How about a boatload of screenshots showing that traffic at dating sites worldwide is declining. This made me sad. Caveat: Some of the decline can be attributed to: seasonal nature of dating, the quality of Alex’s rankings and sunspots.
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I have a suggestion which explains this – a couple of years ago we talked about the growth of niche dating. It is very difficult for these measurement companies to categories these tens of thousands of niche dating sites – either individually or categorised into the dating category – so as people move to these niche sites they’re not counted in the stats.
There’s no doubting it’s getting harder in this industry, but the cleverer people are still managing to grow their business, but it’s at the expenses of their competitors.
From our perspective, traffic has grown 246% over the last year, now doing about 300,000 uniques per day across our partner sites – this is a not insignificant amount of traffic. I read that PoF had around 500,000 uniques per day (http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture) – it’s probably higher than this now, but either way you can see that 300,000 uniques going to niche sites is a big amount taken away from measurement companies.
Anyway, there’s a thought anyway! :)
Ross
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Ross, accurate audience measurement remains a pipe dream, although I do have hope for Quantcast and Compete.
Pof is around 1.7M/day
The real issue is facebook, I started tracking where people meet thier next boyfriend/girlfriend online. Of people who leave Plentyoffish and meet someone else online 40% is from Facebook, 60% from other dating sites.. By the end of the year that number will be reversed.
re: facebook. keep in mind that many dating sites have a presence on fbook and that they may have met on one of the dating apps but feel more comfortable saying that they met on fbook vs dating site/app X.
as a niche dating operator of freemium sites, fbook is the behemoth that keeps me up at night. nothing new here but they can easily become the major player in a myriad of industries should they choose to. same could be said about google but b/c fbook is social by nature a pivot into dating is not inconceivable.
Maybe – but isn’t Facebook more of a threat to free dating sites? Both, it could be argued, cater to the less serious side of the dating market.
There’s a lot of dross to wade through – at least paid sites offer the customer care and moderation (well some of them do – other paid sites still rely on scammers for a quarter of their income!!).
Facebook is definitely one to stay close to though – it’s particularly interesting for companies like Zoosk and SmartDate who rely on it.
Ross
Its not dating apps, its the fact people are dating friends they know from 5-15 years ago after being reintroduced via facebook.
@markus: we cater to more traditional communities (middle eastern, etc.) so even if they met on one of our sites, the more publicly shared (and acceptable) story is that they knew each other in a previous life *blah blah blah* and re-connected on fbook. that said, no disputing that a huge # of people do meet/re-connect on facebook and other SN.
@ross: depends how they offer dating and address the privacy issues. imo they can serve both the serious/casual demographics successfully. once upon a time SN were mostly used by young folks but now fbook has managed to get everyone, young & old hooked. dating on fbook could certainly unfold in the same manner. time will tell. tic toc, tic toc.
My explanation is simple: 15 months with traffic declining == “the Online Dating Fatigue Phenomenon”
Daters had understood that the entire Online Dating Industry for serious daters in 1st World Countries is a HOAX, performing as a Big Online Casino.
Daters got tired of being scammed with “automatic renewal” of their subscriptions and other “credit-card billing trickery”.
The new IAC Q1 2010 says “Match” had nearly 1,585,000 paid subscribers but it really means [Match + Chemistry + NetClubEncuentro + Udate + PeopleMedia communities + SinglesNet].
The 27% stake in Meetic can be found on the “equity in losses of unconsolidated affiliates”
The Latin America Partnership (50% stake in Parperfeito) is not yet accounting for in earnings.
I think it is a serious US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud to use the word “Match” meaning “Personals: Match + Chemistry + NetClubEncuentro + Udate + PeopleMedia communities + SinglesNet”
I find it hard to believe that traffic to online dating sites is declining. For every report out there like this, you have several others that say online dating is booming. Alexa stats aren’t always very accurate.
Personally, I’ve had great luck with Yahoo Personals and POF. Match is getting too picky with their ridiculous subscription rules.
One thing’s for sure, online dating is here to stay!
I agree with Markus that Facebook is capturing a lot of the dating business, although I think it’s more about meeting friends of friends than dating old acquaintances.
Meh, OKCupid might be a big site but I’d love to see exactly how many people actually find a bf/gf on there. I’d say it’s very low. The interaction is what keeps people coming back but from my experience and others I know, pof and okc and sites like that offer nothing but whales and spammers. When I say whales I mean undesirable women. Not to mention the fact that there are more guys than girls and I assume the majority of the women go for the “top tier” guys leaving the other 99% twiddling their thumbs.
I find it hard to believe that a high number of people are meeting and dating through Facebook. Sure, FB presents an opportunity and dating through FB will happen for some. But using FB for that purpose means you’re trying to connect with people who may not have that goal in mind. It’s got a wild card factor to it.
Other issues include the fact that people are much more mobile now, so the idea of reconnecting and meeting school or uni friends isn’t realistic. Privacy is playing a greater role and FB users are more careful with profile info and contacts than they were this time last year. There’s the whole filtering/screening aspect to consider.
With online dating – paid or free – people are usually there for a reason and at least there is a criteria to start with in terms of checking out shared interests etc.
I don’t buy that FB is capturing “a lot” of the dating business, and it will be interesting to check out Markus’ prediction regarding percentage reversals at the end of the year.
As for POF and other free sites such as Girlsdateforfree, these sites have understood for a long time that content can be used to acquire revenue for and from other things. However, as a consumer my experience as a member of both sites mentioned was that because they were free they were considered less worthy by other members. So the experience isn’t taken seriously by the majority of members. Markus is aware of this, with the new upload an image decision and other changes to improve user experience. What difference that will make to the user? I’m not convinced.
Facebook is a great way to do matchmaking. If you have great friends its easy for you to connect us. I think just about everyone would agree that you get a much more complete picture of a person from their Facebook page than on any dating site.
The issue is how to build a matching system which shares people’s information with some sense of anonymity. Apps like Wings are working on this. Once they get that sorted out, the argument against dating sites becomes that much stronger.
Problems include people who misrepresent their relationship status or don’t fill out a status as all. Those are major hurdles for any dating site.
Still not convinced. Sure, it has the potential to be a “great way to do match making”. Is that what most people are using it for? Not from what I read, hear or see.
I don’t see the majority of FB friends being into connecting others on a romantic level, regardless of the fact that a FB profile is probably more honest (because people we know can see it and call us on exaggerations etc).
Your right, an app such as Wings will make all the difference, but the question remains as to whether or not automatically gathered date will do a decent job of matching.
Having said all this, the future is an unknown landscape and many factors will influence the outcome.
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