History
DoYouDo, Inc. was incorporated on September 23, 1999, with Sudai serving as chief executive officer and (Spark Networks founder and current CEO) Joe Y. Shapira and (Spark co-founder and former co-chairman) Alon Carmel serving on the board of directors. A 2000 Business Wire article noted:
| “ | The doYOU2.com service currently focuses on teens, helping them to avoid the risk of rejection and peer pressure inherent in developing friendly and romantic relationships. DoYOU2.com is designed to empower teens and others to freely express themselves in a fearless and fun way. | ” |
DoYou2.com's failure to catch on widely may have been due to the implementation of the scheme. Its marketing focused on the teen market to the exclusion of the adult market, had a high cheese factor, and concentrated on promoting a viral e-mail system instead of the matching system. The viral e-mail system allowed users to email anonymous DoYOUs through the website, asking, for instance, "doYOU Miss me?" with the recipient having to guess who sent it. If the recipient guessed incorrectly as to whom sent it, they would send their reply to the wrong person (perhaps one of their friends who hadn’t used the system yet); the recipient of the misdirected reply would in turn try to guess who sent it (or, perhaps, delete the email). The theory behind it was that this would lead to users introducing the system to their friends, expanding the customer base in the same way a virus spreads. This system was shut down in late 2001.
The firm was acquired by Matchnet.com in September 2000 for an undisclosed sum, dependent on certain success parameters, to be paid completely in MatchNet shares. The item "Acquisition of DoYouDo, Inc. $ − $ 1,820,000" appeared on the company's 2001 financial statements. Matchnet's 2002 Annual Report disclosed, "The purchase price was contingent upon the Company acquiring a separate entity, eCrush, before May 30, 2001, and was to range from $1,820,000 to $1,820,000 plus 70% of the difference between $5,000,000 and the actual purchase price of eCrush, if it was less than $5,000,000." eCRUSH, a company providing essentially the same service, had entered the market on Valentine's Day, 1999; today eCRUSH claims to have over 1.6 million users and to have legitimately matched over 350,000 people "through a proprietary and patented database process." The company never actually acquired eCRUSH.com.
MatchNet's 2004 Second Quarter Report claimed that its strategic rationale for the DoYouDo purchase was to "leverage the positioning and membership database of an existing online personals service" and "enhance and extend existing brands." An August 4, 2004, SEC filing said that the rationale was to "leverage acquired intellectual property."
MatchNet's 2003 annual report noted:
| “ | In September 2000, MatchNet acquired DoYouDo, Inc., the owner of both a website based on viral e-mails and a patented business model relating to an automated method for determining mutual interest. In this model, people register on the site to see who has a “crush” on them, by submitting their e-mail addresses. Those people then are e-mailed and referred back to the site to see if there is a match. The acquisition was made primarily for the purpose of acquiring the patent on this business model for future development. At present, MatchNet has kept the DoYou2 site dormant and our DoYouDo, Inc. subsidiary has no operations. | ” |
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