RATE OR DATE — Sep 6 — Take a look at this Alexa graph of two sites going in different directions, plentyoffish.com vs. americansingles.com.
Unlike many industries, where market share is a costly trophy for top executives, here, share and momentum are about survival. In a recent report by Kelsey (Newspapers Should Bolster Online Alliances) senior analyst Michael Boland says, "Partnering with online players to etch out a strategy is something that we've seen work, and we recommend that partnering with an online player is a good move." The report goes on to state that newspapers need to re-think their emphasis on offline conversions, when new technologies offer more potential for online conversions. Here's a list of U.S.newspapers.
| Dating Site/Network | Paper Partners, Weighted Total |
| eharmony.com | 18.33 |
| perfectmatch.com | 14 |
| people2people.com | 13.5 |
| fastcupid.com | 7 |
| match.com | 4 |
| americansingles.com | 3.33 |
| relationshipexchange.com | 2 |
| ahsventures.com | 2 |
| yahoopersonals.com | 1 |
| relationshipnetwork.com | 1 |
| heart2heartnetwork.com | 1 |
| 900 number | 1 |
| jdate.com | 0.33 |
| n/a | 31.5 |
| SUM | 100 |
| Dating Site/Network | Top 3 Partners, by circulation |
| eharmony.com | usatoday.com latimes.com chicgaotribune.com |
| people2people.com | washingtonpost.com stltoday.com tampabay.com |
| perfectmatch.com | philly.com miami.com kansascity.com |
| fastcupid.com | sfgate.com seattletimes.com signonsandiego.com |
| match.com | dallasnews.com pe.com fresnobee.com |
| americansingles.com | latimes.com chicgaotribune.com newsday.com |
| relationshipexchange.com | denverpost.com buffalonews.com |
| ahsventures.com | chron.com mysanantonio.com |
| 900 number | nytimes.com |
| yahoopersonals.com | boston.com |
| relationshipnetwork.com | mcall.com |
| heart2heartnetwork.com | jacksonville.com |
| jdate.com | sun-sentinal.com |
Almost 1/3 of newspapers have no online-personals partner. Partnerships at the parent-company-level were not as coherent as one might expect. Only Gannett stands out for their unwavering faithfulness to eHarmony, a partnership that spans over a dozen papers in the Top 100 list. Compare that to The McClatchy Company, who is primary linked with PerfectMatch, but whose portfolio companies also appear to include one-off deals with eharmony.com, match.com and americansingles.com. But at least those companies are in the game, which is more than one can say for Advance Publication. Despite having four papers in the U.S. Top 100 list (cleveland.com, nj.com, mlive.com, al.com), no online-dating partners could be found on any of their sites.
Best Integration – Boston.com / Yahoo! Personals – Yahoo provides several content sections, Boston.com has their own Personals forum, and Boston.com Personals has even held their own events and contests.