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
This suit highlights a problem that I have been writing about for a long time -- Internet dating’s dirty secret. The paid dating sites like Match.com (and I LOVE Match.com) have allowed people to list for free, yet make people pay to email each other. But they make no distinction between the paid and unpaid profiles. At LEAST 9/10 of the profiles are those of folks who have not paid up, so can’t email you back without paying first. A powerful disincentive for answering is having to pay $25 or so to do it. So now Match is being sued. Well, let’s see if it makes any change....
Lovelorn Man Sues Match.com for Fraud
Sean McGinn Claims Dating Site Makes Canceled Members Seem Available
By BRANDY ZADROZNY
June 19, 2009 —
When Barry, a Brooklyn man signed up for Match.com, he was optimistic, he perused profiles, wrote and sent messages and winks, and then he waited...and waited.
When replies failed to come, Barry who asked we not use his last name, thought something was fishy. After all, he is young, arguably handsome, and gainfully employed.
“It was really depressing,” Barry told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
He came to believe that the Web site itself might be to blame for making him feel “undesirable and rejected” and that there might not be real people on the other end of all those messages.
He is not alone.
Barry is considering being part of a proposed class action lawsuit filed by another Brooklyn man Sean McGuinn who is claiming fraud against the online dating site.
In McGinn’s complaint, he alleges Match.com perpetrates fraud by returning inactive or canceled members in search results of seemingly dateable people.
He believes he was actually sending e-mails to ghosts of Match.com’s past.
Barry understands McGinn’s pain.
“I put a lot of time and effort into these subscribers, I feel they never existed,” Barry said. “You can find yourself staying up late at night waiting for e-mails that never come… its really sad.”
“With all due respect,” ABC’s Andrea Canning asked McGinn, “Do you think it could have been you? They just weren’t interested?
“Sure it’s possible,” Barry admitted.
But the lawsuit claims Match keeps profiles of canceled or inactive members on the site, creating false hope.
And McGinn’s attorney, Norah Hart, says she knows of other former Match members who were contacted after cancelling their subscriptions.
“They cancelled their subscriptions and then they still get e-mails from Match.”
She hopes to petition to have the suit raised to class-action status.
Match.com in a statement denied any wrongdoing. “The allegation that we would deceive our subscribers by encouraging them to connect with inactive members does not make sense and is contradicted by our 14-year record. “
Lawsuit Accuses Match.com of Fraud
McGinn’s suit is not the first against Match.com. In 2005, the site was accused of having their own employees reply to e-mails to keep members subscribed. That case was thrown out.
In addition to a $39.99-a-month membership fee, McGinn bemoans in his suit the loss of his “time, labor, and emotional investment,” according to the complaint.
Time he says he spent writing lengthy, witty messages, sifting through profiles, sending winks at what he thought were potential matches, and time waiting for responses, which never came.
Barry in the meantime has found true love and is now married he says it happened the old fashioned way. “I ran into her on the sidewalk...and we started talking and it’s happily ever after.”
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.
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.
Around Valentine’s Day, Sara Schaefer Munoz posted on a Wall Street Journal blog about high priced matchmaking services. She refers to an article in Financial Times which thank goodness clarified for me that Munoz was writing about introduction services that took both men and women, not like the trend we have seen to match wealthy men with gorgeous young women. I’ve written about those sites before, see here.
Munoz asks for readers’ comments, and she got lots of them! You might want to take a look at the comments yourself. The really interesting part is that practically none of the comments are about high-priced introduction services. Instead, they are about online dating, mostly success on Match.com! Hey, good advertising, huh?
For Busy Professionals Seeking Love, Are Dating Services Helpful?
Posted by Sara Schaefer Munoz
We’ve talked about how busy young professionals have trouble finding the time to focus on dating. According to this recent article in the Financial Times, several elite dating services — modeled on executive head-hunting firms — promise to find you the perfect mate for a price.
One service, the Country Register, charges £10,000, about $20,000, for an 18 month membership in its top tier personal search service, and is currently signing five new city-based clients a month — twice the joining rate for 2000, the piece says. The service spends at least half a day in the client’s home getting to know them and promises that respondents are met and screened in advance.
But why pay a premium when you could meet people at work, or take on inexpensive Internet dating? A former busy professional at Merrill Lynch says in the article that “The last thing I wanted after work was to socialize with bankers or sit down at a computer.” Singletons also say that online dating requires a lot of time to sort through profiles and craft witty responses to potential suitors. (It can take so much effort to present yourself that some are even plagiarizing profiles they find online.)
I’d love to hear from single professionals who are looking for love. What’s your experience with online dating? Where have you met — or looked for — a mate? Would you pay a premium for an elite match-making service?
Four years ago, I lived in a small city where it was hard to meet single, like-minded men. I posted a profile on Match.com and eventually received an expression of interest from a man who lived 90 miles away–someone I would never have met any other way. We e-mailed a few times and then arranged to meet in my city for a drink, which led to dinner…and, about 10 months later, marriage. We now have a 2-year-old son. Online personals don’t work for everyone, but they did for us.
When I met my final “date,” I had already been on Match.com once before. The second time, I posted new and improved photos (of myself) and a rewritten, snappier profile (that I wrote on my own). I resolved to keep the e-mail correspondence to a minimum. I set up in-person meetings as quickly as possible to avoid any fantasy, “virtual” dating, which is easy to fall into when you’re e-mailing someone you’ve never seen before.
