Snap Interactive's Annual Report Announces Highlights for 2013 and 2014, Updates on Business Strategy and Vision

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Apr 01, 2014, 04:41 ET

NEW YORK, April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Snap Interactive, Inc. ("Snap," the "Company," "we," "our" or "us") (OTCQB: STVI), a leading social dating developer and owner of AYI.com, has filed its Annual Report for 2013 which included highlights for 2013 and 2014, as well as the Company's business strategy and vision for the future.

"2013 was an exciting turnaround year for us, during which we started to reverse a sequential quarterly trend of decreasing revenue and active subscribers," Snap's Chief Executive Officer, Clifford Lerner said. "We introduced several new initiatives in support of our vision to "Eliminate Loneliness," with a renewed focus on execution and improvement of our application and operations. The results of the hard work of 2013 have already become apparent. In the fourth quarter of 2013, we saw our first revenue growth in nearly two years. The momentum has continued into 2014, with growth in our active subscriber count."

"We enter 2014 with a leaner cost structure, a unique application that matches users based on friends and interests in common, and a sophisticated process for continuously optimizing AYI.com's user experience," Lerner continued. "The building blocks are in place for a successful 2014, and we are as excited as ever about the future of Snap and AYI.com."

Key highlights for 2013 include:

We rebranded AYI.com (from AreYouInterested.com) and rebuilt the application's user matching engine to tap into Snap's vast repository of social data, including compatible interests, friends in common and friends-of-friends.
We instituted a product testing framework that allows us to test over 7,000 versions of AYI.com simultaneously, resulting in continuous, data-driven improvement in user experience.
We substantially cut expenses by reducing headcount and migrating technology operations from a managed hosting data center to a co-located facility.
We introduced the "The Data of Dating" blog, which has been picked up in several top-tier publications, including Time, USA Today, NPR, Glamour, and the New York Post.
We announced a strategic partnership with Match.com, enhancing the experience for AYI.com and Match.com users.

Key highlights for the first quarter of 2014 include:

The first two months of 2014 have built on the firm foundation established in 2013, with a 12% increase in active subscribers from 78,000 as of December 31, 2013, to 87,000 as of February 28, 2014.
Hired COO Alex Harrington, who brings a successful track record in mobile and Internet leadership.

Experimentation
We introduced a rigorous product development process that has delivered what we believe to be one of the best user experiences in the interactive dating industry. With "experimentation" as a core value at Snap, we invested in real-time robust analytics and a world-class testing framework that enables us to deploy thousands of variations of AYI.com in order to optimize the experience for our users. The experimentation process at Snap is called 'CIO' – celebrate, iterate, obliterate, and is one of our greatest accomplishments. This investment and commitment to experimentation has enabled us to achieve our engagement and conversion goals while improving the user experience each week.

Advertising and Marketing
While we redesigned AYI.com, we kept advertising and marketing levels low to conserve capital while the site was optimized. As a consequence, we witnessed a decline in our subscriber and revenue base through August 2013. However, the enhancements and optimizations led to increases in user engagement and conversion rates, which translated to increased advertising and marketing scale and efficiency. Our subscriber base began to increase in September 2013, with three consecutive months of increases beginning in December 2013. We believe we are poised for continued growth in 2014.

Our Vision and Values
During 2013, we refined our vision and values. Our vision, which is designed to guide our decision-making, is below:

Eliminate Loneliness: We build innovative solutions to make it fun and easy to meet new people in order to enrich people's lives.

We also refined our values, integrating them into all activities within Snap. Our values represent how we do our jobs, who we are, and how we plan to achieve our vision of "Eliminating Loneliness." We articulated five core values that guide our every decision:

Experiment
We use a data-driven method to make decisions – we hypothesize, experiment, learn and iterate. We find innovative solutions and question assumptions, even if they are longstanding. Even our most innovative ideas are guided by experimentation and iterative steps.

Own It
Our passion comes through in how we work. If we see something that needs to be fixed, we take the initiative to not only do it, but to do it well. When that is fixed, we hunt down the next opportunity for improvement and make it happen. This applies not only to our work but also to ourselves. We actively pursue self-improvement and make ourselves experts in our fields, whether it's by taking classes, reading forums or joining book clubs.

Be Quick
Signed, sealed and delivered! We do things quickly and in MVP form. We have a bias for action and speed over perfection. We prefer an ugly but accurate report today, over a fancily formatted report tomorrow. The faster we move, the faster we fail, the faster we learn. To help us move quickly, we automate wherever possible.

Plan & Execute
A goal without a plan is just a wish. We commit to lean plans and processes and then follow through on them to get results. We remain nimble. If we realize we are heading in the wrong direction, we are quick to embrace change, make a new plan, and get on a new course.

Collaborate
Great ideas can come from anyone, so we create a safe and open environment where we are always exchanging ideas. For collaboration to work, hearing is as essential as being heard. That's why we seek first to understand, then to be understood. When we hit a bump in the road, we focus on learning, not on blaming. Since we value each other's ideas, we are able to spar intellectually one moment, then grab beers together the next.

"Although the last couple of years have been challenging for Snap, we invested in the business for the long-term and decided not to settle for short-term solutions. We believe that 2014 will be a landmark year for Snap," Lerner said. "In addition to continued growth in revenue and active subscribers during 2014, we expect to become cash flow positive from operating activities in the third quarter of 2014. We look forward to communicating our progress with stockholders over the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your continued support."

About Snap Interactive, Inc.
Snap Interactive, Inc. develops, owns and operates a social dating application for social networking websites and mobile platforms. SNAP's flagship brand, AYI.com, is one of the largest social and mobile dating applications on the Internet and offers a completely integrated Facebook, iPhone, Android and Web dating application. AYI.com's mission is to improve the online dating experience of meeting new people by integrating a user's friends and interests to enable more meaningful connections. For more information on SNAP, please visit http://www.snap-interactive.com/, its online dating blog at http://www.ayi.com/dating-blog, on Facebook at facebook.com/SnapInteractiveInc and on Twitter at @SNAPInteractive.

The contents of our websites are not part of this press release, and you should not consider the contents of these websites in making an investment decision with respect to our common stock or warrants.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc. iPhone® is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. Android® is a registered trademark of Google Inc. AYI.com® is a registered trademark of Snap Interactive, Inc.

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Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Words such as "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "budget," ""continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "goal," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "seek," "should," "began," "target," "would" and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the following: general economic, industry and market sector conditions; our future growth and the ability to obtain additional capital or financing to execute our business plan; the ability to achieve break-even cash flow; the ability to grow revenue, decrease expenses and increase the number of active subscribers or new subscription transactions; the intense competition in the online dating marketplace; the ability to develop, establish and maintain a strong brand; the effect of any interruption or failure of our data center; our ability to effectively manage its growth, including attracting and retaining qualified employees; and circumstances that could disrupt the functioning of our application and websites. In evaluating these statements, you should carefully consider these risks and uncertainties and those described under the headings "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement or statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement was made, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws.

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SOURCE Snap Interactive, Inc.