WIRED — Mar 11 — These days, if you're single and have internet access, you're about as likely to have an online personal as not. Not long ago I read a series of articles about how membership in online dating sites was leveling off. Of course it is! If a matchmaking site is any good, it stands to reason that people would pair off and cancel their memberships. The lines between meeting online and meeting offline grow fuzzy. Ask me where I met my boyfriend and I'll tell you online, on a motorcycle listserv. Ask him, and he'll say offline, at a party thrown by another member of the list. The internet has become as ordinary as any church group, running club or singles hangout when it comes to meeting a special someone or two.
The full article was originally published at Wired, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: So now we've hit mainstream, what's next? Social networking? Mobile dating?
Hi:
My name is AJ, and Mark invited me to jump into this board. The dating site that I run has been operating steadily for a long time. It’s highly “niche” (for people living with herpes and/or HPV) and has made it up to about 45,000 members over seven years. Enough to keep 3.5 of us busy full-time.
At our size, of course, one closely-viewed metric is the total number of members. It was about three years back when I realized that we had reached what I call a “neutral buoyancy point” – new members were coming in, but attrition was equalling the number of new members. People naturally leave, oftentimes returning later. Additionally, as a part of AOL’s whitelist email program we follow, for ALL members, the AOL rules with regards to handling bounced and spam-marked emails. So to continue “growing” we’ve had to improve our new sign-up rate and thankfully that has continued to increase, due largely to word-of-mouth and a small but dedicated affiliate group.
Related to this is the metric concerning the “total market potential”. Our members like to write in and point out that as 1 in 4 people have herpes, we should therefore have 1/4 as many people as Match.com or Yahoo. I disagree with that as there are many other factors involved, which I won’t get into now, except to comment that I did my own calculation. I went to the Overture inventory page and found that a search for “herpes dating” (our top search term) was performed 5309 times in January. I removed the word “herpes” and discovered that “dating” was searched for just over 7 million times! So I’m figuring that our target market share is 0.07% of that of Match.com or Yahoo! It’s representative of the number of people who have herpes and actually want to date in that niche. I’m not sure what today’s figure for the membership for either of the big sites is, but I don’t think it’s 60 million so I think that with 45,000 members on MPwH, we are actually ahead of the game!
Another thing about running a real niche site like ours is that we provide a lot of ancillary resources – medical and lifestyle information, support chats, even a paper on how to “tell” someone that you have herpes – something that is unbelievably scary for a lot of people. I suspect that the majority of people with herpes don’t even want to join such a site – not interested. But for many others, just being able to log in and be around others who have herpes is the biggest pick-me up and boost to help them get on with life. Aside from the pure mechanics of the “picture and a paragraph” ad format that is the core of MPwH (and which works great, by the way, despite TV ads besmearing that concept), providing a safe and nurturing environment while people are with us is the focus.
Anyway, just my ten cents on how the Internet Dating scene is normalizing.
AJ
http://www.mpwh.net
Some of the larger herpes dating sites would have you believe they are ahead of the game when you stop and compare their membership base to that of the larger online mainstream dating sites. When you stop to really think about this – common sense tells you that their numbers are declining and will continue to do so as long as herpes advocates (like myself) continue to promote self confidence, honesty, awareness and open communication with non infected potential partners.
90% of those that are infected with the herpes virus are not even aware they are infected because they have never been tested nor had any noticeable or visible symptoms. So when you think about those facts smart people begin to realize that one in four people on the major mainstream dating sites such as Match.com, ePersonals.com, ChristianCafe.com and Lavalife.com will actually have the herpes simplex virus too.
I have been told personally that the biggest pick-me up in life is to be around others that are going to accept you for who you are and not what you have. Why would you limit yourself to dating only those that have herpes? Isn’t that like saying I am choosing only to date those with blonde hair and blue eyes? Besides.. why should having herpes define who you are as a person?
If you are looking to meet people with herpes I would much rather see people achieve this by locating their local herpes support groups or their local herpes social groups. In those groups people are encouraged to keep an open mind and are given the tools necessary to gain the confidence and self esteem needed in getting on with their lives.
People automatically assume that because they are part of a larger herpes personals site that they are only going to meet people with herpes and that might actually be the case but what other stds will that person have? That niche holds true for the major online mainstream dating sites such as Match.com and ePersonals.com So are you really doing yourself a favor by sticking strictly with the herpes dating site? Is that herpes dating site trying to make it seem as though they care about your self esteem, how to tell, etc. But do they really care about YOU or are they simply hoping you will pay the monthly fee and renew at a later date?
My advice to those that are considering meeting somebody via internet is that you take your time looking for that special person and simply be open and honest about STDS in general – not just Herpes Simplex Virus. It’s important to discuss STDS and encourage proper STD testing in all realms of the online dating world.
Having Herpes and utilizing strictly herpes dating sites isn’t going to somehow make things easier because you still have to encourage one another to obtain proper STD testing. Since it’s good to do that any way – why would you limit yourself? Why wouldn’t you feel inspired to broaden your search for that special someone?
The reason those popular non-herpes dating sites have millions if not billions of members is because there are many people out there in search of the same thing you are that have the same problems you do that are willing to keep an open mind and find the person that has the qualities that they are looking for. Qualities that I feel are much more important that just having herpes. Qualities that really matter such as integrity, honesty, compassion, caring, friendship and so forth…
My advice to those people that just found out they have herpes is to honestly put dating on the backburner until you have spent some time learning about the virus and how it works. Surround yourself with positive people that are going to encourage you and help to have a positive and healthy outlook. Take some time to take care of yourself and to be on your own for a time. Once you have learned everything you need to know about herpes and have found out what truly makes you happy in life you’ll be ready to date again. You’ll also feel empowered and have the self confidence that it takes to search for a partner that is going to accept you for who you are and not what you have.
Angela S.
Patient Advocate
http://www.yoshi2me.com/