Dating site are getting a little too comfortable announcing the total number of members over the lifetime of the service in their marketing pitches instead of say users active in the last 30 days.

I feel like a crotchety old man having to write this same blog post every month or two, but When Zoosk says 50,000,000 singles, are those recent logins, active profiles in the last year, or profiles in their database going back to 2007?

I wonder how many active people on Zoosk you can email and hear from today without the other person paying to read your email. What do you think, 500,000 profiles? More or less?

Related posts:

1. Zoosk Raises $6 Million in Third Round
2. Zoosk looks to attract investors for new financing
3. Zoosk Crushes Social Dating, Earns $90 Million

Haven’t done this most basic of searches in a while. Search results Google for the phrase “dating sites“. I love how Datehookup is the number one organic search result. DH has 1.5 million members, is the largest dating site you’ve never heard of.

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Years ago, back in the wild-west days of Facebook, companies like Zoosk and Are You Interested were able to grow like weeds by taking advantage of Facebook’s then quite lax approach at allowing viral marketing on people’s walls.

Over time, Facebook clamped down viral marketing opportunities and instead began forcing companies to buy advertising instead. The science of K-factors and virality soon gave way to companies managing Facebook ads just like they had been on Google.

To fuel growth, Zoosk closed a $30 million round of funding in late 2009, bringing total financing at that time to $40.5 million. Two years later, and Zoosk is back talking with venture capitalists, hat in hand, asking for $50-75 million. The new financing will help Zoosk pay for more marketing and international expansion. The company operates a dating community of more than 50 million users in over 60 countries and it recently extended a TV ad campaign from the United States into the UK and Canada.

I don’t understand why Zoosk says they have 50 million users, when they have 15.2 monthly active users on Facebook. There is no way they have 35 million users on their website. These aggregate number of profiles statistics are exactly what got Match into hot water, forcing them to ask affiliates to stop mentioning numbers of profiles and daily signups. I wish dating sites would agree to use monthly active users as a standard for engagement. If you haven’t logged into a site in a month or two, you’re not active and few people see you in search results.

Regardless of how many they currently have, Zoosk needs an enormous infusion of fresh cash to continue acquiring users. Zoosk heavily promoted the fact that it was on track for a $90 million run rate this year, but this was most likely based on increased ad spend during the peak Valentine’s Day season.

Zoosk should talk to Friend Finder Networks, which is $450 million in debt. Full details.

Related posts:

1. Zoosk Claims 50 Million Members
2. Zoosk Raises $6 Million in Third Round
3. Social Dating Site Zoosk Secures $30 Million in Series D Funding

Had a great conversation with Ross at Global Personals (White Label Dating). Inspiring discussion and provided fodder for what should be a number of blog posts.

Check out the monthly active user drop-off of three popular Facebook dating applications. Are You Interested rebounded slightly, Zoosk suffered large loss and Cupid is clawing its way back to where it was a month ago.

To look at other Facebook application statistics, Appdata.com is the place to go. Look at the DAU (Daily Active Users) for these sites as well. Cupid DAU went up, Are You Interested DAU actually goes up even though MAU is down, Zoosk  DAU is all over the place, notice the sawtooth-like nature, I wonder what causes that.

Facebook is doing its damnedest to reduce viral marketing effect, instead forcing apps to buy ads instead. It was bound to happen and is going to make Facebook a *lot* of money once they improve their ad units.

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Looks like people are finally starting to use mobile dating apps more often than on their computers. Tracking two million singles across Compete, comScore and Alexa, mobile app analytics firm Flurry reveals that singles spend around 8.4 minutes in mobile dating apps vs. 8.3 minutes online.  Flurry found the top dating apps and sites are Match.com, eHarmony, PlentyOfFish, Zoosk, Jazzed Online Dating, Skout, and Grindr. More mobile dating news at TechCrunch.

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Markus at Plentyoffish asks whatever happened to old-school dating sites like Perfectmatch, Date, Matchmaker and Christian Cafe? Two years ago they were all in the top 20 and now they don’t even make the top 50. Jdate is barely in the top 40 itself, and that is the absolute defintion of a niche dating site.

Ranking methodologies change (nobody can really get solid numbers across mobile, web and Facebook), the ever-evolving dating site industry is enjoying a new round of entrepreneurs stacking the deck with traffic tricks, traditional dating sites totally missed out on the Facebook viral marketing days, outliers like spam-tastic Badoo grab headlines but offer awful user experiences… the list goes on why the big dating sites continue to grow and the rest aren’t going anywhere fast, usually dropping off the map, with a few exceptions.

The industry is so fragmented with generic dating sites, its no wonder that Match keeps growing and growing. People don’t want 500 dating sites, they want a few big-box retailer site like Match and eHarmony and a well-defined network of niche sites (People Media). This is why Match is doing so well, but at some point there will be nobody worthwhile left for them to buy (scratches head over Singlesnet acquisition). Maybe Match will buy Cupid PLC, but they likely a bit to adult-oriented for Match’s tastes at this time.

Plenty of other sites making a million here and there, but those are rounding errors and usually such low-quality experiences that they will continue on forever solely based on cheap low-quality member acquisition costs. Enough people will stumble across them that they will manage to throw off enough cash to remain lucrative  for the owners.

