37SIGNALS – Feb 17 – If you’re
a dating site, you’re going up against much bigger competitors,
like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. You could spend big bucks on
advertising and marketing. But what if you start promoting by teaching? You’ve got a treasure
trove of data. That’s
exactly what OkCupid has done at its blog with posts like
The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures, How Your Race Affects The Messages
You Get, and Exactly What To Say In A First Message. The blog, which OkCupid
started in Oct, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs
and social networks. Since OkCupid started its blog, the number of
active site members has grown by ~10%, to 1.1M,
according to the company. FULL ARTICLE @ 37SIGNALS
Category: OkCupid
Finding The Right Online Dating Service
LA TIMES – Feb 14 – Piper Jaffray Investment Research predicted U.S. spending on online dating would reach $1.7 billion annually by 2013, and $1.2 billion was spent in 2008. The Internet is essentially the world's largest bar, explains Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch. The first step is figuring out which nightspot is for you: There are those with no cover charges, PlentyofFish and OKCupid, and hookup spots Fling.com and OnlineBootyCall.com. There are "theme nights" geared toward particular interests, such as BikerPlanet.com, and "neighborhood watering holes" based on religion or culture, such as JDate or AsiaFriendFinder. There's comfort in name recognition from eHarmony and Match. Or get a yenta through eLove.com.
"One of our more popular sites as of late is DateaCougar.com," says Stephen Ventura, VP of First Beat Media, which owns GothScene.com, BikerPlanet.com, FitnessDates.com and others. Want a dash of romance with your social networking? Brooks says to look to Zoosk. It syncs with a users' Facebook's profile page. Spark's Kizmeet is attempting something similar. Still, Brooks says it's unlikely that social networking sites will kill the online dating market. "If people are anonymous, people tend to be more aggressive and more outspoken," he says. "On an Internet dating site, if you want to cut somebody off, you can easily. When you're on a social network, you have to be [polite] because their friends are watching."
Match.com's mobile members alone grew 250% from 2008 to 2009, says Whitney Casey, Match's relationship expert. Industry experts Brooks and CyberDatingExpert.com's, Julie Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare. "I'm looking forward to people using Internet dating on the iPad," Brooks adds. "You can look up a profile very easily on that format. The iPhone is still a phone." Spira says to look to webcam dating sites, Speeddate.com or WooMe.com. Hitwise reports that visits to free dating sites like PlentyofFish rose 19% over the previous year.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES
See all posts on PlentyofFish See all posts on Match.com
See all posts on OkCupid See all posts on DateaCougar
See all posts on Fling See all posts on Zoosk
See all posts on OnlineBootyCall See all posts on SpeedDate
See all posts on JDate See all posts on WooMe
See all posts on eHarmony See all posts on Spark Networks
See all posts on eLove
In The Calculations Of Online Dating, Love Can Be Cruel
NY TIMES – Feb 11 - It is love in the time of ones and zeros, the rudimentary language of computers. Never-answered messages, explicit requests for sex, fake bios, outdated photos and insults are ubiquitous. Subscribers to dating sites are forced to come up with a list of their desires. Red hair? Yes or no. Over 30 O.K.? Please check a box. The result is that millions are now trained to be dismissive based on detailed and sometimes arbitrary criteria. At OkCupid.com, however, it is left up to members to suggest dating criteria, and the result is an astonishing example of the need by some to quantify the ideal mate. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
The Online Dating Game
SMART MONEY – Feb 8 - The online dating market is expected to reach $1.6 billion by 2013, up from $957M in 2008, according to Forrester Research. With online services reporting an increase in subscriptions, sites could raise their prices without losing customers, says Mark Brooks, principal consultant for Courtland Brooks. PlentyofFish.com and OKCupid.com let you troll for dates free of charge. Ignore dating-site boasts about their number of profiles. "The real measure is the number of people who have logged in," Brooks says. "A paid subscription isn't worth it unless monthly traffic is at least 10,000 unique visitors", he says. Complaints about dating services rose 62% from 2005 to 2008, according to the Better Business Bureau. Read consumer reviews about a site before signing up, says Jeannette Kopko, a spokeswoman for the BBB in Dallas. Scammers prey on online daters reeling them in with promises of love and then begging for cash to afford a plane ticket or other expenses. Sites have policies in place to weed out such users, reviewing profiles and communications for red flags, such as poor grammar, mismatched photos and details, and keywords including "wire money," Brooks says. Some also use monitoring services that recognize the scammer's computer preventing him or her from creating a new account after one gets flagged. FULL ARTICLE @ SMART MONEY
2010 Internet Dating Conference Highlights
OPW – Feb 5 – The 2010 Internet Dating Conference was held from January 27th through January 29th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. iDate Miami is the largest single gathering of online dating CEOs, matchmakers, and social networking executives in one room. iDate2010 also included the first annual iDate Awards, results for which can be found here.
