STATISTA – Bumble and Tinder are the most popular dating apps in the U.S., according to Statista Consumer Insights. 35% of U.S. dating app users said they had used Bumble in the past 12 months, compared to 37% for Tinder. In the following ranks were Badoo, Plenty of Fish and Hinge.
MARKETPLACE – Aug 8 – Tinder makes ~ 2M “matches” a day and is just one of the online dating brands under the banner of InterActiveCorp that includes Match.com, OkCupid, HowAboutWe, BlackPeopleMeet, and OurTime. Experts thought the future of online dating was in small niche sites, but the big sites are winning for a simple reason. “It’s like a shop,” said Mark Brooks. “You’ve really got to stock the shelves. You can’t make do with a few hundred people. You need to have thousands of active people on a dating site.” IAC doesn't combine all the sites into one because, as Sam Yagan explains, dating is “such an intimate and personal search process, that people care a lot about the emotional affiliation they have with the brand that they choose.” Having the sites under one roof provides opportunities for cross-promotion. The strategy has led IAC to control more than 1/4 of the $2.2B online dating market in the U.S., twice the next biggest competitor, eHarmony.
THE GRIO – Nov 16 - After analyzing 1M+ profiles on a mainstream dating site, researchers at the University of California Berkeley, concluded that whites are highly unlikely to initiate contact with black people. 80% of the communication initiated by whites was to other whites. Black members were ten times more likely to contact whites. According to a 2009 analysis, black women on OkCupid.com get the "cold shoulder" from everyone, including their black male counterparts. Ron Worthy, a spokesperson for Blackpeoplemeet.com, a subsidiary of Match.com, says that this illustrates the importance and increasing popularity of niche dating sites. AfroRomance.com is specifically geared toward interracial dating. Rob Thompson started the AfroRomance.com because it was difficult to tell who was truly interested in interracial relationships on conventional sites. He went onto meet his wife, who is from Kenya on AfroRomance.com.
by Chelsea-Lyn Rudder
The full article was originally published at The Grio, but is no longer available.
HUFFINGTON POST – Aug 19 – The U.S. Census says African Americans are the ethnic group least likely to marry. BlackPeopleMeet.com, is the number one personals site among African Americans, according to Nielsen. The site had 410K African-American visitors during June 2011. African Americans also made up 12% of the Match.com audience, BlackPeopleMeet's parent site. "African-American penetration in the online personals category has more than doubled in the last four to five years," says Ron Worthy from BlackPeopleMeet.com.
by Jessica Cumberbatch Anderson
See full article at Huffington Post
ATLANTA POST – May 3 – Online dating is now the third most popular way for singles to meet, ranking behind the workplace and school (#1) and friends and family (#2), but ahead of bars (#4), according to an eHarmony study. ~113M people visit dating sites each month. 6 out of 10 African Americans are unmarried, according to Packaged Facts, while according to the 2004 U.S. census, 42% of all black women have never been married. Such statistics make the black community a prime target for the online dating industry. BlackPeopleMeet.com, was the 11th most visited dating site in March, reaching 4% of the total U.S. black population, according to Experian Hitwise. Other sites targeting African Americans include BlackSingles.com, AfricaSingles.net, BlackPeopleLove.com and SoulSingles.com. ~90% of online daters stick to the top 100 dating sites though, according to industry consultant Mark Brooks. Among the world's top sites are PlentyofFish, Zoosk, Manhunt, eHarmony. These sites offer relationship services that social networks do not, Brooks pointed out. "Dating sites protect the name and identity of people until they're ready to give it up. Facebook is a handy tool for researching people. You can look them up on Facebook and see what kind of company they keep. So the two work hand in hand."
How are Internet dating sites changing society? In a number of significant ways.
People are able to weed out people with show-stopping attributes. Second, dating sites have leveled the playing field for men and women. Women are not penalized for making first moves. Third, as a research paper by Brooks points out, singles are becoming more picky because online dating allows them to be more selective.
Online dating has a well-known downside. People online tend to lie about themselves. According to a study by OKCupid, men fib about their height. Half of all daters lie about their weight, and most people inflate their salaries by ~20%. A danger to avoid is a tendency to mask faults by creating the perfect date in the mind's eye. "When you start talking to somebody and you really want them to be the perfect match, you might start projecting qualities onto them that you would most desire, and that's called the halo effect," said Brooks. "There's a huge fantasy element to this, which is one reason why the virtual world sites are big," he continued. "There's a mental need for this, for believing that virtual worlds are better than the real world. A lot of Internet daters are disappointed. And ultimately people need to get out on 20 dates before they ever make their choice. They need to go experience the real world first." Chemistry counts, and daters must meet in person to develop a close relationship. "Personally, I do not think we will ever take the mystery out of dating and intimate connection," said Dr. Thomas Bradbury, eHarmony advisor, professor of psychology and founder of the Marriage and Family Development Lab at UCLA. "We are hard-wired to connect, and the daily challenges of creating, maintaining, and improving that connection are likely to be always just outside our grasp."
by Steven Barboza
The full article was originally published at Atlanta Post, but is no longer available.
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EURWEB – Apr 9 – Ron Worthy, Executive Director of BlackPeopleMeet.com believes that online dating is the most effective way to find and develop relationships that work. Worthy cited that the African American community has higher incidents of divorce and lower incidents of marriage. Launched in 2002, BlackPeopleMeet has helped introduce tens of thousands of couples, with a majority of members ages 35-45. Every month, the site reaches 4% of the total Black population in the U.S.
The full article was originally published at Eur Web, but is no longer available.
MARKETWATCH – Mar 10 – According to research from Packaged Facts, more than six out of ten Black Americans are unmarried, thereby making that group the most unattached in America. The solution may lie in online dating, where African-Americans now constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of that market. BlackPeopleMeet.com is operated by People Media. Launched in 2002, BlackPeopleMeet has helped introduce tens of thousands of couples, with a majority of members ages 35-45. Every month, the site reaches 4% of the total Black population in the US.
The full article was originally published at MarketWatch, but is no longer available.
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This is the news for January 12th through January 19th, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
BUSINESS WIRE – Jan 12 – BlackPeopleMeet.com, the online dating site
devoted to African-American singles, has launched BlackPeopleMeet.com
Magazine, which is free and requires no
membership. It is filled with insightful advice and perspectives to help
single African-Americans navigate through the world of dating, love and relationships. FULL ARTICLE @ EARTH TIMES
This is the news for the week of November 6th through November 12th, 2009. We hope you enjoy the new weekly news format. Here is the news we covered for this week: