Social dating is a hybrid of social networking and traditional online dating. A popular topic on this blog ever since Facebook really started to take off, social dating is officially The Hot Idea” for 2011.
Given the dearth of dating sites trying to take advantage of a presence on Facebook, its is amazing to see a site like Badoo crushing it in terms of popularity, seemingly coming from nowhere to outpace social dating sites like Are You Interested and Zoosk. Badoo.com has grown to 100 million users, 4 million daily users and 32 million monthly users.
The primary issue with Badoo is one of definition. Badoo is a social network that has a presence on Facebook and enables people to talk to each other about anything, including dating. Is that social dating? You be the judge.
Casual dating sites are a large and lucrative market that make up a decent amount of revenue in the dating industry. There is money to be made, but OTOH, just survey your friends and ask how many of them have connected on a social dating site. People try them tend not to stick around long enough to be considered active users.
The high churn rate, brand perception, lack of customer service, fake-ness of many of the profiles and overall quality of the people on the sites are the primary detractors, yet the market segment continues to grow.
The dichotomy couldn’t be any clearer between traditional dating sites and social dating on Badoo. Badoo is a social network that has a presence on Facebook. Its not really a dating site, because its far too social/casual. There is nothing wrong with this, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call this social dating.
The majority of people on Badoo have Spanish-speaking profiles. The service feels somewhat spammy and overall the user experience is middle of the road. Reminds me of Orkut.
Don’t take my word for it. Go make an account on Badoo, Are You Interested and Zoosk. Use the sites for a few weeks and let us know how many useful email conversations you have and how many dates you go on.
Perhaps these sites are generating real relationships, but I haven’t seen much evidence to support this.
The big question is, who is going to be successful creating a social-powered dating site that’s for serious daters?
