Category: Match.com

Information Suitor Highway Goes Mobile

Posted on September 6, 2005

PHYSORG — Sept 2 — For most singles using Match.com Mobile, using the mobile phone to search for dates and flirt via text messaging will make dating more convenient, said Match.com spokeswoman Kathleen Roldan.  Young single people are more attracted to the service, with 42% of users under age 25 and 81% under age 35.  Eventually, Match.com also hopes to enhance the service with a location-based technology, so that mobile users could find matches in close proximity based on the location of their phone, she said. Some companies are already doing this, like SmallPlanet, whose members can "crowdsurf" by using their Bluetooth radio signal as a "radar" to find friends or other members at best within 100 feet or less but still allow for members to control their privacy. According to analyst Brent Iadarola of Frost & Sullivan in the Chronicle, "subscription revenue for the mobile dating services are expected to rise from $31.4 million this year to $215 million by 2009, which does not include revenue from text-messaging charges, but could double those figures." FULL ARTICLE @ PHYSORG

Mark Brooks: Online dating takes a significant commitment of time.  Mobile dating allows users the added convenience of being able to peruse profles whenever and wherever they feel like it. 

Match.com Invests £3m in UK Offline Advertising

Posted on September 1, 2005

MatchcomAug 31 — Match.com is urging singletons to 'make love happen' in a £3m UK advertising campaign, launching next week. It is the first major ad campaign for Match.com in this country, and will include television, radio and print ads. Earlier this month, Nielsen NetRatings revealed that personals sites attract more than 3.5m people a month in the UK — an audience that has almost doubled in the last year alone.

The full article was originally published at Revolution, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Europe is hallowed ground…opportunity awaits…but, it's far more challenging than the homogeneous US market.

Hooking Up Is Out; Finding Your Perfect Match Is In!

Posted on August 26, 2005

PerfectmatchcomPRNewswire — Aug 23 — PerfectMatch.com appears prominently in the "Must Love Dogs" movie trailer and throughout the extensive television campaign.  PerfectMatch's remarkable growth in 2005 has been driven by partnerships in entertainment with Sony Pictures' "Hitch," the Dr. Phil Show and Lifetime Television, as well as major online brands MSNBC, iVillage and drugstore.com. PerfectMatch is a premium "relationship" site and continues its impressive growth while the "casual" dating space faces an industry-wide slowdown. A primary reason for the slowed growth within the casual dating space is the emergence of the savvy Internet dater. "Casual sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals are terrific to introduce users to online dating," Mr. Dahl, CEO, stated continued. "As singles gain confidence, we can expect them to graduate to a community of like-minded people. At PerfectMatch, singles can do that because we have a community of genuine people looking for real love and sincere 'relationships.'"  PerfectMatch.com(TM), is preparing for another sizeable growth increase in 2006 with the release of a book "Finding Your Perfect Match" authored by PerfectMatch relationship authority Dr. Pepper Schwartz (Penguin), and a partnership with NBC Universal's "The Break-up" starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. 

The full article was originally published at Red Nova, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Match and Yahoo Personals, along with True.com I might add (a relationships site with a slightly broader perspective), allow users the freedom to decide what kind of relationships they are interested in. eHarmony and PerfectMatch are focused on people who are 'very single' and very motivated to hook up for a longer term relationship.  Examples of full-on casual dating sites include Adultfriendfinder/Passion.com (Alexa rank has gone from 100 to 45 over the prior 12 months), Sexsearch (Alexa rank grown from 1500 to 600), Mate1 (15,000 to 2,000).  Eroticy and IwantU are plugging along as well.  Morals aside, full-on casual dating sites are here to stay.  This segment is alive and kicking and not to be ignored.

Online Dating Feeling Less Attractive

Posted on August 19, 2005

Personal_sitesCNN MONEY — Aug 18 — Online dating has shrugged off its social stigma and emerged as a mainstream means for singles to find that special someone. The U.S. online dating industry is expected to climb 9% year-over-year with revenues of $516 million in 2005, said Nate Elliott, an analyst at Jupiter Research. That's slower than the 19% growth in 2004. And 77% in 2003. There are currently nearly 1,000 dating Web sites, said Bill Tancer of Hitwise, and one out of every 100 people logging on to the internet visits an online dating site. Niche sites are popular. Social networking sites have become increasingly popular among the young.  That's giving traditional online dating sites a run for their money, said John Tinker, research analyst at ThinkEquity Partners.  The Big 3 online dating sites — Yahoo! Personals, Match.com and EHarmony.com will have to tweak their business models and create new innovative products to grow revenue. One place to look is advertising. Date.com's CEO Meir Strahlberg said that advertising revenues have doubled in the past few months to 10% of total revenue. "There are 86 million single adults who control annual spending of $1.6 trillion," Strahlberg said. "Online dating sites reach about 30 percent of that market currently." Date.com can target an advertiser's products to almost any demographic based on user profiles. Yahoo! Personals general manager Lorna Borenstein said, "today's online daters are increasingly sophisticated. You can't just increase offerings; you have to help singles figure out their relationship goals and offer tools to help them find their version of success, whatever that might be."  FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY

Mark Brooks: Hot future trends; 1. targeted advertising on online dating sites.  2. personality profiling.

For Online Daters, Love Not Always True

Posted on August 8, 2005

DALLAS NEWS — Aug 4 — Rhodes showed up his date revealed she had a picture online that was at least 35 years younger. Terri ended up meeting a man who was   married with two children. As dating moves from clicking in bars to clicking a mouse, questions are arising about what online dating services are doing to protect subscribers from deception.  The Texas Legislature joined several states that were considering legislation to require disclosure of background checks but the proposed Texas legislation died at the end of the session.  The databases that background check companies use are generally out of date by up toa year.  There's also difficulty in defining an Internet dating site; i.e. online chat rooms and craigslist classifieds.  Proponents like Herb Vest, CEO of True.com, contend that checks will help weed out unsuitable mates.  True.com’s screenings result in the rejection of ~ 5% because offelony criminal records, and another 4% who already are married. “It’s not foolproof, but I think it’s very effective,” Vest said. “We’re very serious about enforcing these rules.” Match.com and Yahoo! Personals rely on subscribers to alert them to dishonest members. 

