Louis Gray has a guest post by Micah Baldwin, Online Transparency Leads to New World of Group Dating, about how dating has been changed by social media.
Connecting the dots between how transparency leads to group dating is proving difficult and I can’t say that I agree with premise that group dating is “clearly the answer to online dating”. It would have made more sense to say “if you’re in your 20′s and don’t do well in one-on-one dating situations.”
I’m all for companies throwing myriad dating concepts against the wall to see what sticks. Group dating is clearly a niche, will be lucrative for a handful of companies. TeamDating, Ignighter ($1.2 million in funding) and Mixtt are mentioned. In the last week I talked to MixandMeet, based in Boston, and yesterday I heard about a new social/team dating sites in Australia.
As transparency becomes a required part of interaction, especially among people under the age of 35, paid dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony are finding it difficult to hang on to their users, especially those under 35. Jupiter Research indicates that only about 10% of the online population uses paid dating sites, which is a decrease of 6% since 2006. Match.com’s largest growing segment is users over 50, seeing a 300% increase since 2000.
Spark Networks, owner of sites such as JDate.com, has seen annual sales drop to $14mm from $15.8mm a year ago. Free sites such as OkCupid, which appeal to the under 35 crowd, have seen new user signups increase 60 percent since September, from 110,000 per month to 180,000 per month.
Here’s the key takeaway quote:
For the traditional dating sites, it will be imperative for them to allow users to interact outside of their walled gardens in ways that could potentially reduce the amount of time spent on the sites.
Right on. Metrics such as “time spent on site” are for sites like Hulu. Dating sites boast about people spending hours a week on their site, which is the inverse of the needs of their members. The goal of a dating site should strive to have the *lowest* engagement metrics, i.e., I’m on the site, I send a few emails and I’m off.
Interacting outside of walled gardens at it’s simplest is about allowing people to communicate outside of the site itself. I’m not sure what this means to Micah though, and I still don’t understand how transparency leads to group dating though. Hopefully he will read this and clue me in.
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David,
Thanks for the additional analysis. Dating sites have two functions: 1) facilitate communication and 2) match potential relationships. They are still valuable in the second, but have lost most value with the first.
Therefore, they should do the matching, setup some initial communication, and then allow the participants to communicate however they please (twitter, facebook, IM, etc).
In terms of group dating, because of the heightened transparency that exists due to social media, the first date can be difficult. It enables people to interact in a less demanding fashion than the traditional one-on-one date. Does it work for everyone? probably not. But, for many, (given the size of sites such as Ignighter) it seems to be a welcome alternative. I would guess that group dating sites would not exist at all if the level of transparency afforded people today due to social media did not exist.
re: communication – You are assuming that everyone has good manners. Many people don’t, and facilitating member communication through the dating site’s messaging platform helps keep the site free of those who don’t know how to behave acceptably.
Dating sites that manage communications have access to usage stats and other metrics that can improve the overall user experience.
Agree that people should be able to communication via FB, private email, etc.
I don’t see how knowing more about a person makes a first date difficult. If anything, having things to talk about makes the first awkward moments easier.
Group dating exists because it was an untapped market sector and some 20-somethings were tired of mainstream dating sites. Has nothing to do with transparency IMHO. Good points though.
Initially you want dating sites to control communication mainly just for the privacy and blocking options. Once you trust someone more you are communicating with, then move on to other tools.
You can always bring friends out with you on group dates after securing a blind-online date but the sites can be fun I suppose for the pre-date planning with groups of friends.
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