For someone who had done everything I could think of to expand my social circle and meet new people in my city, online personals worked better than my other efforts–through which I met some wonderful friends, but no potential boyfriends.
Comment by anonymous - February 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I tend to think that the only real advantage that an ultra-premium service could offer is a signal between matched participants that both are monetarily successful. While online surveys are imperfect, I have no reason to believe that a person can’t put up a facade for half a day to present just as ideal an image to a premium service as they do to an online site. To be sure, there is more of an initial guarantee of the validity of the person’s identity and appearance, but if someone online presents a false appearance, that will be found out quickly in the light of a real meeting.
Totally free sites are probably so diluted as to be useless, but lower premium sites do some analysis to attempt basic compatibility and weed out people who are really on the fence about whether or not to put some effort into it; and ultimately, perception of compatibility is a rather imperfect science anyway, so having a range of options is probably a good thing.
I think that unless someone prioritizes financial success above all else, paying $20,000 is not going to produce markedly better results than paying somewhere in the $100-2000 range.
That said, while the traditional approach of meeting people in life is theoretically great, it’s a rather sensitive issue for people in tightly wound social networks; one bad relationship and one’s entire social fabric can become unwound.
Comment by Clinton - February 19, 2008 at 11:25 am
When clients ask me about the best dating sites, I always list Match.com at the top. How could I not, when I met my Sweetie Drew there almost exactly ten years ago right now? I love it that Match.com has stayed at the top (or nearly so) of the thousands of dating sites that have cropped up. And I particularly like the new look Match started a year or two ago—a classy black and white, with style and pizazz. My impression is that Match is trying and succeeding in attracting a bit of a higher cut of singles. See this piece below which validates what I have been thinking:
What The Heck is Going at At Match.com?
Posted: 03 Mar 2008 02:41 PM CST
Recently, I have been on several great dates and been deluged with emails and winks from some very cool women on Match.com. Did someone at Match optimize a database differently, tweak the search page, or are they spending more ad dollars in different ways?
Whatever the reason, I am seriously impressed with the people Match is attracting these days. Obviously there are a number of factors, some of which I can control, others not so much.
The usual post V-day signup splurge is in full effect, I’ve got some new photos and, hello Match, every single woman that emails me says my little mini-blog post that I updated at the top of my profile is a big reason they contacted me. They know I’m active and taking the time to do something different to put myself out there and differentiate myself from the rest of the single dudes.
I only belong to about 10 dating sites now, down from a peak of 25+ a few years ago. I’m not seeing anywhere near this amount of activity on any other site except for OKCupid. Singlesnet sends out a lot of emails but they are so spammy and unauthentic that I don’t even bother replying anymore.
To give eHarmony credit, I have gotten matched several times recently, but I’m not a member right now so into the trash bin they go. They really need to do a better job enticing me into being a member again, their re-marketing messaging is not doing the job.
I feel like I need to put up a giant disclaimer when I write about my personal experience with dating sites. I talk about dating site clients, I trash sites that obviously are just in it for the money and doing a crap job of it, and after 6 years in this business I am admittedly jaded, but not pessimistic (there is a difference), about online dating.
That said, it feels really good to experience this uptick in activity. Here’s to all dating sites working harder to make this experience the rule, not the exception.
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.”
And here’s something about Match.com’s new ad campaign, too—see article below. This one actually seems to mimic eHarmony’s featuring of successful couples who met on the site, but what is better for business than success? Hey, Match: I met my husband Drew on Match in 1998. Why not feature us, huh? I do wish we could see something more creative like the ads Match is running in the UK—see my blog posting about Cupid and Fate. But it probably is a good decision to keep those ads with the Brits. Americans just don’t have the same sense of humor. Unfortunately.
Match.com Aims for ‘Regular Folks’ With New Campaign
December 20, 2007
By Vanessa L. Facenda
Match.com’s new campaign aims to inform singles-looking-for-love that online dating works—especially via its service.
Darcy Cameron, vp-advertising and marketing, Match.com, said the new campaign dubbed “Rewind,” is the next step in breaking down the alleged stigma of online dating.
“In “Rewind,” we’re showing people who have found [love] online, that Match works,” she said.
Cameron noted that this year’s campaign, “It’s Okay to Look,” which also featured ads with TV’s Dr. Phil, aimed to break down some viewers’ aversion to online dating. “Rewind” raises the bar by telling stories of couples who found love on match.com. The three spots (60-, 30- and 15-seconds), titled “Baby,” “Vacation” and “Dating,” feature couples of differing ages in various stages of relationships (one couple just had a baby, another is on vacation, etc.).
The spots begin with the end result—what happens when you look online—and retraces how each couple’s “love story” began. The spots open with the question, “How did it all start?” and conclude with, “It starts with a look. At Match.com.”
“‘Rewind’ ties into our current campaign but brings it to the next level,” said Cameron. “The campaign is designed to show that the couple who met on Match are just like any other couple; they just met online.”
The campaign also highlights a new function on Match, “MatchMyFriends,” which enables friends (or relatives) to fill out a profile for someone, write a testimonial, upload images and even pay for the person. Cameron explained that a letter is then sent to the person to approve before anything is posted.
