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Thursday, May 15, 2008
We're not the first to notice and double-take. Penthouse Media Group Inc.'s ownership of a Christian dating website called BigChurch.com has been mentioned by a few publications, but usually as an ironic side note. Understandable. It's kind of a heavy (yes, quite loaded) subject. However, PMGI CEO Marc Bell tells WebProNews, in an exclusive interview, it's just business.
Editor's Note: Politics and now business make strange bedfellows, so to speak. From Penthouse's perspective, business is business and they shouldn't exclude based on personal value systems. The other side of that is less, well, amoral in its approach. What do you think? Is this exploiting the faithful or just business as usual? Let us know in the comments.
Newsweek brought some more attention to the, putting it mildly, counterintuitive pairing earlier this week with the eye-grabbing and head-scratching headline "Penthouse Gets Pious." Author Jennifer Ordonez followed up with a somewhat deferential take on how Penthouse was broadening its horizons following its $500 million acquisition of Various, Inc., the company that brings the Internet various ways to find likeminded friends.
"We're a social networking company. Just like a MySpace or a Facebook."
Marc H. Bell, CEO of Penthouse Media Group
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You may be more familiar with FriendFinder, which will replace the name Penthouse on the corporate letterhead soon, or with the main reason Penthouse picked up Various—Adult FriendFinder. The 18 to 34 year-old male demographic, everybody in the advertising business knows, is the sweet spot. Along with Adult FriendFinder came 600,000 affiliates promoting memberships to 260 million sets of eyeballs at websites like Bondage.com, GayFriendFinder, JewishFriendFinder, LesbianPersonals.com, and LikeMyGayPhoto.com, and 1.2 million paying subscribers to sites like BigChurch.com.
BigChurch offers dating services, Bible search and commentary in four different languages, and boasts half a million Christian members worldwide, though a job posting on the site, the high-salaried requirements for which presume a certain comfort level with adult content, boasts 8 million active members. A footnote at the bottom disclaims any expectations of real-time numeric accuracy, though.
For as little as $5.55 per month (interesting sequence of numbers, but three sixes perhaps would have set off alarms) you can connect romantically with others "compatible with your Christian values," as promised on the About page, complete with daily horoscopes.
Compatibility issues are left at the signup page, it would seem, for if you'd rather be an affiliate of BigChurch.com, then FriendFinder and PMGI claim you can make up $30,000 per month and even earn "a whirlwind weekend in Sin City with gorgeous Penthouse Pets at your side," echoing what many know already: God is big business.
It's been said before that the horizon beyond the all-inclusive social network like MySpace holds more exclusive, niche networks, neatly dividing up the audience along demographic lines. Targeting becomes that much more pinpoint, and a boon to networks offering direct access to individual markets. In 2005, the US market for religious publishing and products reached $7.3 billion.
If you've made it this far into the article—if you made it past the first paragraph—the idea that the self-titled "largest global adult company" owns and operates a Christian dating site may seem a bit incongruent. But CEO Marc Bell doesn't seem to think so. Bell told WebProNews the company, in advance of an IPO, will be changing its name to FriendFinder Networks. These days they are a social network company, of which Penthouse is just one brand making up a mere 10 percent of its business.
"[Penthouse] doesn't represent what we do," said Bell, who equated the soon-to-be FriendFinder Network with MySpace or Facebook. As for BigChurch and Penthouse under the same roof, Bell was pragmatic, saying it was just like owning two separate businesses. Under the FriendFinder Network umbrella, BigChurch and Penthouse are independent from one another.
When pressed, Bell dismissed suggestions BigChurch membership would take issue with the site's ownership, noting both that many Penthouse subscribers hailed from the Bible Belt (indeed, this year's Pet of the Year is from Mississippi), and that his business partner, Dan Staton is a devout Catholic.
Though Bell seemed to think the idea of a fundamental conflict existing was rather foreign considering BigChurch and Penthouse are separate businesses, we presented the simple fact that Penthouse owned a Christian dating site to a number of area Christians* to get their reaction.
Four people from four separate denominations had similar reactions, ranging from "wow" to initial silence as they wrapped their heads around it.
» But wait, there's more!
The Christian community responds in the second half of this investigative WebProNews exclusive.
Click here to keep reading.
About the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.
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