Personality matching had it’s day in the sun. Eharmony and Chemistry are winning that battle, game over. It was difficult to the industry to get excited about personality matching because nobody understands it except for a few experts, consumers don’t necessarily like filling out forms and the tests are difficult to integrate with existing dating sites.
Now it seems it’s time to move on to mobile dating. Again.
It’s interesting to watch various people in the dating industry attempt to build up interest in mobile dating. Mark Brooks has launched a whole blog dedicated to mobile dating and iDate had a mobile dating conference last year. Network carriers are lukewarm about the potential for a revenue stream that justifies putting much effort into dealing with dating sites. They are all about SMS and games and movies, that’s where the real revenue is.
Enpocket has been delivering mobile dating solutions for several years. Their product for Match has had flat growth, remaining near 100k subs last time I checked. Webdate does mobile, but who’s on Webdate and where are they making money off of it?
I scratch my head when I see people talking about looking at profiles on a tiny phone screen. These services are targeted towards 20-somethings, exactly the kind of service they will not pay for since most are getting raked over the coals with their current data plans. Where is the revenue? What other dating sites charge for mobile phone access?
Mobile dating will succeed when people figure out that it’s not only about browsing, it’s about listening to audio profiles. Entice people to leave audio profiles and I think you’ve got something worthwhile. I can listen to them while driving, commuting, waiting for dentist or hanging out in a cafe.
The problem is that not many sites offer audio profiles or blogs and consumers have expressed low interest, as seen by Match’s failed audio introductions. Match failed because they have not been successful at market their own services to existing members. The wholesale moving of people over to Chemistry may prove me wrong, and good for them if they do.
Do you really think it will pull the dating industry out of it’s current slack tide?
Technorati Tags: enpocket, mobile+dating
