Posted on 02/14/2011 12:38:05 PM PST by wmfights
“Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment.” That is the declaration of Noel Biderman, a Toronto businessman who wants to sell you an adulterous affair. As the current cover story of Bloomberg Businessweek reveals, Mr. Biderman is doing a great deal of business.
The magazine describes AshleyMadison.com as “the premier ‘dating’ website for aspiring adulterers.” Biderman says he came up with the idea after serving as an agent for professional athletes. That job required him to negotiate around the adulterous affairs of his clients. Biderman came to the conclusion that adultery could be big business.
Now, Ashley Madison grosses $60 million in yearly revenue and produces $20 million in annual profits. Biderman himself is making millions of dollars a year, and adultery appears to be a growth industry.
The idea behind Ashley Madison is easy enough to understand. Biderman’s plan was to create a website that would appear to cater to women seeking an adulterous partner, while actually attracting men seeking the women for an adulterous liaison. Clients of the site establish a personal profile, check off their “availability status,” and mark their personal preferences. The real money flows to the site when men connect online with women and then have to pay rather steep fees for the privilege of continuing the conversation. If all goes according to plan, adultery soon follows.
Businessweek’s reporter, Sheelah Kolhatkar, describes Noel Biderman as “a lone genius — possibly evil and certainly entrepreneurial.” He serves as chief executive officer of Avid Life Media, the parent company for Ashley Madison. He is also the married father of two young children. In his office the computer monitor flashes his company’s promotional message: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
Biderman’s wife, Amanda, seems unconcerned about both the business and her husband’s chosen role as the captain of the adultery industry. In a statement of almost complete moral evasion, she says: “Really, the business itself doesn’t match who he is as a person — it’s not our lifestyle or value system or any of that.” Well, here’s a clue: if you conceive, establish, and run the business, it is your value system. When “Life is short. Have an affair.” is your motto, adultery is “who you are as a person,” even if you never have an actual affair.
She went on: “I mean, yeah, I’d love it if he were working on a cure for cancer. But it’s a business, and that’s how we look at it.”
The same could be said for a house of prostitution, of course, and at least some observers suggest that prostitution is basically what Ashley Madison is all about. After all, though almost all of the men registered at the site are married, about 20 percent of the women are not.
Interestingly, since adultery has now been transformed into a major business, certain metrics become available. Reporter Sheelah Kolhatkar explains that 20-40 percent of heterosexual married men and 20-25 percent of heterosexual married women will have an affair during their lifetime. She cites University of New Hampshire economist Bruce Elmslie, who claims that men and women commit adultery at about the same rates until the ages of 35 or 40. After that, women are more reluctant to have an affair, and the men surge on.
Biderman explains that women are most likely to have an affair in the workplace with a “work husband” or with the husband of a friend. Men commit adultery under a far wider range of circumstances. Ashley Madison is “drowning in husbands,” Biderman reports.
Biderman launched the site in 2010, but he founded the company back in 2002. He named it Ashley Madison by combining the two most popular names for baby girls that year. He claims just to be meeting a need and rejects the idea that he is actually expanding the numbers of affairs. Nevertheless, anthropologist Helen Fisher accuses Biderman of “preying on human frailty.”
At least in economic terms, Biderman’s idea is paying handsomely. Ashley Madison has already made him a millionaire several times over. David Evans, publisher of Online Dating Insider, remarked that Biderman and his company “certainly own that cheaters’ market.” He added, “It’s quite lucrative and successful.”
Amazingly enough, Biderman actually complains that his business is the target of discrimination. After all, Fox turned down his proposed Super Bowl commercial. As a matter of fact, Biderman seems to complain rather constantly about the opposition his company engenders. On the other hand, some suspect that he is also fueling the opposition, stirring up his own publicity.
Sheelah Kolhatkar describes the company in these terms:
What Ashley Madison does is legal. It’s also illicit, in that it helps users violate their marriage vows and engage in deception and secrecy. This presents enormous branding challenges as well as financial ones: How many fund managers want to go home to their wives and announce, “Honey, I found the perfect investment opportunity!”
It is hard to imagine how this company and its founder would not face “enormous branding challenges.” With understatement, Kolhatkar expresses the obvious: “He is running a budding empire built on an activity that most people would say is wrong.”
That last statement is revealing in more than one sense. It does seem that most people believe that adultery is wrong. Even so, it is rampant. It seems that many human beings will abandon their moral principles when faced with the opportunity to commit adultery. Ashley Madison exists to create even more of those opportunities.
It undoubtedly says a great deal that Bloomberg Businessweek chose this topic for its Valentine’s Day cover story. Why did they run a cover article on a man who declares, “Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment”? Does this represent the magazine’s agreement with Mrs. Biderman when she says, “…it’s a business, and that’s how we look at it”?
Who would thrash you for this? The cliche of "I can do whatever I want as long as I don't hurt anyone" is the slogan for those unable to face their own failings.
He may indeed provide the service in question, but there is deception on so many levels, not only with his own company's image and services, but also inducing deception on the part of AM's "customers" - that there can be no good to come from this.
In a nutshell - exactly!
No. The only real way to improve your search engine standing is to pay for it. Businesses pay out the wazoo for search engine standings. Google is also very good at parsing. You can misspell a popularly searched site like AM to hell and back, and it will automatically provide you with the correct search results.
Here’s something that most folks don’t know. Fidelity rarely figures into a divorce. You don’t get more stuff because your spouse was unfaithful, and they don’t get more of your stuff if you were unfaithful. If custody isn’t disputed, you don’t even have to physically appear in court most states. Everything else is done by the numbers.
I wonder if the wife of the Mafia hitman up the corner from where I grew up would ever say, “It’s a business.”
What a crazy attitude some people have! It never fails to amaze me. Even though I grew up in a rough neighborhood I took certain standards of morals and ethics for granted. IT AIN’T EVER FOR GRANTED!
Never take the standards of morality, ethics, modesty and decency for granted. They have to be worked on all the time, re-inforced, taught, celebrated, protected.
This “business” will be taken down in time, I’d hope. Some big dog Divorce Lawyer representing one or a class of complaintants will take everything the happy “Adultery Inducing” business couple have.
I’m telling you, it’s a fraud. If AM were really hooking people up it would go broke. You’d sign in, pay your monies get phone numbers, and never need AM again. Instead, you pays your monies, you talk to the fake girls who flirt and tease, but just don’t know you well enough to give you their number yet, and will no doubt become “involved” with some other member by the time she does know you well enough. So, you pays more monies and repeat until you’re broke.
In the space of an hour, I’ve already seen that AM owns half the sites that supposedly review the service. This isn’t about adultery, it’s one big con game. Possibly even more evil, they’re preying on lonely and/or frustrated men.
I think adultery has failed.
It brings heartache, sexual disease, abuse, and children who, if they survive, are handicapped by the absence of a proper family.
What does “failure” mean to this man?
He probably also has sharp lawyers, ready to pull out the legal doctrines about contracts to commit acts that violate law or public policy (hint: the words "not worth the paper they're printed on" figure prominently) and explain to any dissatisfied customers that they've forked over their money for nothing and there ain't a damn thing they can do about it.
Thank you. I’m starting to really see how it works though. So far, you’re the only person who sees the fraud here. Everyone is in anguish over the adultery, and I suspect there is very little actual adultery happening because of this website.
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What can I say? Love, fidelity, commitment, trust, loyalty - these all mean nothing to the owners and users of this enterprise. As you sow, so shall you reap - it's the immutable law of karma. And promoting evil earns the same reward as practicing it yourself.
current cover story of Bloomberg Businessweek ... describes AshleyMadison.com as “the premier ‘dating’ website for aspiring adulterers.” ... grosses $60 million in yearly revenue and produces $20 million in annual profits.Yeah, it could be what you say. I agree with the theory, but the article is a cover story in a reputable business magazine -- you might want to buff up your claim a bit, evidence-standards-wise.
Oh you know it. I’ve done more checking and I’m more convinced than ever that I’m correct. It costs X dollars to see a profile, X dollars to send an email, X dollars to receive an email, X dollars to chat with the potential mistress. Potential mistress of course being the woman who’s being paid to string the sucker along to spend dollar after dollar on emails and chat by the minute. Poor bastards are too stupid to realize that if the woman on the other end was real, she’d save herself some cash too and just make phone contact.
Our society has a few problems.
I guess she hasn't considered the possibility of him being good enough to keep his affairs secret. After all, he is good enough at that to make is a multi-million dollar business.
INO, adultery is almost always a product of the workplace.
It doesn't work that way. 90% of the time, no matter which spouse cheats, the wife walks away with the house, the kids, and a big monthly check.
Take my word for it.
I hope he has a good legal department. ANYONE who uses that service is subject to the discovery rules. Private investigators probably have an entrapment field day.
Remember, toll pass records are used in divorce cases now as sop.
This website is just an internet version of the no-tell motel only with less security.
You are spot on.
That's VERY high overhead costs for a web site like this purports to be. Maybe Bloomberg's division needs to add some basic business analysts?
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