Finding Love Online

Posted on August 5, 2005

Finding_love_onlineKNIGHT RIDDER NEWS — Aug 2 — Talk about life-changing decisions. George and Erika posted profiles on the same dating site, met a few weeks later and got married a little more than a year after that. Now, they're sitting in their home on a Friday evening trying to keep Hannah, their black Labrador puppy, from gnawing everything in sight. They provide a pleasant contrast to the ABC show "Hooking Up" (9 p.m. Thursdays) where singles juggle, mislead, evade and dump potential mates they meet online. eHarmony knows of 12,000 couples married after meeting on its site. Match.com receives 200 engagement/marriage emails/letters a month.  Both eHarmony and Match.com say the prime audience tends to be people in their 30s who have moved beyond their college social network and are still looking for a mate. George and Eriks's advice about Internet dating: Sign up, fill out the profile honestly and take the time to thoughtfully consider your matches.

The full article was originally published at Billings Gazette, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Internet dating takes time and patience.  Be honest, get a great picture, be specific in your profile and have fun on those first (coffee) dates.

Dangers of Online Dating

Posted on July 29, 2005

News10News 10 — July 28 — For many single people the question isn’t who’s dating online, but who isn’t?  Kane says she tried Internet dating but decided it was too risky. She says dishonest online daters forced her to go back to more old fashioned methods to meet men. "The more important thing is to check them out before you just go and meet them," said CyberCuse owner Glenn Santa. "I think that’s where people get in a lot of trouble they see their picture they read the profile and they say hey let’s meet tomorrow and that’s dangerous that’s really dangerous and we’re finding that out now." Match.com says no dating is 100 percent safe and suggests you protect your anonymity until you feel comfortable meeting someone.  They also recommend doing an Internet search on any potential match.

Mark Brooks: All this talk of how dangerous online dating is.  It’s still the safest venue for meeting people if used wisely.  The industry is working to improve safety options.

Online Dating Sites Break Into the Mainstream

Posted on July 27, 2005

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS — July 25 — George, 35, and Erika, 29, provide a pleasant contrast to the ABC show "Hooking Up" (9 p.m. Thursdays) where singles juggle, mislead, evade and dump potential mates they meet online.  A few years ago, George and Erika’s relationship might never have happened but internet dating has gone mainstream.  eHarmony knows of at least 12,000 couples married after meeting on its site.  Match.com estimates it has helped hundreds of thousands of singles meet. It receives 200 e-mails or letters each month from couples telling about their engagements or marriages. Both eharmony and Match.com say the prime audience tends to be people in their 30s who have moved beyond their college social network and are still looking for a mate. More than 26 million people, or 16% of U.S. Internet users, visited an online dating site in June, according to comScore. U.S. consumers spent $470 million last year on Internet personals, making it the largest category of paid online content.

Mark Brooks: In the 90’s people said, ‘ugh, you’re using internet dating. People are now saying, ‘I use internet dating and it’s OK.’  In the future people will say, ‘you’re not using internet dating…are you insane!’ Everyone will be using internet dating…but it still has a long way to go. Personality profiling, mobile phone based dating, referral/social networking based services, services that bridge the communications gap between email/IM and that first coffee date.  This is the future.

Male Call: Advice from a Guy

Posted on July 6, 2005

KNIGHT RIDDERS NEWSPAPERS — July 5 — One thing quickly became clear as we sifted through the responses to our recent question about whether online dating was still worth the effort. Many of the readers who wrote to tell us of the joys of online dating services were – surprise! – now married to their Netmates. Those who found it flawed, well, they weren’t.  Chris, from Tallahassee, Fla., wrote that going out with women he met online was like "meeting your sister.” His theory was that it’s too easy; men need the thrill of the hunt.  More prevalent were the responses like Nancy’s, "I would not be so fast to discourage it. I met my husband six years ago though Match.com."  And Jean’s,"My husband and I were living parallel lives two miles apart, but probably never would have met if it weren’t for online dating."  The thing that became clear to us from the responses is that a few liars, cads and deadbeats can’t extinguish the romantic spirit.

Connections, The Wireless Way

Posted on June 30, 2005

BUSINESS WEEK — June 29 — SMS.ac and other mobile social networks help users find dates, keep in touch with friends, share photos, and update their blogs via cell phone. SMS.ac claims 40 million users; 14% in U.S. Most other services only have thousands of customers, who typically pay a $5 monthly subscription fee. Popularity should skyrocket as telcos, which get a cut of fees, roll out more of these applications later this year. Sprint began offering SMS.ac, Match.com Mobile and Lavalife Mobile several months ago. U.S. subscription revenues should rise from $31.4 million this year to $215 million in 2009, according to Frost & Sullivan.  Additional revenues from forwarding SMS and MMS messages could double that amount. These social networks typically cater to 18-35-year-olds.  There are 2 billion cell phones in the world, vs. fewer than 700 million PCs. No wonder online heavyweights such as Google, Match.com, and online social networking sites are ramping up their efforts in the mobile social networking market. Friendster is testing Friendster Mobile in the Philippines. Google acquired Dodgeball.com. In July Match.com will debut a more advanced mobile dating service in Japan. Members will be able to post multiple photos with their profiles, receive daily or weekly lists of matches, and perform complex searches.

The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: See you at the mobile internet dating convention.