First, some research from PeopleMedia, who says the majority of black men and women don’t seem care about Valentine’s Day.
A minority, however, does take the holiday to heart, scrambling for any date at all (15 percent) or seeking the comfort of a favorite vice (12 percent). And that’s especially true for Black men, who are more than twice as likely as women to see Valentine’s Day as a fine reason to go on a date.
I love these polls, have received so many of them this week that they all flow together now in a kind of weird online dating zeitgeist of un-related statistics.
PeopleMedia has so many niche sites, Littlepeople, SeniorBlackPeople, BlackBabyBoomerMeet, the list goes on and on. I joined DemocraticPeopleMeet for kicks, but there is one man and one woman from MA there who have logged in in the last 30 days. We are the most democratic state in the union and there is one person for me? That’s too nich-y for me, thankyouverymuch.
Niche dating has all but killed the idea of competing on superior functionality for many dating sites. Might want to scrap those plans for an expensive search engine and put the money into marketing, because the number of people who care if the search works or not, or if the email system stinks, seems to be a minority. Who cares, I’m with my people, all 2,700 of them!
I kid, partially, but the writing is on the wall and I fear that the true innovators like VisualDNA, IntroAnalytics, Basisnote and the other vendors out there fighting the good fight (who I love to talk to, work with and help succeed) and the others pushing the limits are going to be marginalized by the online marketers. I certainly hope this is not the case.
The success of PeopleMedia’s black and senior sites is similar to the story of Spark Networks and JDate. 20+ sites in a network with just a few sites that matter. PeopleMedia timed their acquisition perfectly. The niche dating market is now pretty much sewn up in the US, although if you can identify a micro-niche with a few thousand people in a specific geographic area you could still make a go of it.
That’s the niche market these days, put up as many template-driven sites as you can, turn on the marketing dollars spigot and see what happens. It’s all about effective marketing spend. The roulette-wheel type of luck resembles the record labels, which tend to back 20 bands to get one star, two middling singers and the rest sit in tour busses for the rest of their lives. Here’s to hoping that PeopleMedia doesn’t cannibalize their underperforming sites to support the popular ones. Where will the big, the little and the really big folks go then?
Easydate Ltd has partnered with Dating Factory so they can focus on niche marketing and leave the infrastructure issues to their new partner. The good news for both parties is that adult is what drives the revenue for white label providers and there are no shortage of naughty people in Europe.
I saw today that World Singles are giving away some of their profits for Hatian relief efforts. Good job guys!
Ok, that’s a wrap. Snow day tomorrow!
