PARADIGM SHIFT – Feb 26 – Plentyoffish.com just passed 105M monthly logins this month, and has up to 380,000 emails an hour sent between users. The latest comscore numbers show Plentyoffish is bigger than all of Match.com and Meetic properties combined worldwide.
The full article was originally published at PlentyofFish blog, but is no longer available.
This is the news for February 16th through February 22nd, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
TIMES ONLINE UK – Feb 14 – Facing a stagnant US online dating market, the top US dating sites are focusing more efforts in the UK. Comscore has reported a 1% drop in the global dating market, but the UK is showing a strong 16% growth. Match.com and eHarmony.com, each with a reported 20 million members, dominate the estimated £1 billion a year matchmaking business in the paid site space. PlentyofFish.com holds the crown for the free dating space, attracting 933,000 visitors in Britain last month alone. Kate Bilenki at Plentyoffish said the site appeared to be picking up business that would otherwise have gone to the paid sites. “If you are on Match then you may find that the same people are also on eHarmony. So a lot of people are signing up with us as well because we are free,” she said. eHarmony added 130,000 new UK members in January, bringing their subscriber base to 800,000. Match.com has long been established in the UK and boasts roughly 6.5 million members. FULL ARTICLE @ TIMES ONLINE
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This is the news for February 10th through February 15th, 2010. Here is the news we covered:
LA TIMES – Feb 14 – "Keep profiles brief and specific. Leave the novel at home. Don't put pictures of you and your pets or children. Don't post party photos."
— Julie Spira, author of Cyber-DatingExpert.com and the book "The Perils of Cyber-Dating"
"It's great when people put five or 10 pictures of themselves that depict things they love to do, pictures that communicate your personality. It's about making it personal [with] adjectives, interests, descriptions and honesty."
— Bob Holden, EHarmony's VP North America
"You should always have one close-up to the face. Post three to five photos. Also run 50 or so through HotorNot.com [and let people vote] for which ones score the best."
— Mark Brooks, editor at OnlinePersonalsWatch.com
"Get a friend to help you write it. Be honest about who you are and what you're looking for."
— Greg Liberman, president and COO, Spark Networks
"If you start on a date with a picture from 10 years ago and you've gained 10 pounds or if you have a lot less hair now, you're starting on false assumptions. Your profile should be three paragraphs. It should be a conversation piece."
— Whitney Casey, Match.com's relationship expert and author of the book "The Man Plan."
"The more someone knows about you, the less they want to date you. If you write a massive essay, they're going to find something to dislike about that person. If you don't know something, everyone assumes you're the same as them. Let everything else come out during the dates."
— Markus Frind, founder/CEO of PlentyofFish.com.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES
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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
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MIAMI HERALD – Feb 12 – Virtual gifts have become a $1 billion industry in the U.S. and $5 billion worldwide. Snap Interactive runs the Facebook app. "Are You Interested?'' which introduced a gift store two months ago. CEO Clifford Lerner said the app. is raking in "a couple thousand dollars a day'' just from gift purchases starting at $1.25 for a heart, to $20 for a picture of an engagement ring or gold bricks. "We've actually seen that the higher cost of some of these gifts, the more we actually sell,'' Lerner said. "If a girl is not interested in a guy, and she sees he spent $20, she's probably going to respond. And that's worth it to the guy, just to get a response.''
Avid Life Media's HotorNot.com got the virtual gift ball rolling in the dating scene back in 2002 by selling virtual flowers which now cost $2 to $10 each. At AshleyMadison.com users can send a virtual bottle of champagne or hotel room key. "The growth rate is phenomenal,'' said Noel Biderman, president of Avid Life Media. "If it has the right impact, people will pay to replace words.'' AshleyMadison has 5.2 million members and has seen spending on virtual gifts jump from 2.4% to 4.1% of total user revenue in the past year.
This kind of success is persuading other sites to give it a spin. First Beat Media oversees more than 100 niche dating sites like BikerPlanet, GothScene, LatinaRomance and TattooLovers. It's testing virtual gifts. "Seeing a ton of icons of roses and chocolates from other suitors on your page might turn people away from contacting you — doing more harm than good," said Stephen Ventura, director of operations. "We're approaching it very cautiously,'' Ventura said. "We feel it might detour some folk from the relationship finding process.''
The full article was originally published at Miami Herald, but is no longer available.
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THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR – Feb 13 – Weirdos, misfits, perverts and losers. That's who was out there in the early years of Internet dating, or so it was commonly believed. But in the 15 years since Match.com came out with the first major dating site, the stigma has slowly disappeared. It's a $3-billion US industry, says Mark Brooks of Courtland Brooks, a U.S. consulting firm for Internet dating and social networking companies. In August 2009 alone, there were 113M hits on Internet dating sites worldwide. Meetic.com, Europe's largest online dating company, saw its revenues increase by 23% last year and membership grow to ~1M. Plentyoffish.com claims its members will go on more than 18M dates this year. Lavalife welcomes 15,000 new members every week. FULL ARTICLE @ THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
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FOX BUSINESS – Feb 11 – “Valentine's Day is our Super Bowl,” said Amy Canaday, public relations director for Match.com. “It is the Christmas of the dating industry,” said Eric Resnick, of Courtland Brooks, a boutique marketing firm catering to the online dating industry. "It is one of the most emotional days for singles and couples alike,” said Julie Spira, author of The Perils of Cyber-Dating. Match.com is one of the oldest of the roughly 1,500 dating sites in the U.S/ Industry. Observers say its chief competitor is plentyoffish.com, a free dating site with a membership base comparable to Match. The CourtlandBrooks site, OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, reported on Hitwise’s ranking of U.S.-dating-site visits. As of Oct '09, PlentyofFish was tops, followed in order by Match, Singlesnet, Yahoo Personals, DateHookup and eHarmony. "Match established itself as a market leader long ago", Resnick said. "But staying on top can always be as challenging as getting there." “Mobile, mobile, mobile,” said cyber-dating expert Spira when asked about the latest trends in online dating. Experts at the iDate 2010 Internet dating conference held in Miami last month pegged mobile online dating as a $550M-annual-revenue ringer industrywide, with the potential to double. “We have found that mobile users are twice as engaged as those on laptops or desktops,” said Mandy Ginsberg, Match.com' general manager. FULL ARTICLE @ FOX BUSINESS
MERCURY NEWS – Feb 12 – For every online nightmare there's a story of a couple who met and married. Between 21M and 24M people visit dating sites each month in the U.S., said Mark Brooks, an industry consultant who runs OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. With the advent of dating sites that cater to married people looking for affairs, such as AshleyMadison.com, the number of hitched users trolling those services intended for singles has diminished from ~30% to 10% or less, Brooks estimated. "And some sites are now using fraud reduction companies such as iovation to keep online scammers away", he said. "The Internet dating services are flawed because they lack service," Brooks said. "The matchmaker services are severely flawed because they lack choice." Paul Falzone, a Boston-based matchmaker, is trying to bridge the divide. Falzone's company, which owns The Right One and Together Dating Service, bought an online dating site a couple of years ago. In October, Falzone renamed the entire enterprise eLove, and he plans to launch a select service for the Web site after Valentine's Day that lets clients visit a local matchmaker for background checks and photographs — and then head online. Kate Bilenki, director of love for the free dating site Plentyoffish.com, said most people she knows in their 20s or 30s wouldn't consider going to a traditional matchmaker. FULL ARTICLE @ MERCURY NEWS
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