Contrary to poplar belief, and this mention in New dating websites find niches, I am a big fan of niche dating sites.
“Imagine if there were 3,000 search engines,” says David Evans, a consultant for the online dating industry. “It would be ridiculous. But there are 2,000-plus online dating sites in the U.S. alone.”
To clarify my position, I understand that it is important for certain niche demographics to feel as though they are searching and being found by “their people,” be that race, religion, sexual orientation or geography.
Plenty of large niche sites have taken umbrage with my statements against niche dating sites, and that’s to be expected. If you’re making millions every year off in your corner of the Internet, more power to you.
My point is that there is an incredible amount of inefficiency in online dating marketing that a monolithic database of singles will go a long way to address. Think about the redundancy of personnel, marketing spend and infrastructure that is replicated across scores of dating sites.
Match is in the middle of redesigning the People Media websites. How long until Match integrates profiles from People Media’s plethora of niche sites into the Match database? That sounds like the next step in the integration process.
As a stop-gap measure, perhaps all boomers or African-Americans on Match may see the “Try Chemistry” link on the site replaced with “Try [niche] dating at [niche site].”
Still a fan of niche dating sites?
Go do every web search this week on a different search engine.
Imagine having to subscribe to retrieve search results.
Imagine if every 5th search result was a broken link or a link to spam/malware (ok bad example).
Niche dating sites are here to stay for the time being, at least until the top dating sites hoover up the rest of the top niche sites and integrate them. Spark Networks is really the only large niche network left, and who’s going to buy them? (Plenty of companies kicking the tires, that never ends, but given investor battles going on over the valuation of the company…)
I tell you what, I’ll meet you in the middle. Niche sites are great if you are a minority or a well-established religion, but for the rest of us, we’re out of luck. The only nich we can self-identify with is serious or casual dater, and that hardly helps.
If someone would start a decent dating site aggregator I will shut up about Niche sites.
I can’t tell you how many “dating site search aggregators” I’ve worked with over the years. Some were able to get to the point where Match was officially sending them links to profiles every day, the majority never took the time to partner with top sites. The ones they had deals with were crappy free sites which acted more as a detracting force on the overall user experience than a “Wow, this is very cool, one search across the entire online dating universe, here’s my credit card!”
I should have been clearer in my previous discussions about niche sites. I have no problem with them, my issue is that I’m not going to be happy until someone comes up with a dating site aggregator that actually works. At that point, the more niches the better. Ok?
Until then the closest thing we have to dating site aggregators is lead-generation companies with SEO ninjas who bid up dating keywords, grab the leads and re-sell them to dating sites. This is another interesting market worth further discussion.
