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Kathryn's Blog: Online Dating Facts and Figures
Internet dating is nothing but a growth industry. Disasters? People go online to look for love. The economy is in the pits? People go online to look for love. Bad weather? People go online to look for love. Holidays over? People go online to look for love. It seems any excuse will do. It’s cheaper than a date, saves time, and it works. Go for it!
Online dating soars as temperatures plunge
By Will Smale
Business reporter, BBC News
Singletons seem to be using their time stuck at home to join dating agencies
As the UK’s big chill shows no sign of ending, people appear to be seeking to raise the temperature with a bit of online romance.
With millions of Britons unable to make it into work because of the snow and ice, one of the unforeseen effects has been a reported surge in the number of people exploring website dating agencies.
Stuck at home and bored with daytime television, singletons are seemingly turning their attention to finding a new partner via their laptop, with two of the UK’s largest online dating sites both reporting a big increase in traffic over the past two days.
Mysinglefriend.com says visitors to its website soared by 55% on Tuesday alone, with its busiest time coming at 1500 rather than the traditional 2200.
Meanwhile rival site Singles365.com says its visitor numbers grew 27% across Tuesday and Wednesday compared with a year ago.
‘Icebreaker’
“January is our busiest month anyway, as many single people make it their new year’s resolution to find a partner,” says Singles365.com spokeswoman Katie Mowe.
“However, the increase in traffic over the past two days has been very unusual, as typically they are quiet days for us - we are usually busiest at weekends.
“We can only put this down to the bad weather meaning more people are staying at home. We saw a similar picture when we had snow last year, but obviously the weather is a lot worse at present so the increase has been much more marked.”
Sarah Beeny, founder of Mysinglefriend.com, says the snow was “proving to be an icebreaker for singles out there”.
“January has always been our busiest month, but this surge in traffic is unprecedented.”
The big increase in people using dating websites comes at a time when the industry is already booming.
Online websites have helped remove the stigma attached to dating agencies
According to a study by market research group Forrester Research, the number of Britons paying to use online dating agencies is set to grow from 2.6 million people in 2006 to six million by 2012, creating revenues of around £368m.
This vast increase has come as more adults are computer literate, the old stigma attached to joining dating agencies has dissipated, and the ability to join an agency via a laptop makes people more comfortable and confident to take the plunge.
However, it is not just traditional dating websites that have reported a big increase in business over the past few days.
IllicitEncounters.com - a website which provides a platform for married people to conduct affairs - says it gained a record number of new members on Wednesday, with the majority coming from areas of the country worst hit by the extreme weather, including Hampshire, Berkshire, and the wider West Country.
The firm says that over the past six days as a whole, it gained 2,567 new members, 37% more than usual, and as a result has needed to take on additional staff to cope with the rush.
“In light of these figures, I’d be interested to see how much work those working from home have actually done,” said spokeswoman Sara Hartley.
But with the bad weather set to continue into next week, many people who have found a prospective new partner via a dating website may have to wait sometime before they can actually meet up for their first date.
Love those facts and figures. See my underlines for particularly interesting numbers about good old AshleyMadison.com I actually had someone call me up the other day, thinking that I somehow had something to do with Ashley. Only to say bad things. The only good thing I can say about AshleyMadison is that perhaps it gives married people who want to fool around a place to go. I haven’t heard so much lately about married folks trolling the dating sites and pretending to be single, so maybe Ashley is doing her job.
Marriage and divorce ... with a modern twist: PDQuotient
By John Campanelli, The Plain Dealer
(edited)
8—Percent decline in the divorce rate from 2003 to 2008 in states without constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.
20.7—Percent decline in the divorce rate from 2003 to 2008 in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage (2004).
0.9—Percent increase in the divorce rate from 2003 to 2008 in the states with constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.
About 20—Percent of new divorce cases that contain the word “Facebook” in their petitions.
30—Percent of “singles” on online dating sites who aren’t single.
More than 4.5 million—Members of AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for married people that carries the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair.”
70—Percent of AshleyMadison.com members who are male.
I love it when I see science catching up and studying what is actually going on in the dating world. Here’s proof of what I have been saying and seeing about the use of dating sites by older singles: Underlines are mine.
Online dating more popular
NEW YORK - ANY lingering stigma about finding true love online seems to be fading, particularly among older adults, researchers found.
In a study of 175 newlywed couples scientists at Iowa State University said those who met through online dating agencies, or social networking sites, tended to be older than other couples who met through traditional ways offline.
They were also less likely to be marrying for the first time and had shorter courtships before tying the knot - 18.5 months instead of 42 months.
‘In many cases, there are real structural forces that encourage the support and use of these technologies,’ said Alicia Cast, an associate professor of sociology at the university. ‘And one of them is just structural constraints on people’s time - such as people who have kids, or have full-time jobs, or work long or extensive hours,’ she added in a statement.
But the online spouses were as attractive, intelligent and had the same self-esteem levels of the offline couples.
Prof Cast and her graduate assistant Jamie McCartney studied data on the couples over a three-year period. Twenty five couples in the study had met online. ‘My understanding is that there are very few studies that have been able to simultaneously get access to a source of couples who met through more conventional means, along with those who choose to meet people online,’ said Prof Cast.—REUTERS
Anyone who reads what I write for more than five minutes knows that I say “Don’t be cheap with your future—pay the bucks and join a good dating site.” Match.com is my favorite. But the free Plentyoffish.com is now the industry leader and there must be reasons why, beyond free. Here’s a report below by Dave Evans who writes Online Dating Insider. He critiques from the inside, actually using PlentyofFish for a few months. Markus is the developer and owner of PlentyofFish, which has made him marvelously wealthy on ad revenue alone. I’ve underlined in the article what I think is particularly interesting in Dave’s report.
Free Dating Overtakes Paid Subscriptions, Now What?
by David Evans on September 24, 2009
Markus at Plentyoffish let me know about his post today, Worlds top dating sites for August from comscore.
I’ve stopped using paid dating sites for a few months to gauge firsthand how effective free dating sites are. Basically I’ve been on Facebook dating apps, Plentyoffish and OKCupid. Someone asked me about mobile apps recently. I personaly don’t use mobile apps for the most part. Why squint at the screen when I can go home and view on a 24″ monitor. I’m not in that much of a rush to get a date. I know, thats just me, but mobile clones of the desktop just aren’t interesting anymore.
Based on a few months on Plentyoffish, here are a few personal observations, some of which go against what I’ve been saying for years, but things change as the online dating industry evolves.
I wouldn’t date 98% of the women on Plentyoffish, but the 2% I would date is getting to be a huge number and I can’t avoid this anymore. There seems to be a lot more attractive women on the site compared to a few years ago. Some people are going to hate me for saying that but it’s true.
Match says you are paying for customer service. Sure Markus has lots of complaints in the forums but if you don’t get in trouble and act accordingly, who needs customer service? How much customer service is related to billing at a site like Match or eHarmony? Can a free site with no paid help deliver results like a free site? I used to think not, and the fact is that people pay for assistance. Would you buy a free car if there wasn’t a dealership to take it to?
Plentyoffish is like crack, the whole site is built to keep you clicking on faces through a variety of means. The embarrassing “people who haven’t gotten email in 24 hours” display and the constant barrage of photos on every page keeps me clicking like crazy.
The more you click the more likely you are to come across someone you want to meet. This is what kills eHarmony. I’m hearing of people getting 7 matches a month, which is ridiculous.
I end up clicking on a lot of Plentyoffish profiles because so many women (men too) have terrible photos or one blurry photo and that has me moving on without a glance. If a photo isn’t up to par, it should be removed. I don’t know how that would be measured but it sure would help. I would also outlaw people who hold camera in front of themselves in bathroom mirror photos, personal pet peeve. Women, go ahead and continue to show too much cleavage on Plentyoffish. That’s why many men consider it a pickup site. If I could filter on women in suggestive poses I would, because they are 99.999% of the time not my type.
So what if the freemium model at Plentyoffish isn’t compelling? Does it really matter? I’m the first to admit that I sometimes need to get off my high horse when it comes to the perceived quality of dating sites. Most people just want a date and could care less what a site looks like or functions. They just want to be discovered.
A few constructive criticisms that no doubt Markus can refute. I am completely aware that on many sites, things that don’t make sense to me, or seem broken, are actually designed that way on purpose. This is why having access to dating site statistics is so incredibly important and why it’s unfortunate that generic dating sites never do anything with the wealth of information at their fingertips.
Fix the photo system, the display doesn’t work very well, I’m always mousing over the photos and having to readjust to view the profile. Go browse a few people and you’ll see what I mean.
The profile layout needs to be redone. Put everything above the fold, don’t make me scroll down on each and every profile. Match is brilliant, you see everything you need to see immediately. On Plentyoffish I have to focus, scan, scroll and interpret the text, which is a pain and takes too much time. Markus can afford a designer now, change the serious member logo, it’s awful. This is why I am not a designer and I outsource all client User Experience and UI stuff to Thought-Rocket. If it was up to me everything would have lots of whitespace around it and look like it was designed in Europe.
I despise the big-boobed ads for human pheromones next to every single woman’s photos. That’s tacky and crass. The crap-tastic ads for the competition are getting stale as well. Then again, I’ve been looking at the site for five years inside my little bubble. People will put up with a lot of junk if something is free.
I’m amazed at the amount of traffic Plentyoffish is getting, north of 100 million visits a month I believe. And the visits per month kicks everyone else off the chart. These numbers are so much higher than Compete reports it’s ridiculous, although Quantcast seems to peg them at 200 million monthly visitors.
The exact numbers don’t matter, what matters is that Plentyoffish is destroying the free dating competition and paid dating will now always be a smaller market than free. This doesn’t mean that free is better, just, free, which is enough of a value proposition for millions of singles to join free dating sites. There will always be those who will gladly pay for the privilege of meeting online for many other reasons. Do you want to go to a KOA Campground or a boutique hotel? The choice is yours to make.
Food for thought: anyone can go buy a boatload of traffic like Singlesnet and True and get into the top ten dating site list. How can we as an industry gauge how good a dating site is when not taking traffic into account as the sole metric by which success is measured?
If you are in a relationship, no matter how you met, your participation is needed in a new study on couples. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the online questionnaire (I took about 10 minutes, vs. what the suggested time was of 30 minutes). We need data comparing relationships that met online vs. those who did not. Either way, if you are in a relationship, go to this website and answer the questions:
http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/” title="http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/">http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/
Are Online Relationships More Successful than Offline Relationships?
OnlineDatingMagazine.com Launches Groundbreaking “Modern Love Study”
(September 29, 2009) Online Dating Magazine, a consumer watchdog publication for online daters, has just launched a new modern love study of the factors that determine relationship satisfaction and whether couples who meet online have the same or better quality relationship when compared to couples who meet through more traditional methods.
“We are seeing the media increasingly challenge the claims of dating websites that online matching methods produce high quality relationships for singles,” says Joe Tracy, Publisher of Online Dating Magazine. “In fact, the debate continues around the world as to whether online dating is really effective at creating successful long-term relationships. We want to see a conclusion to that debate through this study.”