Given that there are around 15 new dating sites that have any sort of a chance of succeeding (money, market and team), this new wave of sites, especially the mobile ones, faces an uphill battle. We’ll all cheer them on, but the reality is that mobile dating is a fad. People will browse profiles on their phones, but as for picking someone up based on their location, I’m still waiting for any sort of report stating that a) people want this and b) it actually works. I know I’m poking the bear here, but there is so much hype about mobile dating and unless you are gay and on sites like Grindr, where’s the action?

I’d love to know how much email communication is originating on mobile apps, as opposed to responding and searching.

The strongest mobile sites will partner with brands that can push cheaper traffic. And then people will say that mobile dating never really worked out as expected and we’ll move onto something else like actual reputation and matching systems, which is what the industry really needs but these problems appear too difficult for entrepreneurs to attack. Why attempt difficult matching systems and invent reputation features when you can throw together a mobile app in a few weeks and pray for financing to actually get anyone to use the damn thing?

Here I am talking about mobile, but the real story is that most of the top dating sites of yesteryear are slipping off the radar. Thats what you get when you don’t innovate and evolve. They had their time in the limelight, but they got complacent, or unfocused, and their traffic and brand awareness suffered.

Now everyone is rushing out sub-par niche sites based on their old creaky platforms, which makes me cringe, because these companies know absolutely nothing about the niche’s they are going after. There is one niche left worth going after, can you guess what it is?

Here’s a recent rip of dating site rankings, followed by ranking from two years ago.

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And on the seventh day God rested, not! Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day you shall enable wifi and visit Plentyoffish.com.

Last Sunday, while I was brunching and then crashed on the couch watching movies after a 3am Saturday night blowout, six million people managed to log into Plentyoffish. That is just unreal.

I started getting grumpy trying to decipher the x-axis of the chart, Markus. what is 183?

If you own a dating site, consider taking next Sunday off  to figure out why Markus is 10 laps ahead of you.

How can that be? Skill, timing and luck. Markus has enjoyed an enormous amount of all three.

My default setting has always been that dating sites embark on all sorts of sketchy black/grey-hat marketing. That way when I meet someone Doing It Right I can act pleasantly surprised (this hardly ever happens).

There are number of people who keep close tabs on Plentyoffish, its traffic and growth. I get reports from people every so often, usually from bitter rivals looking to dethrone Markus by exploiting his Magic Secret. But the general consensus is always a lot of forehead-smacking and WTF. It seem that somehow Plentyoffish has a direct line to an astonishing amount of singles around the world while people in the dating and marketing industries tend to automatically think they are doing something fishy.

As far as the dating industry goes, its unfortunate that so many sites have to engage in stuff like incentive marketing (scammy), profile buying (don’t forget to edit that Terms of Service), cheap bouncy traffic (kills site quality) and all of the other sketchy marketing practices that *anyone* trying to make a buck on the Internet are forced to engage in to build a business. Google and Facebook did this, go complain to them.

As I like to tell the haters, go get Lady Gaga to mention your site in one of her videos. Watching keyword pricing and performance all day is one thing (and you will get rich if you are any good at it and your site doesn’t suck too badly), but getting Gaga to love you? Now thats real marketing.

Read Yay finally passed 6 million logins/day.

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Match.com has launched a new dating site for 50-plus singles. Featuring over a million profiles at launch, OurTime.com is actually a People Media site, as you can tell from the templates used.

I’m not sure if the million profiles are from SeniorPeopleMeet and SeniorBlackPeoplemeet, but thats what it sounds like. Does this mean that profiles were copied over? Are members aware of this? Will SeniorPeople Meet continue on as part of the PeopleMedia/Match brand? I’m talking to People Media next week to get some answers.

Not to be too picky but if  seniors are the biggest growth sector in the online dating market, why did they launch with such a lackluster design? With a million members on day one who cares if it looks like a store-brought template? Old people, on to your computing devices!

Here’s a snapshot of the Match.com hallway when I was there a few weeks ago. Will post more pics.

RightNow Provides Match.com Customers With Support On The Web, Phone, And Social Networks.

SugarSugar.com has launched a mobile application for locating singles interested in the “sugar” lifestyle: the SugarSugar Dating App. Now its even easier for hot young women to meet older men who will pay their credit card bills.

Check out the traffic decline at eVow. Looks pretty bad since its started tanking during the busy season. I think they basically copied over everyone they could from Plentyoffish and lots of people bounced.

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While this is not 100% accurate, and doesn’t take into account the vagaries of website vs. Facebook traffic, it certainly looks like the tables have turned on Zoosk vs. Are You Interested Facebook app traffic.

I wish we could get access to a blend of website and app traffic in one number for comparisons. Lots of new analytics companies out there measuring app engagement and virality, but one number must rule them all.

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Amazing and sad to see the collapse of Myspace. Looks like Mike Jones and the rest of the team were unable to right the ship in time as it appears the site is looking to be acquired. Still, 45 million monthly vistors is absolutely incredible. Via Silicon Alley Insider.

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