Avalanche, owners of Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com, has introduced virtual gifts.
This Valentine’s Day, our members have the option of showing affection and interest by spending $1 on a virtual bouquet of roses which will digitally last forever. Compared to $75, the average cost of a dozen roses, which only lasts one week, it certainly seems like a viable option for millions of online daters who may have brought a bouquet of roses to a first date in healthier economic times.
Members purchase tokens that can be converted immediately, or at a later date, into Virtual Gifts. Online gifts, which range in price and start at $1, run the gamut from romantic to flirty. Everything from roses, hearts, Cupids and boxes of chocolates to martini glasses, food, stuffed animals, and even a shiny red sports car are available for purchase. Specialty items and limited edition items will be introduced in future updates of the feature.
Branded Virtual Gifts will also be available to advertisers that are looking for innovative ways to market products to online daters. Singles do not have to be paying subscribers of the sites to purchase, send or to receive Virtual Gifts. Virtual Gifts can be purchased using all major credit cards as well as via PayPal.
Dating sites are approaching virtual gifts one of two ways, by partnering with viximo or building out their own virtual gifting system. The tradeoffs are clear. Dating sites hold on to more money if they roll out their own system at the expense of diverting resources towards development resources. Or they do a revenue split with viximo.
It appears that small and medium dating sites that do not have the resources to allocate to a full-scale project are warming up to a partnerships with third-party vendors like viximo, whereas larger sites are content to build out the feature internally.
One thing is for certain, virtual gifts continue to grow in popularity, but the fact remains that the ROI for dating sites seems to be a primary point of concern for dating sites. I think that once the quality and caliber of virtual gifts improves (customized Flash apps and music), we’ll see increased adoption rates.