The study will measure different aspects of committed, romantic relationships in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships and then determine whether relationship satisfaction and stability is different for couples who meet online compared to couples who meet using traditional methods.
“This type of study has never been conducted before, and a major goal of the research is to create the most comprehensive and valid measure of relationship quality in the academic field. Much research on compatibility is based on outdated questionnaires and theories,” said Dr. James Houran, spokesperson and feature columnist for Online Dating Magazine, who heads the team conducting the study.
According to Dr. Houran, “This project aims to bring cutting edge analysis to the question of what really defines a successful relationship, regardless of sexual orientation or how a couple meets.”
Anyone who is currently in a committed relationship or who has been in a committed relationship, is eligible to participate in the study. Participants are asked to respond to a series of questions about their current or most recent serious relationship. The basic results of the study will be released upon the study’s conclusion. The questionnaire has approximately 130 items and takes about 30 minutes to complete. It may be accessed via the link below:
http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/” title="http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/">http://lovestudy.yolasite.com/
I’m always on the look out for facts and figures about being single and wanting to be paired up. Here’s a new set from People Media, underlines are mine.
Half of Single Americans Prefer a Partner over Staying Solo, According to New Survey from People Media
As “National Unmarried and Single Americans Week” kicks off, more than half of that group – 52 percent – say they would opt to have a partner over having the freedom to date, live independently or spend their time or money as they choose.
At the same time, an almost equal number – 48 percent – appreciate the myriad freedoms afforded by single living, naming one or another as the best aspect of being unhitched.
Those are the principal findings of a new nationwide online poll conducted by People Media, Inc., the No. 1 provider of targeted online dating communities. Running from September 20-26, National Unmarried and Single Americans Week is an annual commemoration which, for the past 20 years, has given recognition to single life and the contributions of singles to society.
According to the People Media poll, the craving for companionship cuts across virtually all demographic lines. At the same time, the poll found that many singles are, in fact, willing to acknowledge the benefits that arise from living solo.
The findings came from statistically significant responses at 13 of People Media’s sites – including those that cater to seniors, African-Americans, single parents, Christians, baby boomers, and other people of like interests—in a poll posted from late August through early September.
More than 27,000 single Americans answered the question, “What do you like best about being single?” with the following responses.
- “Nothing; I’d rather have a partner”—52 percent
- “The freedom to spend my time as I choose”—33 percent
- “Living alone”—7 percent
- “Being able to date”—4 percent
- “The freedom to spend my money as I choose”—4 percent
Although a slight majority of respondents believe there is no real benefit to being single (52 percent), nearly half recognizes the advantages of being unattached. A full third of all respondents named “the freedom to spend my time as I choose” as the top benefit of their single status (33 percent), along with smaller percentages that value solo living (7 percent), freedom to date at will (4 percent), and having total control over the purse strings (4 percent).
“Would you call this ‘making lemonade out of lemons’ or is it about appreciating the taste of lemonade? I think it’s really both,” said Josh Meyers, CEO, People Media, Inc. “There’s no question that people have a deeply rooted drive for connection and companionship, whether it’s about friendship or marriage, and that’s why online dating communities are thriving.
“According to 2006 US Census data, there are 92 million American adults who are single and unmarried,” added Meyers. “Whether one is single by choice or by circumstance while searching for a relationship, there can be an upside like having total decision-making over how to spend one’s time, which one-third of our respondents named as the best thing about being single. As National Unmarried and Single Americans Week signifies, it’s more than okay to be single.”
Dissecting Singlehood
In addition to top-line results from the more than 27,000 poll respondents in total, the data has been analyzed according to the specific People Media site to which respondents chose to join. Among the findings.
- Those most likely to say there’s nothing best about being single (52 percent on average) include members of the Christian-affiliated LoveAndSeek.com site (64 percent), SingleParentsMeet.com (59 percent) and Mormon-oriented LDSPlanet.com (59 percent).
- Members of SeniorPeopleMeet.com are more likely than others to appreciate the freedom to spend their time as they wish (39 percent vs. 33 percent on average).
- On the other hand, those who identify around religion such as members of LoveAndSeek.com or LDSPlanet.com place the least value on deciding how to spend their time unilaterally (24 percent and 26 percent respectively, vs. 33 percent on average).
- Members of LatinoPeopleMeet.com are the most likely to appreciate the freedom to date (10 percent vs. 4 percent on average); members of BlackChristianPeopleMeet.com and those at SeniorPeopleMeet.com place the least emphasis on this (2 percent each).
- Compared to other groups, members of LDSPlanet.com are the least likely to name living alone as the best thing about being single (4 percent vs. 7 percent, on average).
- Having solitary control over money doesn’t register high as a benefit of being single. Just 3-7 percent of respondents across all groups cited financial autonomy.
When viewing responses by age, the younger the respondent, the more likely he or she is to appreciate the freedom to date: 10 percent for ages 18-24 and 8 percent for ages 25-34; 2 percent for ages 55-64 and 65+.
- The same age breakdown essentially applies to the benefits of living alone: younger respondents enjoy it more (9 percent for ages 18-24 and 10 percent for ages 25-34) than older singles (5 percent for ages 55-64 and just 4 percent for those 65+).
- At any age, controlling one’s money does not register as an important advantage of being single (4 percent for all age categories except 25-34, which came in at 5 percent).
And here’s what Forbes says is the Top 10 Dating sites:
Forbes Top 10 Dating Sites
1. eHarmony
Unique visitors in June: 4,252,000
Growth since last year: 48%
Avg. time spent on the site: 24.5 minutes
How it works: “With eHarmony members, there’s a high level of engagement around a clarity of purpose,” says Greg Waldorf, the site’s chief executive. “When you subscribe to eHarmony, you’re saying that you’re interested in a serious relationship.” Indeed, there are four stages of communication to determine your match’s level of interest--and members can only see people they match with. Other features include secure calling, which ensures members’ phone numbers are kept private.
Price: $60 per month
2. Yahoo! Personals
Unique visitors in June: 4,130,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: -7%
Avg. time spent on the site: 11 minutes
How it works: Nothing special here, save for its brand name. See which users have done a drive-by on your profile. Free browsing and free basic profile. Offers a dating advice section.
Price (for full service): $25 per month for men and women
3. Match.com
Unique visitors in June 2009: 3,379,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: no change
Avg. time spent on the site: 49 minutes
How it works: Each day, members receive their “Daily 5"--five people selected for them by Match’s proprietary pairing technology. A “Profile Pro” will help you spruce up your profile for a $35 fee.
Price: $40 per month for men and women
4. TRUE
Unique visitors in June 2009: 3,134,000
Growth since last year: 33%
Avg. time spent on the site: 13 minutes
How it works: Offers video-chatting and a free three-day trial period.
Price $50 per month for men and women
5. SinglesNet
Unique visitors in June 2009: 2,615,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: -31%
Avg. time spent on the site: 47 minutes
How it works: Build a profile and chat with people who look interesting. Offers a “Dating Forum” where members ask questions like: “How should I break it off?” Also has regional chat rooms
Price: $25 a month for men and women
6. Plenty of Fish
Unique visitors in June 2009: 2,198,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: 94%
Avg. time spent on the site: 91 minutes
How it works: “Half of our members have tried online dating, half have not tried it before,” says Plenty of Fish founder Markus Frind. “We tend to attract busy professionals who want to check it out.” If you see someone you like, you can view similar matches by physical features or personality traits. If you’re free on a particular night, add yourself to the list of other available singles looking for date. In searches, women are only shown men who are taller than them.
Price: free
7. DO U LIKE
Unique visitors in June 2009: 1,992,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: N/A
Avg. time spent on the site: 3.5 minutes
How it works: User friendly, photo-based service. “Do You Like Me?” feature offers a clickable “Yes” or “No” above each picture. See who says “Yes,” to your photo in your “Mutual Sympathy” inbox and decide if you like them, too.
Price: $20 per month for men and women
8. Spark Networks
Unique visitors in June 2009: 1,223,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: -14%
Avg. time spent on the site: 21 minutes
How it works: Owns niche sites like jdate.com, blacksingles.com, catholicmingle.com and kizmeet.com. Has a “compatibility compass” on each member profile; a dating hotline ("We get questions like: ‘I had a great date last night, but now I see she’s back online. Does that mean she’s looking for someone new?’ says Spark President Greg Liberman); and hosts in-person speed-dating events.
Price: no additional fees on top of what each site that Spark owns would charge.
Source for traffic figures: Nielsen.
9. Mate1
Unique visitors in June 2009: 1,173,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: -18%
Avg. time spent on the site: 14 minutes
How it works: Chat with crushes online. If you see a profile you like, click “Add To Hot List.” A little shy? “Online Ambassadors” serve as hosts to loosen up new members and encourage them to mingle.
Price: Woman pay nothing; men pay $50 per month
10. AOL Personals
Unique visitors in June 2009: 957,000
Gain/loss from the same period last year: -53%
Avg. time spent on the site: five minutes
How it works: Aggregates and compares other dating sites in one stop. Each site uses the same AOL layout, so it’s easier to focus on which site has the best features for you. Offers articles on dating from other popular sites, like askmen.com and asylum.com.
Price: no additional fees on top of what each site it aggregates would charge.
I love it when Forbes magazine takes Internet dating seriously enough to write a story about it. Read below and see what good business finding love is…
The Top Online Meat Markets
Courtney Comstock,
Courtship via pixel is no fad. Here’s where most the action takes place.
There was a time not long ago when the Internet was about shopping for a good book, maybe a CD or even a few squishy toys for Oakley, your cuddly yellow Labrador. Now you can pluck a mate (or just a date) from the virtual shelves.
Call it calculating, unromantic and maybe even a bit unnatural, but online dating--now a $950 million industry, including membership fees, advertising revenues and Web products like chat services and virtual roses--is here to stay. Throngs of hungry hearts now cruise online dating sites for companionship.
According to Nielsen, an audience tracking firm, dating sites snared 27.5 million unique visitors in June. That’s a ton of traffic--about half the amount logged by heavily taxed job-placement sites during what has been called the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Indeed, all the doom and gloom about the economy may be helping virtual love brokers. “The stress makes it clear when you’re in not such a great relationship,” says Greg Waldorf, chief executive of eHarmony.com. “People can feel pretty frustrated.”
Dating sites don’t just gin up the guest list; they do their best to get the sparks flying. Some track their members’ searches and look for patterns; others poll couples to find out why some relationships worked and others didn’t. Spark Networks ( LOV - news - people )--owner of a hodgepodge of niche sites like jdate.com (for Jewish singles), blacksingles.com and catholicmingle.com--hosts a popular “Rabbi of the Month” contest on jdate.com. Still other sites host member forums where the tortured masses can bleat about how to survive a break-up.
Some sites generate revenue by selling advertising, while others charge monthly subscriptions fees. (Men and women may not pay the same rate.) And like many other Web businesses, dating sites often sell different levels of service at different price points.
Forbes used Nielsen’s latest unique-visitor data for June 2009 to rank the 10 most popular dating sites. (The number of unique visitors, a common Web-traffic metric, is the total number of people who visited a Web site during a particular reporting period; anyone who visited the same site more than once during the period is not counted again.)
