Go figure. A week ago, Ashley Madison, the cutely named meet-and-cheat site was in the midst of a public-relations meltdown as hackers posted 32 million names, emails, credit card information and even street addresses of its philandering and/or swinging users.
Much fear and loathing ensued. Lawyers were hired, suits were file. The Toronto police said they were investigating two suicides that may have been triggered by the very public shaming some users experienced after the privacy invasion.
Even Noel Biderman, CEO of AM s owner Avid Life Media, announced he was stepping down.
This week, things are looking up at Ashley Madison, which announced that despite the hack, news of its woes may be driving a keen new interest in the service.
Avid Life Media said Monday that hundreds of thousands of people signed up in the past week, including many many women. According to its press release, recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated:
* This past week alone, hundreds of thousands of new users signed up for the Ashley Madison platform – including 87,596 women.
* Some journalists got the story wrong: Last week, a reporter who claimed to analyze the stolen data made incorrect assumptions about the meaning of fields contained in the leaked data.
* Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform.
As CNN Money pointed out, the statement didn t identify the reporter by name. But the company seemed to be referring to a Gizmodo story entitled Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site.
AM went on to tout its own horn: We have customers in nearly every zip code in the United States, as well as users in more than 50 countries around the world. The Ashley Madison app is the 14th highest grossing app1 in the USA social networking category in the Apple App Store. Approximately 70 percent of our revenue on any given day is from members making repeat purchases. We think that shows happy customers on a consistent basis.
Credit: Avid Life Media; in.Reuters.com