The campaign, via Hanft, Raboy & Partners, New York, features TV, radio, print and online. The print ads break in the Dec. 31 double issue of People that hits retail stands today. TV, radio and online ads launch Dec. 26.
TV spots will appear on networks, primarily ABC and NBC during Match’s busy season—now through Valentine’s Day. ABC programs include Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters and Grey’s Anatomy. “We are also partnering with abc.com [to run ads] before Grey’s Anatomy,” said Cameron.
The ads will also appear on cable and in syndication throughout the campaign’s run.
Match.com, Dallas, which was founded in 1995, is the largest online dating site with 15 million members. Cameron says the membership is evenly split among men and women and is fairly split between all demographic groups.
Match spent $92 million in media in 2006, and $145 million between January and October 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus for broadcast, print and outdoor, and Nielsen Online and AdRelevance for online.
Oh Lordy, if you want a giggle, trace down the leads in this short piece below. I did, and GAWD, I love the British sense of humor! Match.com in Britain has launched a series of ads about two characters called Fate and Cupid. The main point is “Do you want to leave your chances of finding love to Fate and Cupid?” And with these specimens, for goodness sake, NO!
First, I went to youtube.com and did a search using “Match.com+ads+Cupid” and got a whole line-up (8) ads featuring these precious inventions. I can just imagine the sessions the writers had when they were thinking these commercials up.
Then I found that Cupid and Fate have their own website, which is even better. All the videos are there, and they even have a game.
Why doesn’t Match.com launch this campaign in the USA? Probably because we don’t have as good a sense of humor as the Brits.
Not only are the ads hysterical, they bring up the best point: Leaving your love life to Cupid and Fate? Come ON! Get real.
Best, Kathryn
Match.com unveils campaign for New Year push
Match.com, the online dating site, is encouraging people to “make love happen rather than leaving it to cupid and fate” in a new advertising campaign that breaks on New Year’s Eve.
The campaign introduces two “lazy, hapless” characters called Cupid and Fate, who spend their time doing their hair and filling in magazine quizzes rather than connecting two star-crossed lovers. It has the strapline: “Don’t wait for Cupid and Fate. Find love for yourself at Match.com”.
If you are over 50 and wondering about Match.com or eHarmony, here are reviews of both sites, aimed at older singles…
Online Dating Site Review: Match.com
From Sharon OBrien,
Your Guide to Senior Living.
With more than 15 million members, Match.com is one of the largest general interest dating sites on the Internet and one of the most successful at bringing people together. The staff at Match.com calculates that every year more than 200,000 people find the person they were seeking by using Match.com. And Match.com reports that people 50 and older represent its fastest growing user segment. For the whole review, click here.
Online Dating Site Review: eHarmony
From Sharon OBrien,
Your Guide to Senior Living.
Marriage is the goal at eHarmony
eHarmony claims to take the guesswork out of matchmaking by using a scientific approach to help people find not only good matches and potential mates, but soul mates—and it seems to be working. To read the complete review, click here.
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.”
The numbers keep rising…
From an article on DailyVidette.com
Last year (2006?), more than 500,000 reported to Match.com that they had “found a relationship that had changed their lives.”
90 million people in the US are single, 60 million are online, and 33 million are open to meeting a romantic partner online.
60,000 people register on Match.com every day.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Top Dating Sites as measured by ‘Unique visitors”:
In December 2006 --
Total Web users in the U. S. (age 15+) 152,350,000
Personals Total 20,555,000
Yahoo! Personals 4,153,000
Match.com 3,970,000
True.com 3,086,000
Spark Networks 2,504,000
Singlesnet.com 2,173,000
In a powerful article aobutabout Online dating in the 1/30/2007 Scientific American (how much more legitimate can you get???), finally, validation of what I have been preaching about for years:
According to Trish McDermott, a longtime spokesperson for Match and now an executive at Engage.com, the confusion over membership figures results from the fact that while a large company such as Match might advertise that it has 15 million members, less than a million are actually paying customers. The others have full profiles online--an important marketing draw--but cannot respond to e-mails. This is one of several reasons, according to McDermott, why many paying members get frustrated by a lack of response to their e-mails; the vast majority of people in the profiles simply cannot respond.
Trish McDermott was the “Vice President of Love” (or some such title) at Match.com for years. In fact, before we met, both my now-husband and I heard Trish on NPR’s “Technation” and were inspired to sign up on Match.com, where we met a few months later. So, thank you Trish! On many levels.
See my earlier blog postings (rants?) on this topic: 1/31/07, 3/06/05
This paid/unpaid secret that almost all dating sites have exploited is the worst and most discouraging aspect of online dating. EVERY SINGLE ONE of my clients asks “Why don’t they answer my emails?” And NONE have understood the odds of paid/unpaid until I explained it. On Match.com, the odds are great than 11 to 1 that the person behind the profile has NOT paid.
Non-responses to first emails are very ego-bruising. Dating sites need to keep in mind that it is extremely easy for people who gather up courage to email a stranger to feel rejected and even crushed. These folks very often drop off the dating site—and convert to being non-paying! These are your best customers, dating sites!!! They PAY!
The reasons that dating sites are set up this way—they allow people to post for free, and the profiles look just like those who have paid—is that then the dating site has more profiles listed and looks busier. And then, if the unpaid people are contacted by the folks who have paid, then maybe the unpaid people will convert to paying clients.