At No. 1: eHarmony.com, with 4.25 million visitors, up 48% from the same period a year earlier. Users spent an average 24.5 minutes on the site per visit. Looking for a casual fling? Keep moving. “There’s a high level of engagement around a clarity of purpose,” says Waldorf. “When you subscribe to eHarmony, you’re saying that you’re interested in a serious relationship.” Indeed, there are four stages of communication to determine your match’s level of interest--and members can only see people they match with. Price: $60 a month, for both men and women.
Yahoo ( YHOO - news - people ) Personals came in at No. 2, with 4.1 million uniques, followed by Match.com, with 3.4 million. At Match, members receive their “Daily 5"--five people selected for them each day by the site’s proprietary pairing technology. A “Profile Pro” will even help spruce up your online image. Membership fee: $40 a month, plus another $35 charge for the profile consulting.
Plentyoffish.com--at No. 6, boasting 2.2 million viewers, nearly double the amount a year ago--offers its brokerage services for free and looks to turn a profit selling advertising. “We’ve been growing so fast, I don’t even know what normal is,” says founder Markus Frind. Perhaps more noteworthy than the site’s $10 million in annual ad revenue is the 91 minutes that an average users spends per visit. One reason for such impressive stickiness, perhaps, is that unlike other dating sites, Plentyoffish relies less on a marketing blitz than on word of mouth from satisfied customers, who in turn know the kind of people who don’t have merely a passing curiosity about online dating, Frind says.
Edgy newcomer Do U Like hasn’t been around a full year but has rocketed to No. 7, with 1.9 million uniques per month. Unlike other dating sites, users must post their photos--racy poses encouraged. If you like what you see, you click on the photo; if you want to see who “liked” you, check the “Mutual Sympathy” inbox. Price for such near-instant gratification: $20 a month.
Happy hunting.
I’m always on the lookout for facts and figures about online dating. Here are a few more…
Online dating services booming in bad times
From an artcile by Liyun Jin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
According to Forrester Research Inc., online dating is the third largest producer of revenue out of all paid content sites, generating $957 million in 2008, a figure the firm predicts will grow 10 percent by 2013.
Dating site Match.com now has more than 20 million members, a figure that grows by 60,000 daily. The company charges members $35 per month and had a total revenue of $366 million in 2008, a 5 percent increase from 2007.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, couples are more likely to stay together in times of need than in plenty. The number of divorces and annulments dropped by 16,000 from 2006 to 2007, a decline of 2 percent.
The desire for a loving escape from the tough economy isn’t restricted to the real world. U.S. retail sales for Harlequin Enterprises, a publisher of romance fiction, rose 9 percent in 2008 compared to flat sales in the four years prior to that.
Yes, folks lie about age and income, but still, here’s what Match.com says that users say about themselves:
Figures below from IAC Advertising Solutions
Match.com users --
Six month average, July - December 2008:
Age (self-reported—I would guess that many over 40 lie about their age, so the percentages in the older categories are probably higher):
18 - 24 13%
25 - 34 27%
35 - 44 29%
45 - 54 18%
55 - 64 8%
65+ 5%
Household income (probably self-reported, probably some exaggeration on income):
15% > $100,000
8% $75,000 - 100,000
9% $50,000 - 75,000
44% $35,000 - 50,000
9% $25,000 - 35,000
14% > $25,000
I’ve been writing for some time now about the effects of the recession on online dating. This period is not too dissimilar to the period after 9/11 when singles rushed to Internet dating sites in search of meaningful connection in a suddenly unstable world. That rush after 9/11 pushed Internet dating into the mainstream where it has stayed ever since. This is a great time to be online and looking for love. Here’s an article below that talks about the current rise in activity on online dating sites, and speculates about what may turn out to be long term trends.I highlight in bold pieces that I think are particularly significant.
Downturn dating: Hearts flutter as markets stutter but it needn’t break bank
Ashley M. Heher
CHICAGO — Credit the recession for staycations and bringing us more game-night parties at home. But also give it a shout for spurring more first dates.
Economic woes, it seems, unleash something practically primal in many of us who find ourselves without a partner: a hard-wired desire for companionship.
Some singles are now hunting for dates with the same fervour others are showing hunting for jobs. On matchmaking website eHarmony.com, membership is up 20 per cent despite monthly fees of up to $60, and activity has soared 50 per cent since September at OkCupid.com.
It’s not just the frequency of our dates that’s changing — it’s also the people we’re choosing to spend time with.
“They’re looking for something that’s genuine in a world that isn’t very secure,” said Bathsheba Birman, co-founder of the Chicago dating event Nerds at Heart. “With headlines full of why you can’t trust established institutions that you thought you could ... people are re-examining their own values.”
Attendance at the monthly gatherings, where mostly young professionals pay $25 for a drink and a chance to spend the evening clustered around trivia and board games — was more than double expectations in April and has stayed high since.
“Misery loves company, especially if the prospect of romance and-or sex looms large,” said Craig Kinsley, a neurologist at the University of Richmond. “Really, dating, rather than being considered as expensive, can be a thrilling and inexpensive distraction. Like getting drunk without the wallet-hit or hangover.”
Kinsley said stomach-fluttering first dates also release brain chemicals that can temporarily erase worries, even about pensions, layoffs, falling portfolios and upside-down mortgages.
Still, Sam Yagan, the founder and CEO at OkCupid.com, sees the changing dating climate as a matter of dollars and cents.
The way he figures it, a man can spend $100 buying drinks at a bar trying to pick up a stranger and leave with little more than a cold shoulder. But, when he’s in a relationship, a Saturday evening can be as simple as Thai noodle takeout, Netflix and some fun under the covers. All in all, Yagan said, that’s “more bang for your buck.”
It’s more than just the recession. Experts say changes in behaviour can relate to other world events — with upticks when news is bad.
Last fall, comparing periods when the stock market fell more than 100 points and when it rose by the same amount, eHarmony found more members searched for matches when the financial news was grim. Activity also grew in the days after a tragedy like the Virginia Tech shooting, while it stayed the same during “good” global events, like the Olympics.
Unlike those one-day or weeklong events, the recession already has spanned more than 18 months, and its effects are expected to last just as long — and that likely will mean more discernible changes in human behaviour.
“It ends up being a reminder that you need to look for the important things in life,” said Gian Gonzaga, eHarmony’s senior research scientist. “It isn’t that surprising when you see people gravitating toward the most fundamental human relations.”
But the trend isn’t uniform.
Recessions can make some romances more challenging, experts say, especially for those who have already said “I do.” The stress that comes with fear, financial problems and economic uncertainty can drive a wedge between partners.
And the most committed bachelors aren’t developing a sudden hankering to buy princess-cut engagement rings.
Instead, the shifts are subtle: a devoted singleton going on more first dates; casual daters seeking long-term relationships; partners who might not have been attractive a while back — someone younger or older, someone who lives in a “geographically undesirable” area — looking much better.
At the Chicago wine bar In Fine Spirits, the changing dating culture has lead to a roughly 30 per cent increase in the number of parties of two, said general manager Brandon Wise.
“With such a tenuous climate right now, I think people are looking for stability in their partner,” he said. “I think it’s less haphazard dating and more pointed dating.”
A gentler tone is taking over, daters and observers say, with substance gaining over style.
For Mili Thomas, a 28-year-old graduate student in New York, that means she now spends time with men who didn’t show up on her radar screen before the recession.
Among them: a PhD who would have been nixed because he lives in New Jersey and an employee at a marketing firm who wouldn’t have made the grade because he is two years her junior.
“I figured this was the best possible time to explore other options since people’s lives have been turned topsy turvy,” she said. “I think everyone is more open to bucking convention given that ’the usual’ has gone out the window.”
I’ve been out of the Internet dating news/gossip loop for a few weeks now while we made our annual trip north to our house in Maine. Apparently, there has been some big news in the meantime: Match.com is being sued for what I have been harping on for years: The common practice on paid dating sites of allowing non-paying members to post profiles for free, but then not allowing the freebies to open and/or answer emails from the paying members. What really is galling about this practice is that there is no differentiation—a single cannot tell who is paid or not by the looks of the listing. Therefore, considerable time, effort, and emotions are spent by paying singles writing to non-paying ones who cannot answer without paying up—a powerful disincentive. I’ve called this “Internet dating’s dirty little secret.” Here’s a link to my first blog post about the practice. But I had been writing about this “dirty secret” for several years before.
Note too that the dating sites NEVER publish their member (paid and unpaid listers) and subscriber (paid only) numbers together. The most recent figuring I did was several years ago when the two very different numbers from Match seemed to indicate something like 13:1 non-paid to paid members.
Now, I still thing that Match is the best all-around dating site, but this all-too-common practice of Match and other paid sites is long overdue for a change. “Why don’t they answer my emails?” is THE most common complaint I hear from Internet daters. And probably the most common reason for non-replies is that the lister is a freeloader and not a paid member. It’s too bad that it make take legal action to get dating sites to stop this practice. All it would take is some small indicator on each profile of the lister’s status. I’d like to know. Wouldn’t you?
See this article below for more details:
NY man sues dating website Match.com for deception
Tue Jun 9, 2009
* Suit says site causes “humiliation and disappointment”
* Match.com says suit lacks merit, will defend vigorously
NEW YORK, June 9 (Reuters) - 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.
Sean McGinn, of Brooklyn, who filed the lawsuit in New York federal court, accused Match.com of causing “humiliation and disappointment” for some members who feel rejected when their attempt to contact a prospective date gets no reply.
McGinn wants Match.com to stop “its deceptive practices” and demands unspecified damages.
People can create a Match.com profile for others to see and search the database of prospective dates for free, but to be able contact someone of interest or respond there are fees, ranging from $39.99 for one month to $19.99 a month for six months.
The lawsuit said that “despite the emotional vulnerability inherent in the dating process, fraught as it is with fear of rejection and anxiety, Match defrauds the consumer of his/her time, labor, and emotional investment” by not telling them that someone they are contacting does not have a subscription.
“Because the writer has no way of knowing this, he or she may experience profound personal anguish, suffering which is easily preventable by Match,” the lawsuit said.
Match.com, which is owned by Barry Diller’s Internet media company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O), is still reviewing the complaint, but said “we believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously.”
“On any given day, upon information and belief, many thousands of members log into the Match site hoping to find someone special,” the lawsuit said. “At any given time, a significant percentage of the emails a member sends cannot be opened, read or responded to by the recipient.”
Match.com’s website it has had more than 100 million members since 2000, offers services in 24 countries and territories and hosts sites in 15 languages. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Everything indicates that a poor economy is great for looking for love. I just watched a Nightline segment featuring Match.com and Internet dating and Match had double the business in January 2009 compared with January 2008. DOUBLE! Here’s an artcle below about a dating site I hadn’t heard of before—Zoosk—that appears to be doing a booming business. But BTW, the quotes of Match.com prices is dead wrong. I just checked: Match is $29.99 for one month, but just $14.99 if you join for six months. Chances are very good that you will not meet your match in one month, so sign up for the six. And even if you do meet Mr. or Ms. Right the first day, isn’t that a great investment?
