Comments on: Two new features on Match.com

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:45:41 +0000

It’s still based on superficial criteria… there’s much more to life than that…

By: Zen Gladstone

Zen Gladstone — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 06:20:16 +0000

to Surfer,

Match.com itself is bigger then the parent of Webdate … Match.com had US$15m sales in 2003, and more than that is expected for 2004.

Match.com’s parent is IACI, which has a US$17 billion market cap and over US$1 billion of cash sitting in the bank.

So, I think Match.com can compete.

By: Stephen Sclafani

Stephen Sclafani — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:10:28 +0000

Unless my eyes just started working, Match has always offered the ability to refine a search but it was limited to the criteria sex of who you are seeking, age range, whether or not results are online, whether or not results have photos, and location. When Yahoo! redid their results page they added the feature of being able to refine every criteria and just recently Match also added this feature.

By: another surfer

another surfer — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 07:39:38 +0000

The ability to refine a search from the results page has been on Match for almost two years.

By: Stephen Sclafani

Stephen Sclafani — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 06:56:56 +0000

With regards to Match starting to play catch-up and matching Yahoo! feature for feature, they also have added the ability to refine a search right from the results page, which yahoo had implemented a while ago.

By: Stephen Sclafani

Stephen Sclafani — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 06:37:49 +0000

This new reverse matching feature doesn’t seem to be anything new or exciting it just looks like their mutual matching feature renamed and modified a bit, and not for the better.

By: surfer

surfer — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 05:20:50 +0000

webdate.com signed up over 1.5 million users in the last 5 months. If you search for webdate.com job postings and some of the related sites etc you will find out they are actually a division or owned by nastydollars.com This is the largest adult network on the internet and makes over 15 million a month.

I find it hard to believe that match.com or any other dating site can compete against a company that has unlimited resources and is offering thier service for free and using it as a loss leader. Currently webdate is the high bidder for nearly every dating related term out there on google and yahoo. They are also huge on spyware networks and email spam etc.

Here is a excerpt from one of webdate.com’s Job postings
Large Internet company think-tank with several properties in the Alexa top 100. We are constantly thinking of new concepts to develop Internet properties. Most of our properties are based around online communities. We have a corporate infrastructure on the cutting edge of technology. We hold several patents and copyrights associated with our Internet properties and technology. Some of our Internet properties include webdate.com, learnaboutyourslf.com, cellspot.com, sublimedirectory.com, etc.

(After leafing through the fake domain registrations you find that the contact for cellspot is nastydollars.com)

By: Dave Evans

Dave Evans — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 04:04:59 +0000

It would help to define critical mass. Just because you have free members doesn’t mean you have the ability or opportunity to monetize those eyeballs. If you go for the ad-supported route, you’re severely limiting your potential because you can’t keep stuffing many more ads on a site. If you license access to your members, you risk alienating them, as many sites have learned.

Serious online daters will always pay more to get access to others like them. Paid access also plays another important role, it separates them from the brunt of the casual daters and predatory kooks.

I just did a quick search for women 25-35 within 25 miles of Boston on each of the sites you mentioned. I’m not going to pick on any of them, but the results were less than appealing overall. I got results from the UK, Canada and most didn’t have photos. Many of those that did have photos were obviously from model sites.

Let’s get one thing straight. Just because a site is free does not mean it’s offering something special. If anything, the free sites are going to play a lesser role in the future. Talk to any major online advertiser, they stay away from free sites. They want high-quality traffic, not just high-quantity. Same goes for serious singles. They want to find people through a reputable site offering great customer service, helpful advice, super profiles and offers links to the offline dating world as well. Most free sites can’t deliver across these important values.

By: Surfer

Surfer — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 03:23:40 +0000

Do you think paid online dating has a future for sites like match.com? Sites like webdate.com, plentyoffish.com and matchdoctor are all free sites that are fast approaching critical mass. If these sites stay free how can sites that don’t offer something special compete? I can see the eharmonies of the world staying around for a long time because what they have is hard to replicate, but what about match.com ?