Is Zhenai.com the World's Largest Matchmaking Website?

An interesting press release went out claiming that the Chinese dating site Zhenai.com is now the largest in the world. Zhenai first started 11 years ago, in May of 1998 as a free dating site called 96333.com. In 2005 they rebranded as Zhenai.com (which means "cherished love") and now has about 20 million registered members and claims that daily, another 40,000 singles signup. Zhenai's largest demographic are singles who are 25 to 45 years old, who live in an urban area, and are white-collar professionals. More than 85% of these members have a bachelor's, master's or doctoral diploma. Zehnai expects its number of registered members to hit 30 million by the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Zhenai claims to be the world's largest dating site by surpassing Match.com which had 15,000,000 registered members and a daily increment of 60,000 new members in May of 2009 (Note: Match.com now claims 20,000 new members a day). The problem is Zhenai switched a few of Match.com's numbers around. Match.com actually claims to have had more than 100 million registered users between 2000 and 2008 (see Press Release). That doesn't even include the profiles registered in the 5 years from when Match.com first launched in 1995. In the Zehnai press release, they are using Match.com current number of members which accounts for 15 million. I believe Match.com defines a current member as someone who has logged in at least once during the last year. I have a feeling that Zhenai is including all registered members since the launch of their dating site and only used the lower Match.com current registered members numbers to highlight their claim that they are the largest dating site.

The real problem is, how do you determine the largest dating site? I think counting registered members is a poor way to determine this. What good is a dating profile if a member has not logged in the last 2 years? The most important factor in determining the largest dating site is, the number of active members it has. IMO the minimum requirement for an active member is someone who is looking for a date and who has used the dating site at least twice in the last month. If we ever see these type of numbers from any of the dating sites (which I highly doubt), then we can determine the largest one.

In the future China will probably have the largest dating site in the world. The US population was 304 million in 2008, China's population was estimated to be 1.33 billion. They are over 4 times as large as the United States and offer potentially the largest online dating market. Last January was a milestone for China since it was the first time they surpassed the United States in number of internet users. China had 179.7 million and the United States had 163.3 million (see Story). China's Internet Research Center, iResearch Consulting predicts that the number of Chinese online daters will reach 140,000,000 by 2010. This far exceeds the estimated 40 million singles who use dating and social networking sites to meet new people here in the United States. iResearch Consulting also shows that Chinese online daters would account for 44.7% of all registered dating site members online worldwide by 2010, creating a potential market worth up to RMB 1.2 billion or 175 million USD. Forrester Research Inc estimated that the dating industry in the United States was worth $957 million in 2008 and by 2013 it is predicted to reach $1.7 billion.

I would like to offer a review of the dating site Zhenai.com but unfortunately I do not speak Chinese. If someone can offer a review, please contact us and we include your review in our list.

This is Zhenai.com first English press release and it can be found here. To find out more about Match.com, read our review and if you are interested in a few other dating sites dedicated to Chinese singles, check out our Ethnic Dating category for a complete list.