Can a recession seriously boost online dating? Commentary: Free and social services will see more of a boost than pay sites
By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—As empty pizza boxes piled up on office tables, tech-minded twenty-somethings swilled beer from plastic cups. In the corner, a DJ was spinning dance music. A guy donning a toga and blonde curly wig worked the room, pretending to be Cupid for Valentine’s Day.
No, it’s not the dot-com era rising from the grave. It’s a startup named Zoosk, hosting its own “Lunch 2.0,” a vestige of the recent Web 2.0 boom. It begs the question: At a time when many in the tech world are now job searching, what kind of company could host a free beer-and-pizza lunch?
Zoosk is an online dating site targeted at those in their 20s and early 30s, a demographic that spends a lot of time on social networking sites. Zoosk’s founders say their site is among the first to incorporate social networking into online dating.
Available both as a full subscription premium service and scaled-down free offering, it just may represent online dating of the future, where friends join the same sites and help find each other matches. It was started in December 2007.
I asked a Zoosk investor how the 13-person startup could hold a free lunch and have offices in San Francisco’s pricey Financial District. After all, startups were warned late last year to save pennies if they want to survive, and generate revenue.
Zoosk has received $4.5 million in funding from various venture capitalists, a fair amount but not really enough to warrant corporate indulgences, unless it was generating revenue.
“We had a subscription model at the outset,” explained Deepak Kamra, a general partner at Canaan Partners in nearby Menlo Park. Kamra was also an early investor in online dating pioneer Match.com, now part of IAC/InterActiveCorp.
Unprecedented growth
Kamra said Zoosk was seeing “unprecedented growth,” especially when compared with the early days of Match.com, when online dating was a new and scary concept. Zoosk currently has 16.5 million registered users despite being barely one year old, and it is even hiring a few software engineers. The company won’t disclose its revenue figures.
Dating services seem impervious to economic downturns, Kamra said. To illustrate the point, he borrowed a news hook from some pre-Valentine’s Day articles last week about traffic growth at online-dating Websites.
“Why would love be susceptible to a recession?” he asked.
Jeff Lindsay, an analyst with Bernstein Research, described the recession phenomenon in a report last week, in which he analyzed sudden boosts in visits to U.S. online dating sites.
“The explanation is not rocket science,” Lindsay wrote. ”People suddenly have 60 to 80 more hours free per week and are miserable—almost perfect conditions for the dating services. These conditions are particularly favorable for the online players because online is cheaper.”
Visits do not necessarily translate into revenue for all. Zoosk has applications for MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and calls itself a social dating network.
Not all Zoosk users—many of whom use free social networking sites—pay $24.95 a month. In return, though, they have fewer features. Zoosk offered a Valentine’s Day promo where users who signed up on Feb. 13 and 14 received full access to the site and members for those days.
Not all growing
But not all dating sites are growing like Zoosk.
Older pay sites have seen growth fall off in the last year or so. Last January, reports surfaced that Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Spark Networks Inc was looking to sell one of its sites, the popular JDate.com, a service geared toward Jewish singles. Sparks saw overall sales drop to $14 million for the most recently reported quarter ended Sept. 30, vs. $15.8 million a year ago.
On the other hand, Match.com saw growth in the quarter, albeit in the single digits, in part due to its expansion in other countries. Revenue at Match grew 5% to $93.5 million.
December 2008 monthly unique visitor data compiled by ComScore and Bernstein Research showed another player in the U.S. called SinglesNet.com taking the lead from Match, with a slightly cheaper monthly subscription of $24.99. Match charges about $35 a month.
Right behind SinglesNet and Match was a free offering, called PlentyofFish.com, based in Vancouver. It generates advertising revenue based on partnerships and links to other pay dating sites, said Dave Evans, who writes a blog called Online Dating Insider. PlentyofFish probably has one of the lowest-cost businesses models. Founder and Chief Executive Markus Frind is the company’s sole employee, though he gets some help from his girlfriend.
“The economy has affected online dating in recent months,” Evans said. “But to say that is the primary driver is just lazy. People are joining more free dating sites; that is a constant trend.”
Increased ads
Evans also said many sites, such as Match, increased advertising budgets to take advantage of the often gloomy time for those without partners. That’s the period from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day when many feel pressure from families about their single status.
The December boost in unique visits ahead of Valentine’s Day surely will slow at the pay dating sites as the recession wears on. While jobless people may be also lonely, many will find paying $25 to $35 a month for a dating service is a luxury when they have no income.
They likely will veer toward free social networking sites, social dating sites like Zoosk or free sites like PlentyofFish. No doubt some people are also now taking advantage of free promotions, and will cancel their subscriptions as soon as the free trial period ends.
“We see a real risk of a Craigslist-like disintermediation of the online dating space,” said Bernstein’s Lindsay.
So while the recession seems to have given a temporary boost to some of these sites, it may only be short lived. End of Story
Therese Poletti is a senior columnist for MarketWatch in San Francisco.
eHarmony is well financed, for sure. In nine months last year, it spent almost double what Match.com spent on ads.
EHARMONY BLOG—Feb 11 --
eHarmony spends $93.3 million in advertising in 9 months, almost twice as much as Match.com—see chart below, figures in the $100,000’s”
Rank Site Jan 07 to Sep 07 Jan 08 to Sep 08
1 eHarmony 79,019.631 93,255.171
2 Match.com 51,170.580 47,607.049
3 Chemistry.com 12,125.655 28,282.073
4 Cupid.com 1,067.142 847.231
5 Nocheatersdate.com 0.000 822.042
6 Blacksingles.com 272.964 510.251
7 AdultFriendFinder.com 0.000 243.553
8 AshleyMadison.com 59.977 243.420
9 Ciaorossano.com 0.000 212.750
10 ChristianMingle.com 0.000 201.213
Source: The Nielsen Company (2009)
Hey Shana, why didn’t you call me? I’d love to talk to you about my very favorite topic!
Control alt meet
Dec. 29--Welcome to New Year’s Eve—the official No. 1 Date Night of the entire year. Let us hope that all you singles out there are happily matched up and ready to ring in a new year with that special someone ...
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps you are among the 10 million American Internet users who say you are currently single and looking for a romantic partner, as reported by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And maybe, just maybe, you are among the 7.5 million who have actually gone to an online dating site, looking for a partner.
Come on, don’t be shy. There’s nothing wrong with this, says Shana Kopaczewski, an assistant professor of communications at Southern Connecticut State University, who has spent the last few years studying the online dating habits of single Americans.
The verdict: More people than ever are meeting dates this way, and yet the stigma still remains.
“Hardly anybody wants to admit that it’s something they’re doing—not until it works, at least,” says Kopaczewski, who first got interested in the topic of online dating the same way a lot of people did: She saw the commercials on television of all the happy couples, smiling adoringly into each other’s eyes, or dancing the jitterbug while a fatherly voice said that finding a partner this way is an OK thing to do. “When I saw all the ads, I thought, is this reality?” says Kopaczewski, whose specialty is studying the way people communicate. “Is everybody a happy couple? I had some friends at the time who were trying out online dating, and I was definitely hearing different stories from them. So I decided to research it and find out what the truth is, and then—well, it turned into my doctoral dissertation.”
Kopaczewski has studied three popular online dating sites: eHarmony, match.com, and Yahoo Personals, by reading comments that their users posted on a site called edatereview.com, which allows people to tell their stories of what happened to them.
There were many more negative comments than positive, she reports, but, she says, that is to be expected. “Many are from people who are ticked off at the process, not the happy and satisfied customers who are off having a good time,” she says. “I did see people who had met their soul mates and think it’s wonderful, but many more who are unhappy about their experience as a whole. It’s a place where people can go to vent.”
Yet, in analyzing the results, Kopaczewski found it interesting that people complain about the population who seek out dates online, and yet don’t seem to notice the irony that they are doing this, too.
“It’s almost like they want their cake and to eat it, too,” she says. “The thinking is they can go online and find someone, and if it works, then it’s awesome. But if it doesn’t, then they say to themselves, ‘I’m a great catch, but I was thrust into this world with crazy, abnormal people in this crazy, abnormal way of dating.’”
The trouble, she says, is that we’re a society in transition. “There’s still a stigma to being single, and everybody is expected to get married, have children and settle down—and yet the dating infrastructure has changed. There aren’t any more matchmakers, and if you don’t meet someone at school or at work or get fixed up by friends—then how are you supposed to meet people? People go online because that’s how we communicate with each other these days. And yet there’s still a shame about admitting that the ‘traditional’ way didn’t work for you and that you’re looking online.”
But Kopaczewski says this perception is changing over time, as more people know someone who’s met their life partner this way. “If you think about dating from a historical perspective, there have been a lot of changes. And every time there’s something new, it’s strange and takes time for the new to become the norm.
“When you tell your family you’re looking for dates online, believe me, they’re most likely going to be upset. They’re going to tell you that it’s not safe. The perception of online dating is not helped by stories about online predators. But all in all, the truth is you have to use caution just the same as you would in meeting someone face to face.”
And there are actual advantages to online dating, Kopaczewski found. “When you meet someone on one of the online dating sites, you know from the start that this is a person who is seeking a romantic relationship. That’s not necessarily true when you meet someone in a bar. And chances are a computer has found that the two of you have something in common. Some groundwork has been done.”
Online dating can also work because you have the chance of meeting so many more people, whereas if you only have the pool of people from school or work to count on, you may go a long time without meeting anyone new. And with the online dating sites, you have a chance to talk online and weed out any people you’re not interested in before actually meeting them. You can actually find out a lot about them before you ever get to the face-to-face part.
But of course, no questionnaire can predict the most important thing of all: Is there a chemistry between you?
“They haven’t found a computer program that can predict that certain intangible something,” Kopaczewski says. “And maybe that’s where the problem is. The sites are attempting to objectify something that is entirely subjective and can’t be explained.”
Some people complain that they feel that going online and paying a dating service is a blatant attempt to purchase love and companionship, and that it’s taking a consumerist approach to love.
Still, Kopaczewski, who recently presented a paper at a professional conference on communications, says that online dating is here to stay, and that it will grow in popularity as more and more people do it. “It just fits society’s needs so well that I can’t imagine it won’t be more widespread. Soon it will just be seen as one of the ways people use to meet their partners.”
Her conclusion is that online dating is just another way of meeting the need to meet people, with no more magical power than any of the traditional ways.
“It’s simply an opportunity to broaden your horizons, get in touch with more people than you might meet in your ordinary life,” she says. “It’s got its ups and downs, its bad and good experiences. Be careful and be safe. And ... well, you just never know.”
Right after 9/11, traffic to dating sites surged as singles responded emotionally to the tragedy. The explanation seemed to be a yearning for connection, stability and home. Here we are again, this time in a financial crisis, and again, the traffic on the dating sites is WAY up, as much as 47%. What’s the message? This is a great time to get online and get active. Lots of new people with renewed interest in finding love. Maybe with you.
Traffic to dating sites is way up since September
By Heidi Dawley
There are plenty of things folks cut back on during an economic downturn, and TV and newspaper reports are full of them: We eat at fancy restaurants less, buy fewer new cars, and hold back on spontaneous purchasing, to name just a few.
