What s that expression. . . nothing succeeds like success?
Nope. Apparently, based on strong user growth in recent months at infidelity-dating website Ashley Madison, nothing succeeds like failure.
When the site of the Canadian-based company was hacked earlier this year, millions of its members s private information was laid out for the world — and, to be more precise, the members partners, spouses and significant others — to see. Overnight, the service s motto — Life is short. Have an affair. — seemed more like a curse than a clever marketing quip.
End of story, yeah? A huge stampede toward the exits as spooked users tried to hide their tracks. Right?
The opposite has happened. In numbers released this week, Ashley Madison says it has grown from 39 million members around the time of the intrusion to 43 million today. It seems publicity, whether good or bad, can do wonders to the bottom line.
Hard to explain the uptick, though, and a spokesman for parent company Avid Life Media, was mum when asked. CNN Money reported that the company announced only that the website had no update to provide since its last statement on August 31, and it would not comment for this report.
But all along, Avid has been downplaying the fallout from the hack, saying reports of its imminent demise, as CNN put it, were greatly exaggerated and that cheaters continued to use the site more than ever.
The attack was both sizable and embarrassing. For example, as The Telegraph reported, Ashley Madison s website showed that among the users exposed in August there were 1.2m Britons. And there were a lot of very uncomfortable members outed, including some in quite unusual places:
It emerged that scientists working in a top secret defence laboratory in the UK and a female MP were among hundreds of public servants whose personal details were published online by hackers.
The recent jump in membership seems counterintuitive, given the brutal nature of the hack, not just for members but for the website as well, says CNN:
The hack was bad enough, but the information revealed as part of the breach was pretty damning for the company. The list of names appeared to show that upwards of 95% of Ashley Madison s members were men.
Ouch!
The company denied that, saying that journalists were misreading the exposed information. Instead, Ashley Madison said that the ratio of men to women who actively used their account was 1.2 to 1.
Above: AshleyMadison.com screen grab
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