The hottest topic of the event was the competition between free sites and pay sites, as well as the convergence of the two models into an increasingly popular “freemium” model. PlentyofFish and OKCupid dominate the free dating site market and have pioneered the new “freemium” business model in which users of free sites can enhance their profile for a nominal fee. PlentyofFish offers a Serious Dater badge and OKCupid has its A-List upgrade.
Mark Brooks, editor of OPW, delivered his annual industry review addressing the top news stories and online dating trends for 2009. During the year, internet dating sites worldwide received 113 million visitors, a key indicator that the stigma of online dating is a thing of the past. Among the big stories for the year were the purchase of PeopleMedia by Match parent company IAC and Meetic's purchase of Match Europe operations. There were several key trends for the year, such as the strong growth of niche dating, the increasing importance of mobile messaging as a “must have” feature, and the implementation of personality profiling on a growing number of sites.
The Internet Dating Executive Alliance, or IDEA, hosted a brainstorming session on ways to improve revenue for online dating sites. IDEA members Scot McKay, Bill Broadbent and Sandira Calviac offered their best ideas to the conference attendees. One of the key suggestions was offering users more services beyond the typical dating functions. Scot McKay of X&Y Communications believes sites should increase conversion and retention by encouraging more creativity in profiles with free-form inputs instead of check boxes. Bill Broadbent, Instinct Marketing, believes sites should create a network of niche sites and cross-sell. Sandira Calviac was a strong proponent of offering lifestyle enhancing products and services such as personal development books and travel.
Manhunt's Jonathan Crutchley delivered an informative overview of the gay online dating market. According to Mr. Crutchley, the average subscription on Manhunt is 15 months, opposed to the 3 month average on traditional sites. Additionally, men married to woman account for 30% of the gay dating business. Brazil is the largest gay dating market outside of the United States.
Sam Yagan, CEO of OKCupid, presented his thoughts on the online dating industry. He discussed the rise of the “freemium” model which is where a site has free limited use with the option to pay for added features. Mr. Yagan also believes that sites should communicate more with their customers through blogs and social media in order to build deep bonds.
Dr. Eva Ritvo from the University of Miami School of Medicine offered her insights into increasing female retention on internet dating sites. She suggests appealing to a woman's instinctive behaviors. According to Dr. Ritvo, sites need to do a better job of protecting and educating women about dating.
She also encourages dating sites to focus on boosting self confidence, as women tend to see themselves as 20% less attractive than other see them.
Steve Faktor, American Express, gave his insights on the economic factors in the current online dating market. More people are switching to lower cost entertainment, fueling the growth of online dating. Women increasingly have stronger and more stable incomes. There is also a trend of longer relationships prior to marriage, which is likely to affect dating sites in the coming years.
The Internet Dating Conference was ended with the traditional Final Panel Debate. This lively discussion was dominated by the free site versus paid site battle. In the end, it was evident that free sites and paid sites have a form of symbiotic relationship which serves to advance the dating industry as a whole. There was also a general consensus that the best way for a new site to enter the market is to find a niche that is under-served.
The next Internet Dating Conference will be held in Beverly Hills from June 16th through June 18th. For more information, visit www.idate2010.com.
Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Feb 9th, 2010
This is the news for January 20th through February 1st, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
- Real Simple Magazing ranks top dating sites
- Avid Life Media pushing for an IPO
- Match.com launches MatchAffinity
- iovation shows strong sucess in 2009
- 2010 iDate Awards results
OkCupid Is Now On The iPhone
EHARMONY BLOG – Dec 2 – The new OkCupid iPhone App brings a lot of the site’s essential functions to the device.
– Mail and messaging
– Member search
– Take and upload photos from the iPhone
– Who has viewed me” list
– “Improve matches” quiz
The full article was originally published at eHarmony blog, but is no longer available.
App And Mobile Dating Market Continues To Skyrocket
CHICAGO NOW – Nov 3 – Worldwide, the mobile dating market, which included app, mobile Internet services and text-based services, has grown from $330 million in 2007 to $550 million in 2008. That figure is expected to more than double to $1.3 billion by 2013, according to Juniper Research. Skout, SpeedDate, DateCheck, Zoosk, Grindr, Radaroo and Gelato are but a handful of offerings in this market. Traditional online dating sites are also realizing the need for a mobile dating solution. Match.com and OkCupid have made strides in this direction. Traditional online dating sites must offer a mobile solution in order to remain competitive.