There’s more cooking at home, more bargain-hunting and coupon-clipping, more vacations nearby.
But folks are also cutting back where one might not expect it, and one is in the search for love. Searchers of romance, it turns out, are skipping the bar scene and all the expense that entails in favor of going online to hunt out the next love of their lives.
A number of online dating services are reporting that their subscriber numbers have soared since September’s stock market turmoil hit.
“We have found that in the last three months, in September, October, November, that we have had a real jump in the numbers of people subscribing for membership,” says Jackie Elton, founder and managing director of Christian Connection, a London-based online dating service. It reports that its revenues in those months were up about 40 percent year on year.
Other online dating companies also have noted a rise. In the U.S., Perfectmatch.com also said in November that the number of members is up 47 percent compared to last quarter.
And Avalanche.com, which owns Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com, reports a similar trend, with revenue up 17 percent year on year and membership up 26 percent.
“It’s hard to know exactly why the numbers are going up, but yes, I feel that this surge is related to the recent worldwide economic crisis,” says Avalanche CEO Meir Strahlberg.
Hitwise, the online measurement firm, says the traffic for the online dating category was up in October compared to the same month the year before, although it puts the figure at a smaller 3 percent.
For the online dating industry, this is only the second economic downturn that has come around since these sites first appeared on the scene.
The first time, was after 9/11. The impact was similar then, too. “After 9/11 there was a tremendous surge in activity,” says Strahlberg.
With numbers shooting up during this downturn, folks at the online dating sites are beginning to think online dating is a countercyclical business, in other words one that manages to do well during an economic downturn.
“We feel that our business model is tested, and online dating is one of the few industries that is recession proof,” says Strahlberg.
So just why should this be? There are number reasons why online dating service bosses think the rotten economy might actually be boosting their business.
For one thing, people are likely to be economizing by staying home more. This leads to a few things. First, they may feel a bit lonely at home on their own.
What’s more, while at home there’s more time to surf online dating sites, looking at profiles. “The thing about online dating is that takes some effort. You have to get on there, make a good profile, see who’s on there. It isn’t a casual thing,” says Christian Connection’s Elton.
Then there’s the fact that if people are cutting back on spending, they won’t want to be splashing out in bars trying to meet someone.
Nor will they want to spend a lot on dates where there’s no chemistry. In fact, 48 percent of people polled recently by Avalanche said that the recent economic downturn meant they were sending more time online getting to know a prospective date before actually setting up a face-to-face date.
But there are a few other reasons too. When there is a time of crisis either relating to security or the economy, people tend to re-evaluate what is important in their lives. Suddenly material possessions don’t rate as high, while relationships and home life gain in importance.
What’s more, when things get tough, people don’t want to be alone. “There’s comfort in being in someone else’s company,” says Strahlberg.
Here’s a rather long article from the British press about Internet dating taken to its illogical extreme—oh so casual sex, and the deadening of sex in general. Not to mention the encouragement to people in committed relationships to cheat. What do you think?
The web of desire or just deceit?
The internet has made it easier than ever to find a partner for casual sex, but having it all on a plate could mean that we end up losing our appetites. By David Smith
* David Smith
* The Observer,
* Sunday October 26 2008
Attractive college professor wants good student for fun hookup Fri.’ ‘Very Hot American in town looking for someone to show him the ropes.’ ‘Monday night - in Edinburgh on business.’ ‘Looking for some fun.’ ‘Inexperienced but curious?’. ‘Sophisticated pleasure for busty lady.’ ‘Ladylike Asian submissive wanted.’ ‘One night stand.’
Just another typical week in Edinburgh, as glimpsed in the ‘casual encounters’ section of the popular website Craigslist. Residents, tourists, businessmen and women passing through - anyone who fancies a bit of sex with ‘NSA’ (no-strings-attached) can announce it to the world and watch the offers roll in. On Craigslist, they don’t have to pay anything or even go through the motions of registering a username and password. This is internet sex: as free and easy as it comes.
The homepage of Craigslist, one of the world’s most popular listings sites, offers flats and houses, holiday rentals, bikes, boats, books for sale, and jobs in just about every sector imaginable. Alongside this classic classifieds fare are personals, some romantic, some for one night only. Just a few mouse clicks away, it seems, the logical conclusion of a consumer age where time is short and convenience expected. Or as the title of Mark Ravenhill’s play had it: Shopping and Fucking.
‘It’s like ordering a pizza,’ says Emily Dubberley, author of Brief Encounters: The Women’s Guide to Casual Sex, and founder of the charity campaign Burlesque Against Breast Cancer.
‘In the past if someone suddenly felt horny they probably wouldn’t bother going to a pub, or even joining a dating site to say, “Do you fancy it?” because that would be a bit weird, so they’d just sort themselves out. Now it’s very available and convenient. But there’s something a bit more sordid about it when you don’t even have to make the remotest connection such as, “Do you fancy a pint?” At least then there would be a flirtation and catching of the eye. Now you can just go online and order genitalia. It’s taken sex to its absolute base level.’
Entire histories have been written about how the growth of the internet had nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with pornography. But just as the net has transformed from a passive one-way street into an interactive ‘Web 2.0’ where users are creators, so the days of computers being little more than digital porn magazines are gone.
The web has become a place through which to contact, meet and have sex with real people, to fulfil the wildest fantasy in the flesh. Cybersex is no longer about merely looking; it is about doing. What no one can yet understand is how this will change the social etiquettes of the past, or how fundamentally it is shifting the dynamics of sex and relationships.
Some sites are quite explicit about their offerings. AdultFriendFinder claims to be the world’s biggest adult social network and sex personals site. Its homepage proclaims, ‘Meet real sex partners tonight!’ beside a picture of a young woman taking off her bra and pouting at the camera. Below there are a series of photos and videos of women with names like ‘sexygirl’, ‘freakychick’, ‘angelfirelady’ and ‘sugarbabe’. The site claims to have more than 2.5 million members registered in the UK, and that tens of thousands are logged in at this very moment. Just log in and you could meet your match.
Other sites quite evidently do as they promise, such as Hookuparea.com and BeNaughty.com. And when a marriage is under strain, spouses no longer have to go very far out of their way to cheat. Illicit Encounters asks on its homepage: ‘Married but Feeling neglected? In need of some excitement? A discreet and confidential extra-marital dating service for women and men… Whatever your reason, we can help. You may be locked in a loveless marriage, starved of attention and affection, partner away or too tired to pay you the attention you deserve, nonexistent love life? Or just looking for some excitement in your life? But you don’t want to end your marriage either. Here you can meet people just like you, in absolute confidence.’
Peter Lines, 43, from West Yorkshire, met his current partner through the site when he decided that his marriage was loveless and beyond salvation. He did not want to ruin his children’s lives so continues to live with his wife in an entirely platonic relationship. He says his current partner was in an identical predicament. ‘Morally, we haven’t got a leg to stand on, but what’s a person to do?’ he asks.
Lines has since become a co-owner of Illicit Encounters, which launched in October 2003 and now has 245,000 members, mostly in the UK. Sixty-five per cent of them are male, and 35 per cent female, a smaller disparity than most dating sites. Women are on average 36½ years old, men 38½. Applicants are required to answer up to 50 questions and fill in a profile. Of around 800 applications received every day, on average 550 are rejected for reasons such as age (people under 25 are discouraged) or personality (self-evident sex maniacs are not welcome).
Lines says that the site is made up of very ordinary people like you and me. ‘It’s the man and woman in the street, the person in the Sainsbury’s queue, the person in the office you would never expect. There are no raging tarts or slobbering lotharios. The membership are primarily people trapped in a marriage and they can’t get out for all sorts of reasons. We did a survey and 71 per cent of people said that if they weren’t having an affair they’d be getting a divorce.’
The internet has made it possible in ways that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago. Lines adds: ‘People in this situation are far more active online than they would be in real life. They wouldn’t go to a bar or another public place to chat to people for many reasons, some of them obvious.’
The site provides a guide on how to conduct an illicit affair, with advice tips including using a separate SIM card in their mobile phone, paying with cash instead of credit cards and never giving their surname, exact location or workplace. But he denies the site is providing an immoral cheats’ charter. ‘We say to everyone that we don’t encourage them to have an affair. We make it very clear on every page that you’ve got to think hard about this; it’s not a substitute for working on your marriage; only do it if your marriage cannot be saved and there’s no way back.’
Not for the first time, homosexuals have been at the cutting edge of sexual and social trends. Gaydar, the networking site for gay men - tagline ‘What you want, when you want it’ - has arguably done more than any other site to make casual sex an integral part of the web. Founded in 1999 by Gary Frisch and his partner Henry Badenhorst in a tiny office in south-west London, it soon became the online equivalent of the gay bar, a safe place to meet, talk and, of course, ‘get laid’. Gaydar is now one of the biggest dating sites on the web with millions of members around the world. The ‘A’ countries alone with registered users are Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan.
Gaydar is sex shopping writ large, with every specific taste catered for. A user’s profile has a basic checklist: height, body type, ethnic origins, out (of the closet, that is), dick size, body hair, orientation (gay or bisexual), role (active, passive or versatile), safer sex (yes or no), smoke and drink. Anyone who fails to
...#8592; post a photograph is less likely to be successful in finding an assignation. Those who do can turn up in a new city anywhere in the world, advertise their availability and be having sex an hour later.
This is perhaps the most spectacular illustration of how the internet has changed everyday behaviour. Gays bars and clubs are said to have suffered a downturn because men are sitting at computers instead; an article in the Economist magazine attributed a slump at Manchester’s Canal Street gay quarter directly to Gaydar. Cottaging in toilets or bushes, in places such as Hampstead Heath, has reportedly declined or even vanished because sex is so readily available via broadband. The author and Gaydar user Mark Simpson once observed: ‘If Joe Orton had his time again his diaries would have been just printouts of thousands of Gaydar profiles and alarming digicam photos.’
The process even formed the subject of a one-man show, Sex Addict, which caused controversy in 2004 when author Tim Fountain invited Edinburgh Festival audiences to watch him trawl Gaydar each night to arrange a sexual encounter, then report back the following day. Fountain has since admitted that the site can become addictive, a confusion of ends and means. ‘I know so many gay men who will literally have Gaydar ticking away all the time, wherever they are, in the corner of the room while they are watching TV,’ Fountain, the author of a new book about the sex lives of the British, Rude Britannia, told the Guardian last year.
‘That’s the worst thing, it’s a terrible time waster. You can very quickly think, “Oh, I’ll just log on and check my messages,” and four hours later you find yourself weeing on someone’s pillow in Willesden Green wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?” Sometimes you think, “Christ, am I still online? I was meant to being doing something else.” The whole web dating thing, gay or straight - on the one hand, it does link people up, but they are not socialising, they are not meeting in bars. They are just sitting talking down a line, ordering what they want, when they want it. That can be a very narrow thing.’
For all its popularity, Gaydar can be regarded as a niche. Not so Craigslist or its rival, Gumtree, which published research last year showing that one in 10 British adults between the ages of 25 and 40 had gone online for casual sex. Nor, indeed, the darlings of the web, social networking sites such as Facebook. This runs the gamut, bringing together business contacts, old school and university friends and former lovers. At one end of the spectrum, a site which invites members to ‘poke’ each other and features countless photos of drunken revelry inevitably features casual sex too.