However, that means that the paying clients are supporting all the rest, and do not know the full story. I tell my clients that you know three things about someone who does not respond to you initial email: They are either rude (because is the polite thing to do to at least send a “Thanks, but no thanks” email to those who put themselves out to contact you) or they are cheap (because they haven’t paid up and are freeloading), or they are both rude and cheap.
Come on, dating sites. Come up with come kind of system that indicates to everyone who has paid and who hasn’t.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
1. Match.com is changing its look -- and from appearances, the kind of singles it is trying to recruit. Style-wise, the site has gone black and white, with a little crisp nave blue, and added the cute motto “It’s okay to look!” And they have also added a stylist to help with advice for profiles and presentation. (Although that guy Jay Manuel looks very weird. Is he made out of plastic?) Looks to me like they are aiming at a higher end market. The site now makes regular sites like Yahoo! Personals and especially true.com look pretty cheesy. Fees are up, for sure, to $34.95 for a month, $16.99 each if you sign up for six. Still a bargain, when you think that even at full price, that’s just a little over a dollar a day for access to millions of singles.
2. Then, in a bow to just how famous Match.com has become, The Washington Post published a piece on 1/28/2007 that is basically an angry rant about the plight of single women by an anonymous woman in her 30’s. It’s sort of amazing that the Post would even publish an anonymous piece, let alone one that blames Match.com and other dating sites for her ills.
However, like most rants, there are grains of truth. Granted, men (and women) have gotten spoiled by the seeming plethora of “hotties” of both genders. Never mind that these folks practically never return emails. Anonymous goes on to list her demands for dignity and respect, for all single women to to start “dignified dating behavior.” Some of the list makes sense, like honesty, keeping in shape and not dressing provocatively. But just as her anger reduces the effect of her message, some of her guidelines negate the rest. Like “If you don’t receive flowers by the third date, dump him.” Gosh.
Remember, the Internet and dating sites like Match.com are the medium, like a telephone. Phones changed people’s lives, too. We are in the middle of a big change period for dating and mating. It feels like with Internet dating going mainstream (out of the shadows), we are now in a bit of the opposite extreme, of people going sort of wild with expectations, and then having massive disappointment.
3. Then, practically on the same day as the Post piece (1/29/2007), the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Match.com and baby boomers. Match. now has the largest number of paid subscribers among U. S. dating sites. Match.com’s subscribers (paid members) now number 1.3 million, up by 1/3 over the past two years. How? Match has been reaching out to singles over 50 and divorcees, pitching itself as a destination for mainstream daters who want serious relationships. Yowzah! Is that what we want to hear or what???
Here’s more:
At Match, 23 percent of subscribers are over 50, more than double the number two years ago. Yahoo Personals has seen double-digit growth in the number of users over 50 in the past two years, thanks in part to a new service that provides extra control, privacy, and security. EHarmony’s fastest-growing age group last year was the over-50 segment.
Here’s something you rarely see: the number of paid subscribers to Match.com (1.3 million) and the number of “registered users” (15 million—total of PAID and UNPAID users), in the same article. These figures are rarely paired together, because of what I call “Online Dating’s Dirty Little Secret”—by far the largest percentage of folks with their profiles on dating sites are unpaid, and therefore not able to answer your email without paying up first. That’s more that 11 to 1, paid to unpaid, on Match.com. That means for every 11+ first emails you send out, you should only expect to get 1 back! Why is this so? Read my earlier posting to find out.
Here’s a bit that I found interesting but confusing:
The site is also branching out to daters desiring privacy, like executives or teachers reluctant to post their pictures online where subordinates or students may find them. It has introduced Chemistry.com, a premium service that shows a subscriber’s profile only to those candidates deemed suitable by a personality test developed by an anthropologist.
I’ve had a number of clients who are professionals in their community and really worry that their clients will see and recognize them. Some way for them to take advantage of online dating and protect their privacy would be great, but I don’t think Chemistry.com is going to do it. Chemistry.com has dud written all over it. The best part of Chemistry.com is it’s name. I have heard no good buzz at all. A commentator on Mark Brooks’ Online Personal Watch listed fiascos for 2007, and Chemistry.com is fifth on this list.
I love Match.com. It’s where I met my Sweetie Drew in 1998. But it’s not perfect. And worst of all, it ignores ME! A successful Romance Coach who met her now-husband right there! The epitomy of dumbness, wouldn’t you think? Now, Yahoo! Personals knows a good thing when they see it. I got RECRUITED to write for Yahoo! Personals. Wake up, Match,com!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s a posting I ran across on the net about the paid/unpaid dilemma on the dating sites that I have written about before. This guy describes another wrinkle: Match seems to alter emails containing email address so that the recipient can reply outside of the Match.com system. It does confound me how and why people would try to get around the rules of dating sites. Goodness! The fees are dirt cheap if you join for 6 months or more. Not bad even for a month. Wouldn’t you pay a dollar a day for access to so many singles?
Subject: a warning about match.com
Hello all!
Well, after being a paid member of Match.com for a week, it behooves me to share what some may consider a not completely honest business practice of Match.com.
