In recent weeks I have been talking with a major US newspaper in regards to a story about dating site legal issues. Today I see that a New York man sued dating website Match.com on Tuesday for misleading members by posting profiles of prospective dates who are unable to respond to any interest in them because they do not have a paid subscription. This, on the heels of True.com recently getting dinged for $1.5 million for unsavory billing practices.
For years, Match and many other sites have operated under the assumption that that consumers were not paying attention to their credit card statements or who they could and could not communicate with. Clearly-defined parameters about who members could communicate with have never been explicitly set and people, while mostly ignorant about a large percentage of what goes on in the world, tend to figure things out after a while.
It’s all about hope and flirting and heartwarming late-night cable commercials until the State Attorneys General starts looking at the dating industry with a critical eye and decides to do something. They did it in the social networking industry, is online dating the next industry to get Spitzer’d?
Match currently has approximately 1.4 million members in 24 countries. Those are the only people you can freely communicate with on the site, the other 14 million profiles are off the table, although I am not clear how Match works in all 24 countries. Notice how you don’t see people suing MiddleOfNowhereSingles.com, Match is where the money and the media is centered. You could replace Match with any number of online dating sites which are subscription-based.
This lawsuit is like the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. Either there is a perfectly rational explanation for this or Match and the rest of the industry has some serious explaining to do.
One thing I know is that the industry itself could never self-regulate, there is simply too much money to be made and the rules of engagement are flexible and undefined. Heck, there are certain sites making north of $50 million that nobody talks about.
I can see this lawsuit as an Onion spoof. “Area Man, living in his parents basement, was like, totally bummed he wasn’t getting any responses after he emailed 100 women out to ‘go get taco’s or something.'”
Although it’s not going to be anywhere near as funny for the online dating industry if things progress as I think they will.