Earlier this year it emerged that Laura Michaels, 23, had set up a group called ‘I Need Sex’ on the Facebook site and, she claimed, slept with 50 men. Within 10 minutes the group had 35 members and soon attracted 100 men, 50 of whom Michaels slept with after vetting their pictures. One of her Facebook conquests was called Simon from Swindon, whom she met for drinks in a bar in her hometown of Bristol before going back to his hotel room for sex. Facebook later removed the page.
Michaels told the Sun about her experiences: ‘We always met somewhere like a bar first and I would get dressed up and treat it like a date. I know that some people will really look down on me for it. They might even say that I may as well have been a prostitute because then I would at least have been paid for sleeping with so many different blokes, but I don’t see it like that at all. I was satisfying my own desires by setting up the group. I feel like a free, liberated woman and I think it’s fantastic that the internet gave me a chance to do this. I know that it was risky behaviour but that was part of the thrill. I always made sure to tell a friend I trusted where I was going.’
Facebook, MySpace and Bebo’s tens of millions of members can communicate with each other via Zoosk, which claims to be the biggest social dating network in the world. It offers the chance to ‘choose a network and start mingling with thousands of cute singles in your area’. It could well appeal to people who would never dream of visiting an all-out casual sex site but don’t see the harm of a simple mouse click which adds the Zoosk application to their profile page, the first step on a slippery slope. The web abounds with questions such as ‘What would you do if you found your husband added the “zoosk” application on Facebook?’ and ‘Does Zoosk randomly flirt with people’?
The online sex revolution is posing new questions for experts who have not seen anything quite like this before. Phillip Hodson, a psychotherapist and broadcaster, says: ‘I do believe the internet is the world’s largest sex aid, largely functioning to augment, magnify and super-speed the processes of dating. Therefore it does represent a “step difference”, a difference of kind and not just one of degree over traditional mating behaviour. You could never flirt with so many people in your entire life in, say, the Fifties as you can today in one un-enchanted evening. The web - soon to be the instantaneous grid - allows people of high libido (and flexible morals) to find each other as never before.’
But, according to Hodson, the web might be making sex too easy, so we end up having less rather than more. ‘All new media have pros and cons, pluses and minuses,’ she says. ‘Undoubtedly adultery is easier to organise by email but there is a new risk of detection given the electronic trail and the dangers of interception or misdirection - for example “Hello Lover!” ending up in your boss’s inbox.
‘I think that the internet, by providing pornography and promiscuity on a plate, does tend to lower the nation’s overall libido. In order to feel sexy, we need a few more challenges than unlimitedporninanyposition.org or Hookersin30minutestoyourdoor.co.uk. Men in particular seem to me to be in danger of becoming “sex lazy” as well as more fickle.’
Indeed the paradox of the throwaway, instant gratification subculture could be that, like a drug, gratification becomes less and less satisfying. No one can share the sentiment expressed in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last!’ It is not only romance that is dead but also the theatre of seduction, the hint of stocking replaced by a brazen sexuality that is about as erotic as a prostitute’s calling card in a phone box. Cinema and restaurant dates are replaced by profiles and pokes.
The era when you married the boy or girl next door, or your childhood sweetheart, in the same village church as your parents, has long been on the wane. But when love is cheap, the internet generation may be less inclined to get married at all.
Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist and biologist, says: ‘I would be concerned that what we are seeing is unrealistic. Yes, you can have sex, but you are now having more people than ever living alone and never getting married. Even as the technology advances, men and women are less engaged than ever before. There is something about chemistry and nuance that is not conveyed by this IT.
‘This is doing something odd to the human condition that isn’t clear yet. In luring people away from strong personal relationships, it could be that people are having less sex, not more. I’m not convinced that it’s making us any happier.’
How to identify cheating spouses
1 They touch their nose often. Research suggests that internal nose tissues swell with blood when one lies. Beware of this when they communicate with you.
2 They avoid looking directly at you. Lying takes concentration and makes them suddenly divert their line of sight.
3 They stare at you too much. They do this to make sure you believe them.
4 They lean forward and get close. Closeness is usually a sign of trust. But sometimes it can be a sign of deceit. They try to exaggerate how close you are by leaning forward when they lie.
5 They pull their earlobe. Some police forces are trained to watch for this very mistake when interrogating criminals.
6 They give you too much information. Their stories are too complex, structured, polished or complete.
7 They tend to give you multiple ‘reasons’. If they were honest, they would have the confidence to give just one reason.
8 They stumble in speech, with mistakes in the story to try and cover it up.
9 They use ‘um’ and ‘ah’ more than usual, where they have to think of lies quickly.
10 They are hesitant at the start of a sentence. They have to come up with lies fast and they hesitate.
Mistakes many cheaters make
1 They forget about a ‘love note’ left in their pocket.
2 They come home smelling of a lover’s scent.
3 They are too protective of their handbag or wallet.
4 They come home wearing different clothes from when they left.
5 They choose too many different excuses too often.
6 They forget about itemised mobile phone bills.
7 They spend too much money on their affair and less on bills at home.
8 They come home smelling of smoke, but they don’t smoke.
9 They use a friend as an excuse but don’t tell the friend.
10 They forget about the caller ID and redial button.
According to Online Dating Insider, Match.com gets 25,000 new members a DAY! Match is always the top dating site that I recommend. Yes, you’ll see the same old profiles that get posted by non-paying members and then never taken down. What’s the risk if you are not paying anything? But a serious dater needs to check Match daily to see who is new. Do not fall into the trap of “there’s no one here that I like today, so Match.com is no good.” Keep looking! Match is the best show in town.
These numbers speak for themselves. Internet dating is THE way to find love, particularly if you are over 45.
LOOKING FOR TRUE LOVE..GO ON INTERNET
Single men and women are more likely to find true love on the internet than at work or at a party - especially if they are over 45. A poll of 10,000 married couples in 2006/2007 found 19 per cent met online compared with 17 per cent who got together at work and 17 per cent who paired up through pals. Of these, 31 per cent aged 45 to 54 met online, against 18 per cent of 20 to 44-year-olds. Galen Buckwalter of online matchmaker eHarmony, California, said: “Wanting to get married and not going online will soon be seen as equivalent to trying to find an address by driving around randomly - rather than using a map.” In contrast a similar poll of 5,000 couples who married between September 2004 and August 2005 found that 14 per cent met online, compared with 20 per cent at work and 17 per cent through friends.
Facts on Internet dating from the Canadian press:
From an article in the Calgary Herald Canadians are lucky in love, Saturday, May 24, 2008
The poll also found that 16 per cent of Canadians had found love online, with the younger demographic having more success—more than a quarter of respondents aged 18 to 34 had been successful in seeking a mate via the web. Only seven per cent of those aged 55 and older had started a relationship online, either by way of e-mail or the Internet.
I always recommend that singles pick a big, established, well-trafficked dating site, one that charges a fee. And of course, if you join, you should pay. Here’s a report that backs up some of my rationale—that people who join and pay a fee are more serious and see others posting on the site as more serious too. Underlining below is mine.
The typical online dater is serious, says report
People who date on the internet tend to be serious about the endeavour, a new report asserts.
According to eMarketer, those who use paid-for subscription services to meet prospective romantic mates are doing so because they want to find a specific sort of person who takes the venture as seriously as they do.
Citing comScore figures that reveal 97 million people visited matchmaking websites in December of last year, representing a ten per cent year-on-year fall, the report comments that a specific demographic is drawn to such resources.
“Online dating site users are looking for a pool of other people who are serious about dating, and pay for access to that pool,” the publication notes.
Meanwhile, an International Herald-Tribune article is cited in which the chief executive of Match.com, Thomas Enraght-Moony, describes internet dating as “highly underpenetrated”.
Hitwise has reported that the term ‘Valentine’s poems’ was the most popular search phrase containing the word Valentine in February 2007.
Most people know that Internet dating is one of the biggest money-makers on the web. Even though total visits were down 10% in December, revenues continue to climb. Speculators say that the less serious singles are dropping out, and the truly serious are paying up. See the article below, I added the underlines.
JupiterResearch Sees Steady Growth for Online Personals, Despite Explosion of Social Networking
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JupiterResearch-- a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business, reports consumers are looking for love in cyberspace at a steady pace, which will result in significant growth during the next five years. Online dating and personals will increase from $900M in 2007 to $1.9B in 2012, according to the recently published JupiterResearch report, “US Paid Content Forecast, 2007 to 2012.”
Despite the grave outlook in some press reports, there are no signs that the eruption of social networks has burned the paid online personals market.
“Still, as casual visitor traffic slows or shrinks, competitors will have to seek out harder-to-sell consumers, as well as offer additional services to their existing customers,” said David Card, Vice President and Research Director for JupiterResearch. “And competition is already ferocious.”
Personals remain one of the larger paid content categories online. Only music and games are bigger, or attract more than 10 percent of online users.
“Personals are one of the few legitimate billion-dollar paid content businesses,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. “JupiterResearch projects a steady 16 percent compound annual growth rate through 2012 for the category.”
I love watching how the online dating industry and the way people use it changes so quickly. It wasn’t very long ago that you could find anything at all on the net about dating, what was happening and trends. Here’s an article about where things are and where things are going that says some interesting things. The article is in red, I’ve underlined parts I think are interesting, and commented in the body of the article in black.
How do I catch a valentine?
By ERIC GWINN
Chicago Tribune
It’s the week before Valentine’s Day, and you might be looking for a special someone. Maybe you’re one of the millions of people who haven’t tried an online matchmaking service. Or maybe you tried one a while ago and were disappointed by the number of people more interested in casual dating than in establishing serious relationships.
Here’s an update: Things have changed. Sites are charging more money to connect people, and the higher membership fees appear to be weeding out the not-so-serious types. Also, the fill-out-a-profile-and-wait-for-replies method of finding a match is giving way to faster means of meeting people.
If you’re thinking about going online to meet a kindred spirit, here is what’s happening these days in the Internet matchmaking world.
WHAT’S NOW?
Fewer people are checking out online dating sites. Internet researcher comScore Media Metrix says the number of visits in December dropped by 10 percent—to 20.2 million Americans—compared with December 2006 figures.
“There are fewer people, but they’re more serious,” says Mark Brooks, who provides marketing and other services for online dating sites. “The revenues continue to climb because the looky-loos have gone away; they can’t get much service without paying (a subscription to a Web dating service.)”
The novelty of online dating is starting to wear off, and Mark Brooks is right, it’s the serious folks who are staying in.
The average monthly subscription is now $25 a month, up $20 a month from a few years ago, but more free sites might start popping up among the hundreds of online matchmakers, thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of Plenty of Fish. Plentyoffish.com is free and among the most visited Web sites—not just dating sites—in Canada and the U.S.
While eHarmony, Yahoo! Personals and Match.com have millions of members, many so-called niche dating sites are growing because they zero in on a specific interest or background or age group, such as SeniorFriendFinder.com. Farmersonly.com attracts those who like the agricultural way of life, while gk2gk.com appeals to self-described geeks. Sparks Networks operates a stable of sites such as JDate.com, for Jewish singles, and DeafSinglesConnection.com. MyPartner.com welcomes gays and lesbians.