So here’s the deal. If you are an unpaid member (I fathom many females belong to this class), email messages sent to you may be altered before you receive it! I (male) sent some email messages to a couple of female members but got no response. Having a relatively high self-esteem, I wanted to test out the match.com email system. After setting up an test (unpaid) account, I used my paid account to send an email with my hotmail address in the body of the email to the test account (and CC’ed it to my paid account). In the CC’ed email, the email looks exactly as I wrote it. However, in the unpaid account, the original hotmail address became the talkmatch.com address (the address Match.com assigns to its (both paid and unpaid) members!
Maybe Match.com specified this behavior in its member agreement (but who reads it?), but I still think the email system of Match.com is not honest in that the CC’ed message looks unaltered. I bet this behavior has caused many men to think something’s wrong with them because the unpaid females members don’t respond (unpaid members cannot send replies).
Just something for you all to keep in mind the next time you think about signing up for an online dating service.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PS Take a look at this blog posting for more on the matter of paid and unpaid.
From my January 1, 2007, *eMAIL to eMATE*:
Internet dating is LOOKING GOOD!
My, how things have changed since I first tried online dating on
Match.com in 1997. Looking for love on the Net was brandy new
then and quite suspect. A few brave souls were tip-toeing onto
the sites and trying out the medium, but, land sakes, was it
scary or what? And no help anywhere. I know, because I looked.
For you newbies to the Internet dating scene, matters took a
dramatic turn after 9/11. The tragedy suddenly refocused the
country: Everyone now ached for connection and family. Singles
started signing up on dating sites by the hundreds of thousands.
Listing on a dating site became okay, even mainstream. No longer
is it unusual to hear that a couple met online. Now, your
computer is second only to friends and family as a way to connect
with possible mate candidates.
The influx was heady. Online dating sites experienced mammoth
growth for several years as folks signed up and plunked down
their credit cards. Growth has slowed to single digits, but that
does not mean that Internet dating is a fading fad. Far from it.
Did you know that online dating is one of the top money makers
online? “After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, online
dating revenue rose 7% last year to slightly more than $515
million, per Jupiter Media. (Match’s share is about $250
million.)”
Remember that there is only a somewhat finite number of singles,
so at some point the growth would have to stop as the percentage
got close to 100. At present, the estimates are 1/3 of singles
have visited online dating sites. Also, people come on and off
the sites every day. Taking your profile down off the dating
site where you and your Sweetie met has become a sign of
increasing commitment with cyber couples.
My buddy Mark Brooks recently posted some interesting info on his
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com blog: Here’s a summary and link to an
article on dating site usage in 2006.
Interestingly, Yahoo! Personals is pulling way ahead of
the crowd in membership and visits. Since I write for Yahoo!
Personals, I’ll take a little credit for their #1 position.
True.com’s stats are deceptive, as comparing the two charts show.
(I cannot recommend True.com—if you wonder why, look at my
http://www.find-a-sweetheart.com/blog/C37/ “ title="many blog posts">many blog posts:.
Match.com (my personal favorite, since that’s where I met hubby
Drew) is stumbling on in 3rd and 4th place on the two charts.
Another of Mark’s postings led me to “Market Spotlight: Online
Distilling the verbiage, it looks like number of visits
to dating sites are down, but revenue is nicely up. To me, that
says daters are getting serious and paying up, and fewer people
are visiting sites to snoop. Good.
Interestingly, the article also points to what I have sensed:
Singles get busy after Christmas, and particularly after New
Year’s. Online dating sites’ business soars then (and so does
mine). Seems as if the loneliness of the holiday coupled with
New Year’s as a time to start new habits gets folks off the
stick.
Tip: That means new people are signing up, right now! This is a
particularly good time of year to be active and looking on your
favorite site. Remember, new people come on every day—and
others drop off as they find partners. Be ready with your spick
and span profile. Be proactive: Contact others. Don’t wait,
because you don’t know how much longer this new Cutie might be
available.
A third posting on OnlinePersonalsWatch is an interview with
Match.com’s CEO Jim Safka. Looks like Match is going stylish and
pursuing a more upscale market: a new look to its site (adding
lots of snazzy black), offering a stylist to help with photos
Lots of
black and white there, too. And Match is piloting a real
matchmaking program with what looks like real matchmakers:
Platinum.Match.com It’ll probably be
pricey, sounds like perhaps around $1000 per year. Still less
that a tractional matchmaker, though.
Yahoo! Personals still looks about the same, and I think is a bit
more unwieldy to maneuver than Match.com. But they are doing
something right at Yahoo! You can’t argue with #1.
So I will stick with Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. Why go
elsewhere, except for a special niche site like JDate? Stay
where the numbers are.
From YOur Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
What to Buy for Your Single Friends Who Wish they Weren’t
Single (And Maybe for Yourself)
Holidays can be tough times for singles. You included. How
about thinking of your single friends (and you!) for some special
treatment this year? P. S. New Year’s is coming too, and what a
perfect time to resolve never to go through this time of year
alone again! Here are my best suggestions to help singles change
their status to coupled:
**************************
Books
**************************
When I was doing online dating back in 1998, I couldn’t find ANY
books that helped. I was on my own. Now, thank goodness, lots
of writing has come out. My “Top Ten” list is posted on my
website.
Here are three more books that I discovered this year and than I
have been recommending over and over:
“A Fine Romance” by Judith Sills. This is a fine, fine book.
