Today’s guest post is by Eddy Ankrett. Sixteen years ago, Eddy set up Elite Introductions – an offline dating service with a strong focus on personal contact with members. Today, Eddy is Chairman of Dateline PLC, one of the UK’s most established dating companies, which offers online and offline with a personal offline home interview. Eddy is also a Director at White Label Dating.
As the online dating industry continues to boom, niche dating services are also rapidly growing in number. From pet lovers and vegetarians to singles with an exceptionally high IQ, it is now easier than ever for daters to find a service offering to put them in touch with potential partners sharing their interests.
Although compatibility is one of the keys to successful relationships, dating expert and Chairman of Dateline Platinum Eddy Ankrett warns that matching purely on the basis of a shared interest or lifestyle choice can potentially limit the long-term success of relationships.
Daters all have certain pre-requisites when it comes to their partners – looks, personality or behaviours that they either cannot tolerate or won’t be happy without. As a result, it makes sense to establish at an early point in a relationship whether a potential match suits their unique needs. However, limiting relationships to partners who share a single specific interest is a very extreme way of doing this.
Not only does this fail to take into account other aspects of a potential partner’s personality, but only dating people with the same interests and experiences to our own limits the chance of discovering new activities or interests through our relationships.
It is far more important that the decision to meet a new partner is based on an accurate and complete profile, which gives daters a clear idea of a possible match’s looks, personality and lifestyle. This helps to ensure that there are no obvious clashes, without restricting the range of people and personalities who can be met.
Niche Dating is a great way of opening a door to new relationship through joint interest, but beware that there is far more to love than ‘liking cats together’.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem is that people run around thinking that they know what they want, but they don’t. And we do!
I never tried online dating before, but I think there is something to be said for it. I think to often when we initially see someone we judge them to be right or wrong for us based on looks. Maybe it would be nice to truly get to know someone, their hobbies, favorite foods, and personality before you see them and form preconceptions.
I found a book that gives great advice on dating once you get to the “in-person” part. It’s called Why I Love Men: The Joys of Dating. This book was inspiring, funny and full of tips that will improve your dating life.
Singles have more choice now than at any other time in history. Just dial in what you’re looking for and you can find it on Match or Yahoo Personals or Plentyoffish (Full Disclosure: POF is a client of CourtlandBrooks.com). So why do people need niche dating sites? People are realising that they can limit their dating circles to make themselves visible only to people who meet their more specific overarching need. That need could be to meet someone, Jewish, or Gay, or Black. Religious, sexual and race oriented niches are the largest. Namely, JDate, Manhunt and BlackPeopleMeet. (Full Disclosure: Manhunt is a former client of CourtlandBrooks.com).
Ultimately, singles often have a particular ‘thing’ that they are looking for above all else. That thing could one of many things, and there’s probably a niche that serves their needs. There are around 1300 dating sites according to Hitwise. We counted through them in 2008 for this NY Times article.
http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2008/04/lets-say-you-wa.html
and found that 44% of them were niche dating sites. The top niche dating sites were gaining a bit more market share than non-niche sites, we found, for this Techcrunch article last year. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/niche-dating-sites-grow-steadily-as-mainstream-ones-flail/
Niche dating sites do indeed encourage people to focus. I’d recommend end users consider being on a generic site AND being on a niche site at the same time. Unless its a showstopper for them not to date someone who is Jewish, or gay, or black, etc.
Mark, the commenter above me, is exactly right. Niche dating sites help people to focus. Although, people need to know who they are before they know what they are looking for and obviously the 2 parties involved, first and foremost need to bring honesty to the table.