the true ratios of male to female members.[7] Additional reports state that the user database is rarely purged, a larger-than-average number of members are professionals "looking for clients".[8] Others are scam-advertisers' fake profiles using photographs taken from the internet, who are simply "fishing" for e-mail addresses or advertising for other websites. As with most websites, they offer a free trial period and free memberships. There are thousands of reports of problems with the free and paid memberships. A free membership allows members only to edit their own profile, but not communicate with other members, which requires a Gold membership which costs approximately $15 a month.

In 2004 and 2005 the Ripoff Report published a report[9] by a former AdultFriendFinder (AFF)employee which included allegations of deceptive and/or criminal activity by AFF. These allegations included the inflation of AFF's database using false profiles, using computer code and archived chat room logs to provide the appearance of greater activity on the site, and the use of bots to send emails from profiles that are not of actual people. A response from AFF's General Counsel stated that "With the exception of certain information that is publicly available, e.g. a civil lawsuit entitled Ferguson v. Friendfinder was filed (and ultimately dismissed without any finding of liability), these alleged facts are false and defamatory".

Notes

  1. ^ Alexa rankings for Adult FriendFinder
  2. ^ http://www.startupjournal.com/ideas/hitechonline/20060306-kesmodel.html
  3. ^ Matt Richtel (July 27, 2007). "A Thaw in Investment Prospects for Sex-Related Businesses? Maybe", The New York Times. Retrieved on 2 February 2008. 
  4. ^ Bianca Fox (2007-12-12). "Penthouse Acquires AdultFriendFinder for $500 Million", AVN (magazine). Retrieved on 2 February 2008. 
  5. ^ Hymes, Tom (2008-08-31). "Penthouse Denies Every Claim in Broadstream Adult FriendFinder Suit", Xbiz.com. Retrieved on 2 September 2008. 
  6. ^ Webcam
  7. ^ Adult Friend Finder: Is It Really Involved In A Scam?
  8. ^ Adult Friend Finder Dating Site Review - Adult Friendfinder
  9. ^ "Report: Andrew Conru, Friend Finder Network, Alt.com, AdultFriendFinder.com, Passion.com, Xmatch.com" Ripoff Report November 19, 2004

References

  • Robert McMillan: AdultFriendFinder settles pop-up adware charges in PC World of 2007-6-12 (online version)
  • Jim Hopkins: 'Penthouse' makes $500M hookup with social site Various in USA Today of 2007-31-12 (online version)

See also

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_FriendFinder"

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