The full title is “ A Fine Romance: The Passage from Meeting to
Marriage,” and Sills beautifully describes just that, the step-
by-step process from singlehood to being paired. Best of all,
Sills identifies “stuck points” along the way, common and
expected hitches in the process that can derail the best of couples.
And she tells you how to manage and move through the morass. A
“must read” for anyone contemplating looking for love.
“The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout. Now, here’s a book
for the other, less optimistic side of love. We’ve all heard the
scary stories about cyberlove gone wrong. I’m skeptical about
the real frequency of fraud and deception, but the stories do
sell papers, so we get them. And I also believe it is just as
easy (if not easier) to meet a fraud, rapist or murderer in
church as it is on the Internet. If we read all the news, we
know that. But some folks are out to get us (Stout says 1 in 25
Americans feel no guilt), and it is in our own best interest to
be able to spot them before they do us in. Martha Stout
describes with chilling clarity the sociopathic personality and
how to recognize it. Be prepared to recognize folks that you
know, particularly politicians. Maybe even family members.
“Did You Spot the Gorilla?” By Richard Wiseman. I’ve been
enjoying Richard Wiseman’s books for a few years now. Wiseman
is a British psychologist and former magician who researches all
kinds of interesting phenomenon like ghosts, the paranormal and
luck. He’s got a new book out that’s a short, easy read, and
that should be mandatory for online daters: “Did You Spot the
Gorilla? How to Recognize Hidden Opportunities.” It’s
essentially a training manual for learning to see what’s under
your nose—and often missed. Unfortunately, “Gorilla” doesn’t
seem to be available in the U. S. A. yet, but you can buy it
through the U. K. division of Amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk/
I didn’t know that it was possible to order books from Britain,
but Wiseman told me how to do so, and it works.
**************************
Dating Sites
**************************
If you have done any nosing around online, you know that there
are jillions of dating sites, and most come and go. Really,
unless you are part of a small minority and want to go where
others like you go too, then stick with the big sites that
everyone knows and lists on.
I ALWAYS suggest either Match.com or Yahoo! Personals or both. I
met my Sweetie Drew on Match.com, so I hold a special fondness
for Match. But I have come to appreciate Yahoo! Personals
equally. And Yahoo! Personals appreciates me, too: I write for
Yahoo! Personals online magazine. Here’s the first article of
Yahoo! Personals offers a gift certificate. Go to
Personals.Yahoo.com and scroll down to the bottom of the
page, third line from the bottom, second hyperlink from the right
will take you to the page to set up the gift. It’s $24.95 for a
month.
Now, if this is a GOOD friend—or yourself—I’d suggest the
real deal of 6 months on Yahoo! Personals for $74.95—that’s a
dirt cheap $12.49 per month. Or what I consider the First Class
Option, Yahoo! Personals Premier at $124.95 for six months (which
works out to $20.85 a month). If you would like to know why I
particularly recommend Yahoo! Premier, check out my blog entry
I’m not sure if you can give those longer subs to another person,
but you could offer to pay for your chum!
Match.com is slightly more expensive than Yahoo!—$24.99 for
one month, $14.99 if you sign up for six months. But I
discovered a deal that Match.com has running: If you sign up
for six months and follow their guidelines (very important that
you understand the rules and follow them), and have not met
someone special in that amount of time, Match.com will GIVE you
another six months. Who can pass on a deal like that? If you
find you need the next six months, then your costs are a measly
$7.49 per month. Find more info here.
**************************
Profile Resources
**************************
If you have looked around on dating sites, you know what a
profile is: Just about all the sites base their listings around a
personal essay of sorts, photos, and list of likes and dislikes.
Virtually every one of my clients has needed work to shape up
their online presentation. After all, it’s you 24 hour a day
billboard, and you hope that it finds you the very best partner
for life. It should be the best you can make.
I do profile reviews (looking over and critiquing what you
already have posted), rewrites (new essays), and complete work-
ups (starting from scratch). It’s a deal at $99 total. An even
better deal? Sign up for a basic coaching package (Four 1/2 hour
sessions) and get the $99 Profile Work up for free! Email me to
set up a profile review gift:
The most important part by far? A great photo. Just about
everyone needs a better one, and I ALWAYS suggest using
LookBetterOnline.com My clients have had very good results and
just those new photos would get them much more attention. The
cost is a very reasonable $129 for twelve Internet ready colored
photos. A deal. If you use LookBetterOnline.com, let them know
I sent you. They know me and treat my folks well.
Here’s what a Romance Client wrote me recently about her
LookBetterOnline.com photos:
“Here are my new photos taken last Friday. I look spectacular!!.
The photographer took 96 shots and I had to only pick 12 OH MY
GOD!” The difference between the photo this woman had been
using and the new ones was astounding.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Match.com has a deal going that is too good to miss. If you join for six months at $14.99 per month ($89.04 total) and follow some simple rules, and then if you don’t find a Sweetheart within those six months, you can get six more months on Match.com for FREE! That comes to $7.45 per month!!! Who says online dating is too expensive?
This is Match.com’s “Make Love Happen Guarantee.” While you do have to follow some rules (like make five contacts with Match.com members a month), those rules are good ones, getting you to be active in your own mate search.
Looks like this offer is good through the end of 2006. If you haven’t signed up already, go do it. This is a great offer.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s an interesting set of stats from Match.com about Baby Boomers that “Flying Solo” columnists Jan L. Warner and Jan Collins mentioned recently:
_70 percent of their boomer members are divorced or widowed;
_More than half of the boomers using their site exercise, and their favorite activities are walking, hiking, dancing, swimming, bowling, and golf.