WHAT’S NEW?
Growing attention to the issue of online safety. New Jersey recently enacted the Internet Dating Safety Act, requiring online dating services to disclose their criminal background screening practices and to offer safer dating tips on their sites. It’s the first such law of any state; other states might follow suit.
This push to legislate “online dating safety” (as if a law could actually do that) is very controversial. I testified against a similar bill here in Florida last year. See my blog entries about it here.
There is no law requiring dating sites to verify the age or identity of members or to run criminal background checks on them. The online dating/social networking industry argues that any such law would be expensive and certainly not foolproof. Most matchmaking sites require users to state they are 18 years or older and to agree they will follow certain rules of behavior. Many offer safety tips for users, and there are plenty of businesses offering to investigate people met online—for a fee.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Some people think online dating is for old people who stay in touch by e-mail, rather than the social-networking, instant-messaging young crowd. Not so fast. “Paid online dating should grow from about $890 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.9 billion in 2012,” says David Card, of Jupiter Research. “We haven’t seen any negative impact from free social networks on the paid social business.”
Online dating is still getting more than 20 million new visitors a month, so don’t worry that potential mates are abandoning online service. As Card puts it, “The big (sites) continue to do well, and there are little guys springing up left and right.”
But if you’re in a hurry for a match, things might seem a bit slow. Dating sites aren’t messing with their time-tested formula for keeping people coming back: the fill-out-a-profile-and-wait-for-responses method. While that makes money for sites, it isn’t the fastest way to meet people.
SpeedDate.com is shaking things up by pairing Web cam users for three-minute meetings—like speed dating from yoursofa. Dodgeball.com lets your cell phone seek out other Dodgeball members while you’re at the bar, the game or even the grocery store. Exchange text messages and choose to meet. Or not.
ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR MYSTERY DATE?
No matter what online service you choose, use common sense to screen out potential troublemakers and be honest about what you want and who you are. When Steve Johnson, the Chicago Tribune’s Internet critic, last summer asked Plenty of Fish Chief Executive Officer Markus Frind what he had learned about love while running his site, Frind said: “Everyone lies. What people say they want and what they actually want are two completely different things. Like when people write their profile and say, I’m looking for this and this and this, the people they actually search for and message are completely different from what they list, like 30 or 40 percent of the time. People put down what they think other people think they should go for rather than what they want.”
I would not say that people are lying when what they search for appears different that what they state, simply that they may be stating what they ideally are looking for, but then reality sinks in. A guy may say he wants a woman he could take home to meet Mom, but actually LOOK AT the other extreme.
Now, I just love the Brits. If you are a regular blog reader here, you’ll have seen my posting about Match.com’s hilarious ad campaign Cupid and Fate. If you haven’t already, you need to take a look.
Something they are doing over that, whether it is “Cupid and Fate” or in the water, seems to be working Big Time. Take a look at the article below for the HUGE percentages of British singles who are using online dating.
Single Brits looking for love online
By Clement James VNU Net - Monday, January 21 10:30 am
The internet has become a mainstream way to find love, according to dating agency Parship.
The online matchmaking service claimed that there is now a 50:50 chance that everyone knows someone who is currently logging-on to find a special partner.
Nearly eight million Britons used some form of online dating service in 2007, compared to 5.4 million who used a mixture of offline and online services in 2005.
Some 52 per cent of British men and 48 per cent of women have used the internet to find a date in the past 12 months, compared to 36 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women in 2005.
Over 53 per cent of singles intend to use the internet to meet someone in the future, rising to 65 per cent of 36 to 40 year-olds.
Tony Blin Stoyle, UK and Ireland manager at Parship, said: “UK singles, particularly those aged 30 to 40, recognise that as they get older and their social networks become smaller, they need to maximise their opportunities in order to meet a partner.
“Our research suggests that if you rely on traditional routes and wait for a chance encounter with someone special, you could end up waiting a very long time.”
Victoria Lukats, a psychiatrist and dating expert for Parship, added: “ Provided people choose an internet dating site that helps them to meet like-minded people, it can be a great way of meeting someone special.
“With the busy lives that people lead today the old saying ‘love only comes along when you least expect it’ is at best outdated. The internet now allows single people to be much more proactive in finding a relationship.”
This little piece below is pretty dense with the financial talk, but interesting. Just keep in mind that even if Match slips a knotch or two, you are still talking about millions of singles who are registered.
Match.com earnings show major decline in subscribers.
Match.com Released their earnings a few days ago. Is this their way of saying subscribers in the US decreased at least 12% year over year? One assumes the US accounts for far more than 50% of their subscribers.
“Revenue growth was driven by a 1% increase in worldwide subscribers, including 13% growth in international subscribers, most notably in the UK, combined with higher average prices in North America. Operating Income Before Amortization grew faster than revenue due to a lower cost of acquisition as a percentage of revenue in North America and flat operating costs, partially offset by higher international cost of acquisition. Operating income in the second quarter of 2007 included amortization of non-cash marketing of $7.2 million.”
Articles like the one below about how Internet dating is “in” have been popping up all over everywhere lately. While they are similar in tone and get repetitious, I find them so welcoming after what I have seen over the years. Five years ago when I was just getting started as a Romance Coach, searches yielded practically nothing, and what did show up tended to be scary. Not so with articles like this. Yea!
The Many Faces of Online Dating
By Erika Morphy
“Match.com is not for everybody,” says Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence or some combination of these qualities.”
Shoshanna Berman, an intern in New York City, is happily dating her ideal future husband: a nice, young—and tall—Orthodox Jewish man who is also outgoing and easygoing.
On date two, they bonded while scalping tickets at a Knicks game. Date ten, she remembers, was an all-night drive to Philadelphia.
“I would have married him if he asked me after the first date,” Berman tells TechNewsWorld, “but it took him a few months to realize the truth.” Now they are unofficially engaged.
Take away a few details here and there, and this could be anyone’s “how we met” story—including the fact that Berman met her beau at SawYouAtSinai.com, a dating Web site.
“My friend met her husband there, so I thought I would give it a try,” Berman says.
These days, anyone who scoffs at online dating is either married or in the priesthood. The U.S. online dating market—typified by such Web sites as Match.com and Yahoo Personals—will reach US$932 million in 2011, according to figures from JupiterResearch.
Soul Mate Search
More than 20 million Internet users visited such a site last December, reported comScore. The top destinations were Yahoo Personals, Match.com, True.com, Spark Networks and Singlesnet.com. In short, from 18-year-olds in college (where there should be no dearth of potential suitors) to senior citizens, multitudes are logging on in search of love or companionship.
To be sure, not everyone who goes online finds a happy ending. Horror stories abound from the horrifying—stalking incidents and worse have befallen many online daters—to the annoying. (Hint: Using photos more than a year or so old always backfires.)
Sometimes it just takes a little patience to find your soul mate, says Robert Schwartz, author of Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth? Schwartz met his partner at JDate, another popular Jewish dating site. Several years ago, he posted a profile there but nothing came of it. Recently, though, in the most serendipitous manner possible, he connected with a woman, and they’re about to move in together.
“I had been living in Oregon but thinking about moving home to Cleveland to look after my father, who was needing assistance,” he tells TechNewsWorld. Idly, he perused the profiles in Cleveland and immediately gravitated toward the woman who would become his partner. “What I loved about her profile is that I could tell immediately she is spiritually aware. That is very important to me.”
Fast-forward over several months of phone calls and visits. Schwartz is now moving to Cleveland.
Specialized Sites
It may be no accident that both Schwartz and Berman met partners on specialized dating sites. Mainstream dating site memberships are stagnating—or, in some cases, shrinking. The proportion of paying customers has stayed the same—5 percent—over the last five years, according to Jupiter.
Another Jupiter metric that suggests interest is beginning to decline: Only 10 percent of Internet users visited an online dating site in 2006—a decrease from 16 percent in 2005 and 21 percent in 2002.
One way the online dating industry is counteracting these trends is by introducing specialized Web sites that focus on commonalities that would-be daters hope to find. Many focus on religion; some focus on hobbies or professions.
Sparks Network, currently one of the top online destinations, operates over 30 online personals—all but one of which is targeted toward a specific religious, ethnic or special interest group. JDate, launched in 1997, was its first site.
It makes sense, some say.
“Match.com is not for everybody,” Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions, tells TechNewsWorld. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence, or some combination of these qualities.”
Singles who do not make great first impressions end up feeling frustrated, he continues. “On a specialized dating site, one attraction may be the similarity of interests, vocation, religion, life challenges and so on.”
Next Evolutionary Step
Specialized sites are the way to go for today’s daters, says Steve Monas, author of several books about online dating and social networking, including Chemistry and Numbers: The Online Dating Guide.
“When I used JDate, there was already a feeling of comfortability, knowing that there will be some commonality moving forward,” he tells TechNewsWorld.
However, the specialized sites may follow the path of the generic dating Web sites, he cautioned—unless they evolve once again.
“Dating Web sites are now trying to get appealing features that will compete with free social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Plentyoffish.com,” Monas notes. These sites, after all, are de facto meeting places and have come to compete with some of the larger, specialized dating sites.
Revenue from major sites will have to come from more personalized services—such as selecting and contacting potential matches on behalf of members, he suggests.
Indeed, some of the newer specialized sites are focusing on what happens once you get past the third or so date and become a couple. eHarmony, a dating Web site known for its hour-long application—and, more controversially, for not matching gay people—has launched a Web site aimed at married couples who want to strengthen their relationship.
On the other end of the spectrum—the far end—is HoochyMail, a service that “brings couples closer together by safely and securely allowing them to create and share their mutual fantasies,” according to site spokesperson Rob Frankle.
Basically, HoochyMail allows each couple to compose and e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo fantasies customized with their own details. There are about 35 different occasions—from Christmas to Thanksgiving to basketball playoffs—in the system Manage remotely with one interface—the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server..
Thus far, the site has been very successful, judging by almost every metric, Frankle says, including opt-in numbers and click-through advertising rates. “Plus, we have never received even one hate mail.”
In the online dating world, that’s as good as it gets.
Here’s an interesting “massaging of the stats” I found by dating coaches Dan and Jennifer. I can’t say whether or not their conclusions about the patrons and matrons of the way sexy site AdultFriendFinder.com are true, but there is some interesting speculation to be done for sure.
Sinners in the Bible Belt? Sex, Swingers, and Religion...
Dan and Jennifer
August 2, 2007
Who would have thought that Texas, the conservative Republican state, is 2nd In the Nation on Sex Seeking Enthusiasts?
While Texas may be perceived as a highly religious and conservative stronghold, deep in the heart of the Bible Belt, it’s beat out only by California, and Florida is a close 3rd in the number of adults actively looking for sex on the internet.
Are we making this up? Now way!
These revealing numbers are reported by one of the largest adult web sites on the internet. The numbers will really surprise you…
If you don’t already know, Adult Friend Finder is the largest sex and swinger personals web site on the internet today with 22,319,717 members. That’s almost identical to the population of Texas which is 23,507,783. Hmmm… That’s a lot of people on just this one website.
