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Mark Brooks has another interview with Jupiter Research’s Nate Elliot.
My quick take:
Online Dating market in EU doubling between now and 2009? Maybe 40% tops. Good points about different EU sites maturing at different rates.
Match and Meetic are the big players but there are several large US sites tentatively looking across the pond. When they come ashore, watch out.
“We’ve also found that online daters don’t leave dating sites for social networks.”
This may be true for EU but absolutely false in the US.
Mobile dating has always been over-hyped, remember last year when it was the 13th most important feature for online daters? It’s a long slow road to adoption, on either side of the pond. US mobile phones lag so far behind EU and Asia, no wonder we’re slow to adopt mobile dating. We need GPS and compelling location-based services for it to work in the US.
Good points about video dating, adoption rate continues to be slow. People are not comfortable with it at all. According to the media, the people who are tend to end up on “To Catch a Predator.” Apple’s built-in iSight cameras on the new MacBooks make it easier than ever to start video-conferencing. Skype video is what’s going to drive this and dating may benefit.
Pricing info is spot on. Raising prices is short-term thinking. Pay-by-credits trend may increase as well. How many more people will pay a few bucks for an introduction like on LinkedIn as opposed to $25 a month for a dating site?
I’ve always said that price is a filter. My $25 a month does not pay for the service, it creates a community of like-minded individuals and keeps out the lower quality browsers.
Daters perceive the difference between dating site and a social networking site as slimmer than ever, and at a price point of $0, the value has to come from more quality matches. I wouldn’t be surprised if some dating sites started to more aggressively filter members like eHarmony to justify their price points.
The industry is growing, but at what cost? The top 10 sites continue to enjoy growth of varying degrees while a huge number of sites sit stagnant and due to low operating costs remain operational well past their sell-by date.
Technorati Tags: price+elasticity, credits, video+dating
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Quality Online dating sites need to convince their clients with valid reasons to pay for the service. Clients will subscribe and pay a fee for quality_contacts / compatible_real_persons, they will also pay to avoid loosing precious time with fakes_profiles & low_quality_matches and to avoid being hurt in their feelings by dishonest/unscrupulous persons.
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Statements like this show just how much little credability that company has. If he took 5 minutes to look at alexa, ranking.websearch.com, hitwise or even comscore data he would have come to the conclusion that.
1. Plentyoffish is #1 in Canada.
2. Plentyoffish is in the top 4 in the USA.
I guess you just don’t exist if you don’t buy their research reports.
Perhaps you are only TRANSFERRING free_users tired of Match.com, tired of Lavalife.com, tired of Date.com, tired of YahooPersonals!.com and tired of other sites TO PlentyofFish.com; from their databases to PlentyofFish’s database.
Technically speaking, PlentyofFish.com makes money off the ads upselling to other sites. It has all free users (the daters) and some paying clients (the advertisers)!
Is PlentyofFish.com really within the Online Dating Industry? or only in the Internet Ads Industry?
Revenue source: Ads. Is PlentyofFish.com only a CHEAP CHANNEL for deliver ADS, cheaper than Google.com, yahoo.com, and others; flying in automatic pilot?
Also Nate Elliot did no say even a word about:
* Market Segmentation.
* Future Legislation.
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
The argument that paying equals quality just doesn’t hold up. It’d have validity only if paying members are restricted to contacting other paying members as bw said above.
As long as non-paying members are free to Wink at paying members, there won’t be a difference between free dating sites and those that charge a fee.
If you look for security, you’ll probably pay more for the membership. Of course, a service souldn’t be short of your expectations. This includes communication, functionality and responce.
There were also mentioned the newly appeared sites that sit stagnant. That’s true and in reality we cannpot have a lot of popular dating sites at once. Each of them takes its niche and has its own community.
It’s good to my mind cause such niche dating sites give users a lot of freedom and challenge to choose a new site, to get more chances.