_The boomers like the finer things in life: 39 percent enjoy dining out, 34 percent like to travel, 24 percent go to museums, 20 percent attend performing arts events, and 19 percent attend wine-tastings.
_Boomers say intelligence is the most important personality attribute in potential partners, followed closely by fidelity, confidence, and humor.
_Those boomers who have not retired are most likely to be self-employed entrepreneurs, followed by executives and physicians. Boomers using the site also have higher incomes than the average member (22 percent of the boomers earn $50,000 to $100,000 annually).
_38 percent are empty nesters.
_47 percent have a bachelor’s degree, while 15 percent have a graduate degree.
_Baby boomers’ biggest turn-off is sarcasm.
_Boomers are the least likely to believe they have only one soul mate.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
You wouldn’t believe the percentage of people, even on the biggest dating sites, who are not paid members. I’ve written about this before. On Match.com, I’ve been able to extrapolate that the percentages are anywhere from 7:1 to 11:11, paid to unpaid. That means that only 1 in 7 or 1 in 11 of the people you contact can email you back without paying the fee—a powerful disincentive to returning your email, unless you are clearly a “10.”
I can’t understand this unwillingness to pay your share for what is clearly a top knotch service. Particularly when the prices are so good when you sign up for more than a month.
Match.com currently is charging $12.99 per month when you sign up for six months. Yahoo! Personals is $12.49 per month for the six month contract. Yahoo! Premier (recommended—here’s why) comes to $20.83 per month for the same period of time.
Don’t worry about the six month factor: It’ll probably take you at least a month or two to get your feet wet on the dating site and get some experience in weeding out potential candidates. Chances are very good that you will not meet Mr. or Ms. Right in your first month. And so what if you do? For an investment of under $100 that gives you access to scads of people looking for partners, even if you find your Life’s Love on the first DAY, it would still be a great deal.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PSD According to an article on biz.yahoo, Match has over 600,000 paid members and over 3,000,000 profiles (even those figures give a 5:1 unpaid to paid ratio). 60% of users are men (good news, ladies!), and Match has the highest percentage of over 35 users making $100,000 or more (7%).
Internet dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony are venturing into new territory: Relationship building, marriage strengthening, and divorce prevention. While it is hard to know what is really going on, the first wave of divorces in couples who met on the Net has begun.
According to an article by Ellen Gamerman in the Wall Street Journal. US Census data says the median length of first marriages that end in divorce is eight years. Online dating got started with Match.com in 1995.
Since all marriages have a divorce rate of about 50%, cyber couples divorcing should be no surprise. And actually, I would venture to guess that the marriage survival rate for couples meeting on dating sites might turn out to be better, since the singles get more information up front about a potential partner than in ordinary dating.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Right after I finished yesterday’s posting about an earlier article in the Wall Street Journal, up pops yet another treatment of Internet dating in the New York Times.
The story leads with Elizabeth Brereton and Robert Smith who were part of one of the first (if not THE first) experiment in computer matching called Operation Match in 1965. Each received a list of ten possible dates after the data they provided was crunched by an impossibly big computer. They appeared on each other’s list, though never followed through in making contact.
Four years later, Smith went to a mixer for grad students at the University of Chicago, saw the proverbial “woman across a crowded room” and introduced himself. They both immediately knew that they had been paired earlier by Operation Match.
They were married four months later, and are still so.
The article goes on to discuss the comparatively new compatibility testing that dating sites are moving towards, a la eHarmony, PerfectMatch, and now Match.com’s Chemistry. Throwing in some interesting statistics on divorce (more of those in a later posting), the reporter David Leonhardt (and the compatibility matching dating sites) make a good case for matching like with like. Leonhardt quotes Pepper Schwartz, Perfectmatch’s pro behind their matching system: “What this does is try to narrow it down so you spend less time with people who are totally out of the question. We’re just upping your chances.”
If you’ve spent any time on Yahoo! Personals and Match.com sorting out who you’d like to meet from the millions listed, anything that saves you time would be welcome. I spoke to a new Romance Client this week who was lucky enough to get a charter membership to Chemistry. She said that she had met two very interesting guys through Chemistry who she would never have considered otherwise. Big advantage right there: You may be blinded by your own prejudices to very good candidates. See what another blog reader reported in about his experience with Chemistry.
I’m not a huge fan of the compatibility testing sites, but combining one of them with a listing on one of the big major sites (like Match.com or Yahoo! Personals) might serve you quite well.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
A reader sent in this report on his experience with Chemistry.com, Match.com’s answer to the profile matching that eHarmony and PerfectMatch do. Also, here’s a link to blog entries of other folks who are trying out Chemistry for the first time. Anyone else out there wanting to chime in on Chemistry? Let’s hear some commments!
Hi Kathryn,
I hope that things are well with you at your new place.
I thought that you might appreciate a brief report on my experiences with Chemistry.com. They gave me a free lifetime subscription, as long as I keep my Match subscription.
So far, it’s okay. I like the structured nature of the service. I basically just log on, check the 5 matches that they send me, and give a yea/nay. When a prospective match occurs, there’s a survey and then a short answers to survey questions before going onto the email stage. I’m pretty sure it’s similar to how Eharmony does it. For me, structured activity is more activity.