What is a sex and swinger personals web site? Well, it’s basically a dating site for singles and couples looking for sex. What many people don’t realize is that Adult Friend Finder gets more visitors every day than Match.com and eHarmony put together!
That’s no big surprise. But what IS a surprise is that Texas is ranked #2 in the number of subscribers to this web site.
Here is the state by state breakdown of the top sex enthusiasts in the U.S., according to Adult Friend Finder:
* California - 1.2 million (That’s 3.3% of the state population)
* Texas - 800,000 (That’s 3.4% of the state population)
* Florida - 743,000 (That’s 4.1% of the state population)
* New York - 660,000 (That’s 3.4% of the state population)
* Illinois - 429,000 (That’s 3.3% of the state population)
Wow, what’s truly amazing here is that Texas - the heart of the Bible Belt - is #2 in all of the U.S. with a larger percentage of the population subscribing than California!
Is Texas shedding it’s ultra conservative facade? Or will the truth remain buried behind closed doors with faceless pictures on the top sex personals sites like Adult Friend Finder?
Here are some more interesting facts about sex on the internet
While it’s difficult to identify the exact number of internet users, ComScore Media Metrix reports 4% of all Web traffic and 2% of all time spent Web surfing involved an adult site.
* According to a recent study by Google, adult content is the most sought after content by users with cellphones. Google’s team found that 20 percent of searches on cellphones were for adult content, while only 5 percent of searches on PDAs were for it. The researchers sifted through 1 million searches by users of their mobile search software to come up with these numbers.
* The AVN Annual Survey of the Adult Industry 2006 asserts that the adult entertainment industry is nearly a $13 billion business in 2006, mostly in the form of adult videos. But the delivery mechanism is changing… Internet sales of adult content, which includes images, live-chat and live-streaming video, has now become the second largest adult entertainment segment, with 22 percent of the market or $2.8 billion in sales.
So, are more than 23 million people wrong? Or are the rules and social stigmas against sex and enjoying our sexuality outdated remnants of the Victorian age?
Obviously the demand is there, but so are the ultra conservative religious extremists and the lawmakers that they keep in their pockets. Which explains why prostitution is still illegal in most states and certain sexual acts between consenting adults are illegal in the privacy of their own homes. The fact that consenting adults cannot do whatever they choose in the privacy of their own homes, without causing harm to anyone, is outrageous!
This is also why Janet Jackson was persecuted for her wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl a few years back (the most replayed moment in TiVo history) and Chicago TV reporter, Amy Jacobson, was persecuted for doing an interview in her swimsuit. Exactly what is wrong with a breast and a belly button anyway? Really… Stop and think about that for just a moment.
When will we say enough is enough?
Wait. Visit http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com today.
Dating, Relationships, and Sex. Tips, Advice, Articles, and Videos.
Copyright 2007, http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com. All rights reserved.
From a press release about LavaLifePrime—LavaLife’s new (and free for awhile) site for singles over 45:
A few interesting statistics on single Boomers:
* 30% of Boomers are single
* 70% of Boomers are internet savvy*
* 70% of single Boomers are dating regularly*
* Of those, 45% of men and 48% of women have sexual intercourse more than once per week*
* Only 14% of Boomer women and 22% of Boomer men are looking to get married or live with someone.* (For the younger groups these numbers are a significantly higher, ie. ages 30-39, 60%.) FULL ARTICLE @ PR LEAP
* AARP Study - American Association of Retired People
That’s SOME set of stats! If you are a single “Boomer,” get out there and have some fun!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I always like seeing some facts and figures come out about online dating. Here are a few from a new poll by Vizu Corporation for OKCupid.com. The numbers I found particularly interesting were in the last paragraph, which lists the factors that singles use to eliminate candidates. If you are chubby, smoke and have kids, your chances of making the cut are slim. One thing that is hard to judge by an oline profile is character, which I think is THE most important attribute in a potential mate. Maybe the chubby mom who smokes would be thebest risk of all. Who will know if you don’t give them the chance?
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
From New Opinion Poll Benchmarks the State of Online Dating
Of the 49 percent of survey respondents who claimed to have interacted with an online dating Web site, more than 20 percent were committed users, either by paying for a subscription or using a free service. Another 29 percent admit to at least browsing profiles, even if they don’t take that final step of signing up and making a connection. Those who do commit tend to stick around - 62 percent trying their luck for two months or longer.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents prefer services that provide personality questionnaires, analyze compatibility and offer matchmaking recommendations. And users want that service for free, too. Free sites are preferred over subscription services at a ratio of five-to-one.
Despite the reach of the now ten-plus-year-old industry, 72 percent still feel there is a social stigma to online dating. Yet that perception appears attached to those who are less involved in the experience. Once daters embrace the online path and actually meet their match, they become more comfortable. Nearly two-thirds will admit that, upon meeting their significant other online, they would tell the truth if asked about how they met.
Finally, the report shows online daters to be highly selective. Most (58 percent) rely primarily on photographs to quickly filter their field of prospective matches. Deal breakers that tend to cause prospects to be rejected include smoking (23 percent say no) and having children (32 percent aren’t interested). As for physical characteristics, 45 percent will reject someone because of his/her weight, and another 33 percent will disqualify those outside their age range.
I’m starting to see stories come out in the news about divorces and assorted romantic miseries in couples who met on Internet dating sites. Well, duh! Did anyone really think that couples who met on the net would somehow avoid the troubles that every other couple has in spades? Of course not! People who meet on the net are going to get married, some in wildly impulsive sort of ways, and a certain percentage of those folks are going to get divorced. When upwards of 15% of couples marrying now are meeting on the web, it only stands to reason that about 15% of divorcing couple will be cyberpairings. There is nothing magical about Internet dating that will protect you from marital misery.
Internet-initiated marriages can head south
11:51 AM PDT on Sunday, May 27, 2007
By AMANDA STRINDBERG
The Press-Enterprise
In 1998, Matt Frassica was featured in People magazine as a cyberlove success story.
He had found his bride on the Internet and was among an emerging group of those who clicked their way to love.
Six years later, the Northern California resident belonged to a different group. He became a Net nuptial divorcee.
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The common interests of long walks on the beach, homemade lasagna and a love for the romantic comedy “While You Were Sleeping” weren’t enough to make Frassica’s marriage last. Frassica realized he was gay and the dream of “happily ever after” ended.
“We really had nothing in common,” Frassica, 34, said. “Our profiles had lots of commonalities, but it didn’t go much deeper than that.”
Internet dating sites began to sprout up about 12 years ago. By 2002, it was a common way to meet a mate. An estimated 3 million Americans have found love online and married or entered a long-term relationship, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports.
But now, area therapists and family-law attorneys say they are seeing an increasing number of cybersplits. While some swear by online dating and say they would have never found their one-and-only if not for the Net, it’s inevitable that cyberromance will also bring with it its fair share of divorces.
Fantasy World
The emerging rocky Web unions make sense given the median length of a first marriage that ends in divorce is eight years, according to a 2005 Census Bureau survey. There are no formal statistics showing if Internet marriages fare better than traditional forms of meeting, but some say the fantasies people create before meeting a match face to face can be blinding.
A 2004 Match.com study revealed 11 percent of married couples who met through its site were in love before meeting. What’s revealed online through the profile and e-mails exchanged is just enough to start the fantasy, said Orange County relationship specialist Michelle Conboy.
“They have already created this image that this person is perfect for them,” said Conboy, a marriage-family therapist. “They become so excited about the prospect of this fantasy coming true that they ignore red flags and don’t ask the right questions.”
Marriage-family therapist Randy Davis, of Corona, described it like this: “It’s like when you see the dessert plate at a restaurant and you create an idea in your head about how it’s going to taste and then when you get it you’re thinking, ‘Wait, this tastes different. It’s not what I ordered.’ “
Divorce Prevention
But dating sites are finding new ways to help make forever a reality. Some sites have hired love doctors, others boast personality tests that measure compatibility for the long haul, and a few have expanded their services to offer advice and interactive tools for married and committed couples.
For example, eHarmony.com, an online dating service that boasts 90 marriages a day, recently launched a separate Web site, eHarmony Labs, dedicated to the study of relationships. The Web site includes tools to strengthen a couple’s partnership such as a relationship checkup, a 60-question survey that identifies a relationship’s strengths and weaknesses.
Last year, eHarmony launched eHarmony Marriage, a Web site that aims to help couples achieve “stronger, healthier and happier marriages” through interactive videos, exercises and coaching. Match.com offers a program called MindFindBind, a series of online videos, workshops and exercises developed by talk-show host Dr. Phil McGraw. The program is said to help people “enjoy successes in relationships they value,” says the Web site.
BlackPlanet.com, a black social networking site, and MiGente.com, a social site for Latinos, say they are unique because couples typically stay logged on even after they have found love.
“It’s about fostering a community,” said Taryn Langer, spokeswoman for Community Connect, which owns the sites. “The ongoing dialogue between members even after they have found someone creates a support network.”
True.com offers its users a long-term-relationship compatibility test, which follows the standards of the American Psychological Association, and is designed to create lifelong matches.
“That’s what we are after, to lower the divorce rate,” said True.com founder Herb Vest. “Divorce is a real bad deal and we are working to eliminate it.”
Vest’s advice on finding a lasting match: “Take your time,” he said. “If it’s love, you have got to give Cupid time to do his work.”
Marriage-Hungry
But with dating sites touting marriage results and nearly promising a soul mate, it’s difficult to ignore the pressure to find Mr. or Mrs. Right, said compatibility expert and psychologist James Houran, spokesman for Online Dating Magazine.
Houran said he is a believer that online dating can create lasting relationships, but the issue is expectations.
“Online dating sites base their success on the number of marriages they create,” Houran said. “When you set people up to think they are only looking for marriage, they come in with the wrong mind-set.”
At first glimpse of what might look like forever, visions of wedding bells begin to dance in their heads. On a turbo trip to the altar, couples are often quick to relocate and make drastic life changes, Houran said.
“These advertising campaigns to find your soul mate are only feeding the fantasy and contributing to the divorce rate,” Houran said. “What they need to be saying is, ‘Put the brakes on.’ “
Exhausted from setups, short-lived romances and bar prowling, online daters are often on a mission to meet someone, Houran said.
“They are eager and looking intently and therefore are more at risk of rushing it and eventually divorcing,” Houran said.
San Bernardino lawyer Stefan Pancer said online dating has opened up “a whole new can of worms.”
Pancer recently got a call from a woman who went overseas to be with her cybersweetie. They married, but when the romance didn’t go as planned, she returned to the United States.
Now she has a husband in another country she wants to divorce, which makes the situation “difficult,” Pancer said.
“I used to see the impulsive Vegas weddings and now I am seeing this,” he said.
Lawyer Stephen Levine, of San Bernardino, has also seen his fair share of Internet splits. On one occasion, the marriage only lasted months before the couple landed in his office.
“She moved here from Idaho and after they got married they were wondering, ‘What the heck did we do?’ “ Levine said.
Palm Spring’s psychotherapist Patricia Craine’s advice: “Remember all that glitters isn’t always gold.”
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