MIAMI HERALD — Feb 9 — South Florida singles are finding increasingly attractive options for finding love — matchmaking services, dinner clubs, online websites, community events and singles fundraisers. Introducing Epicuriosity; a wine and dine social club for singles. The owner, O'Leary, plans dinners for six at local restaurants to help busy professionals expand their social circles. She tailors the gatherings by age groups. O'Leary hopes to have dinners planned for most nights each week. She also hopes to find love for herself in the process.
Mark Brooks: I own a similar club for young Silicon Valley professionals ACE-CLUB
As this report says “USERS” it is predictable that online personals will decline, because they are only users and not clients, and this is the greatest mistake of all.
If a person does not pay for the service, he or she is not really interested, really involved in a serious dating.
Why?
When I go to the market to buy goods, I am paying for the characteristics of that goods.
When I buy an information service, I am paying for the characteristics of this service.
When I pay for a on line dating susbcription, I am NOT paying for the characteristics of the service, I am paying to AVOID being cheated by others, to avoid fakes profiles.
Did you notice that off line chains, instead of disappearing, are growing with good health?
One of the reasons is that they are reliable; they interview all candidates, they analyze all of their profiles, they do backgrounds-checks to all clients, and most important of all, they receive a payment. They have all clients, never free users. This payment not only covers their costs, but also is like a barrier to avoid free users, who could hurt the clients’ feelings; a client is paying and SOONER OR LATER, want to contact COMPATIBLE REAL PERSONS.
Different from some on line dating sites, that problems begin to appear in many of them because conversion rate from users to clients is decreasing due to not reliable profiles database. The strategy to give free memberships to have a good amount of users and then try to convert them in clients (gold memberships) will not work any more, because they will remain as users for ever and ever in a vicious circle.
The on line dating future: Quality like off line chains, perhaps less photos, less instant messages, less chat, less videos, less speed; high reliability and high precision in on line dating techniques, creating demand of the service.
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@argentina.com