On Match.com, it’s easy to just log on every now and then, not doing anything further (what I’m doing right now).
However, I cannot shake the impression that they are just sending me random people, in spite of the personality test, telling me that they are compatible with me, just to see if anything sticks.
I also think that not very many people are signed up with Chemistry. At the beginning, The women I said “yea” to would say “nay” pretty quickly, and they would drop off my list within a few days. Now, there are people who haven’t responded in 15+ days. This might indicate that they aren’t actual or active members.
I also keep wondering whether they are just sending regular Match.com people to me. Today, something new happened. Among my matches were two that did not have compatibility information. Instead, they had text… “Chemistry has selected **** as a match for you based
on the profile information we have received at this point. You can see how you match at this stage in the chart below. When **** completes her entire Chemistry Profile, you’ll be able to learn more about her. “**** is scheduled to complete her profile in the next stage of the process. If you see potential at this point, indicate you are interested to move her into your Active Matches. Then continue along the guided communication process to see if there’s chemistry. Good luck!
… which seems to indicate that this woman hasn’t actually signed up with Chemistry (since completing the personality test is the first thing you have to do when you sign up). Instead, what they sent me was the usual Match.com “do we match” chart.
Regarding the personality test and matching itself, Iam not especially impressed with it. It seems a bit bogus. Chemistry doesn’t seem to be promoting the anthropologist that they originally had when the service was launched.
I’m not sure what Match’s long-term strategy is for Chemistry. With the Dr. Phil thing, they seem to begoing in two different directions.
Please let me know if you have any questions about howChemistry works.
Ben
Since I am a Romance Coach specializing in helping singles find partners using Internet dating sites, I read with interest Vanessa Juarez’s article ”www.findlovehere.com” in the February 20th issue.
The first half of the article is essentially correct, but falters in the second half when Juarez starts talking about specific dating sites. First off, folks 50 and over, divorced or not, find the best and most choices on the largest Internet dating sites, Match.com (where I met my husband in 1998) and Yahoo! Personals. Smaller sites have correspondingly smaller numbers.
What Juarez did not mention is that sites like PerfectMatch and eHarmony (which have built-in a more passive role for singles—the web site does the matching—and therefore appeal to women) have very skewed gender ratios that do not favor women. PerfectMatch openly courts men, enticing them with 2:1 male to female ratios. That would include all age ranges, so likely the older women get (when they outnumber men anyway), the worse the ratios.
Most of my clients are women over 40, and I NEVER suggest either eHarmony or PerfectMatch for these because of those bad numbers. All have gone to either Match.com or Yahoo! Personals or both and been pleased and astounded at the large numbers of quality men just waiting to hear from them. Internet dating is in large part a numbers game, and a single is best served by going to the sites where the numbers are in his or her favor— large numbers of singles in gender ratios that favor the individual.
Best, Kathryn Lord
eHarmony released some eye-popping numbers on January 31: According to an independent survey by Harris Interactive, 16,630 marriages between September 1, 2004, and August 31, 2005, resulted from eHarmony matchups. Since each marriage consists of two people, that means slightly more than 90 singles per day get hitched because of Dr. Warren and company. (16,630 times 2 divided by 365 = 91.12) Those are some numbers by anyone’s calculations.
These are the “hardest” numbers that I have seen so far, at least gathered in what appears to be a legitimate effort. Up until now, the only number I have seen have been from Match.com, and those are self-reports: From my website—“In 2003, more than 200,000 members reported that they were resigning from Match.com because they had met the person they were seeking.” And “ Match.com claims to initiate over 130 engagements and marriages each month.”
There’s a big gap between 130 engagements and marriages a month (3,120 a year at that rate) and 200,000 satisfied resignations. Even eHarmony’s numbers are only 33,260 happy singles a year.
Probably the truth is somewhere inbetween. Or maybe not, since those figures are a year or two old. We know that Internet dating continues to grow as an industry, though not as fast as the 75% growth rates of a few years ago.
Regardless, that’s a lot of happy people, or at least we hope that they are all happy. If “The proof is in the pudding,” that’s quite a set of plums.
I do wonder if Harris Interactive asked about couples who met on other dating sites like Match and Yahoo! And I also wonder how many couples, total, got married in the time frame specified. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Though a survry in mid-2004 indicated that about 15% of marrying couples met online.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
In my continuing quest to bring you good news about Internet romances, here’s a three for the price of one story. See the side bar on the right for details.
George and Erika Eloff met on eHarmony. They got married last March.
Here’s a novel way to get married: At the office party! Terry Duso and Joe Emerson met on friendfinder.com
Robin Galiano and Art Russell met on Match.com. Art was the third person Robin met through online dating. And Art staged a proposal that you’ve got to read.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I love love stories, and I know my readers do, too. Here are some I have read lately:
These two thirty-something’s met on Match.com.
Here’s another story about more thirty-something’s. These two really took their time writing back and forth online, and didn’t even share pictures before they met.
eHarmony came through for Kenneth Jones. Kenneth got lucky when he widened his search beyond his home area of Austin and San Antonio. His Sweetie Bettie Harrell live in Florida. They are getting married August 13.
This one’s a two-fer, two stories in the same article. And it contains a great idea: bribe your kids to help!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
|