The full article was originally published at Chicago Now, but is no longer available.
Sam Yagan, CEO Of OkCupid
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 21 – Sam Yagan is CEO/Founder of OkCupid.com. Here’s the story of how he started OkCupid, and CrazyBlindDate.com. – Mark Brooks
Sam, you have a history of starting renegade companies. What services that you’ve created in the past are you most proud of?
I started 3 companies in the last 10 years. In each case, I was passionate about bringing a community of people around free products or online services and in particular, products and services which had traditionally been paid for by consumers.
My first company was called SparkNotes and we took the idea of Cliff’s Notes as a line of study guides which have been around for 50 years. My partners and I started SparkNotes back in 1999. We grew it to be the largest brand of study guides on the web. We ended up selling the company to Barnes & Noble and they built it into the largest offline series of study guides as well.
After SparkNotes I teamed up with another friend of mine who had started a company called eDonkey, which was a peer to peer file sharing application, which we grew into the largest file sharing network in the world.
We ran this company until 2006 and while it was winding down I got back together with my co-founders from SparkNotes and we decided to start OkCupid. We believed that the Match.com business model was not right. They did not really think about modeling online dating to offline dating.
First, we looked at how people go and date in the real world. In the real world dating is social. One girl will call up her girlfriend and say, “Hey, let’s all go out tonight.” They all get dressed up and they never explicitly say, “Hey, we’re looking to get picked up by a guy.” They just tell themselves that they’re going out to have a good time. No one had ever invited me to join Match.com. No one ever said “go to Match.com, you’ll have a great time”. Match.com was a very lonely experience. So our vision from the very beginning was to build an online bar, a place where you go with a bunch of friends, you observe other people and decide which ones seem the most appealing to you. Then you gradually and slowly begin to strike up a conversation with them.
We also take matching very seriously. If your friend tells you he knows a great girl, no matter how much you trust your friend, you’re going to ask him a series of questions before you meet her. We were able to model that process online by having users upload their own questions and then select their own desirability and weight those on a 5 point scale. So each person was customizing their own algorithm based on their preferences.
You have started another site recently called Crazy Blind Date. Can you tell us about how that came around?
The Crazy Blind Date story actually has its roots comingled in the founding of OkCupid itself. In 2002 my partner Chris came up with an idea to create a dating website where there was a blind date button. If you push the button, you are guaranteed to go on a date that night. Of course, the problem with the blind date button is, in order for that to work, you have to have a huge database. We always had this idea of the blind date button in our back pocket. A couple of years ago we started getting serious about it. We had a big enough site that we could make a blind date button work. A blind date button on OkCupid would be great but we thought that launching it as a standalone site would be really flashy and get a lot of press.
What would you say surprised you the most about the way internet daters behave? Have there been any shocking aberrations in human behavior that you really wouldn’t have predicted?
A lot of people look at a profile and they’re immediately looking for negatives. They’re looking for reasons to reject the potential date. In the offline world people tend to be looking for reasons to make it work.
How does OkCupid help people find somebody who is a match that they also have chemistry with?
There are two elements how we handle the chemistry issue. The first is the expectation. We’re not promising that our algorithms are going to look through all the profiles on our site and find the one who is the best for you. We’re trying to facilitate you going on first dates that don’t suck. The second one is the analogy of a bar I was talking about. On OkCupid there is a big opportunity to see someone over a course of time. We allow a lot of ways for you to express yourself.
So there seems to be a bit of a trend recently with free dating sites starting to charge. Isn’t advertising revenue enough?
It’s not about enough. It turns out that there are opportunities to make money off subscription fees and also off advertisement. We’re going to see a convergence of free and paid dating sites. If you’re on a site that allows you to just post a profile and then if you want to communicate you have to pay, you’re on a paid site. And if you can communicate for free, you’re on a free site. We want to be known as a free site, but there are a bunch of things that we can offer our users who are most serious to pay for a better experience and there are things that we can offer them that are premium.
I would love to know what your vision is for the internet dating industry. What is it going to look like in 2015?
We’re going to have one big free site, maybe two, and we’re going to have a solar system of subscription sites all around them. People will still go to e-Harmony for marital, people are still going to go to places for one night stands but there is always going to be this big free site in the middle that everybody feels they have to be on.
Atheists Have More Success At Online Dating
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Sep 16 - Atheists have more success at online dating, according to an
analysis of 500,000+ "first contacts" sent by users of OkCupid. ~42% of
messages which included the word "atheist" achieved replies,
significantly higher than the average response rate of 32%. Mentioning
"god" in a first approach discouraged people from replying. FULL ARTICLE @ TELEGRAPH.CO.UK