IPOh Oh ...MatchNet, the parent company of much beloved Jewish online dating service, JDate, has withdrawn its planned and ill conceived NASDAQ IPO a mere 6 days after announcing it. “The company cited a faltering market for Internet-related IPOs and said it would reconsider a U.S. offering next year if market conditions improved.” What, you didn’t know that 6 days ago?

Along with the announced cancellation of the stock offering, Todd Tappin, MatchNet’s president and CEO announced his resignation in order to pursue a “new business opportunity.” Joe Shapira, co-founder, executive chairman and Singalovsky High graduate stated “We want to sincerely thank Todd for his service to the company as CEO. He put in place a number of strategic and organizational initiatives that we believe will pay important dividends over the long term.”

MatchNet also announced that it would “focus the full weight of its organization on the core business and put in place a cost reduction initiative. As part of this effort, the company said it will eliminate about 40 full-time or temporary positions, effective immediately.”

Are they going to fire those guys that scan profiles for hidden email addresses on JDate? I sure hope so! They should also probably fire whoever it was that thought that this would be a great time to launch a $100 million IPO for a money losing, albeit pretty large, dating site. I mean the dot com meltdown happened a while ago, but it wasn’t that long ago! People can still smell a money-grab when they see it and it is no wonder that the MatchNet IPO did not generate the heady excitement they thought it would. Anyhow, now I can freely take the piss out of these guys without fear of repercussions because they’re reportedly out of cash. A reduction in their ridiculously ubiquitous banner ad program means they wouldn’t have advertised here anyway. So, uh… did I mention that MatchNet co-chairman of the board Shapira once sold porn to children (accidentally) and lists his (misspelled) high school on his online resumé? Oh yeah, I already did.

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ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

6 Comments

  • Thanks for linking to my post about those wacky JDate folks…

    Poor, poor JDate, whatcha gonna do? No IPO for you, dudes, whatcha gonna do?

  • Heh. What can I say? Yours is the definitive anti-JDate Web site – I bet they rue the day they ever crossed paths with you!

  • Jdate is run by crooks. I highly advise you to stay away from this fake site designed to lure in single Jews. The site pretends to run under a cover of legitimacy, but there are numerous ploys they pull on their site. They delete or modify profiles for content as they see fit (worker by the name of Becky J. admits this). Many profiles are old and inactive. You cannot reach the majority of people on the site because they aren’t paying members (ie they’re smart to not be fooled). If you want to reach a non-paying member then it’s another $25 down the toilet for just 10 attempts. These are things that most people won’t know until they sign up. AGAIN, JDATE IS A PHONEY SITE RUN BY THIEVES. STAY AWAY! SHAME ON THOSE CONS. I WISH THEM TO HELL!