Types (Niche)

It’s pretty cool that no matter where you’re at, you can access your online dating profiles with your phone. Waiting in line at the DMV or the doctor’s office suddenly became a lot more appealing, right? We’ve got a lot to thank the online dating site for when it came to developing these mobile applications.

But you need to know how to use them safely.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the “connect with people around you” capabilities. As a woman, I’m fiercely protective of my location at all times. The same should go for men as well. Whenever I boot up Match.com’s iPhone app and it asks me “to use my current location,” I always select “don’t allow.” My feelings are if someone is interested in contacting or connecting with me, they can use Match.com’s anonymous messaging system. No one I’ve never met ever needs to know where I am or even have the opportunity to connect with me without my explicit permission.

Edward Butler, a senior analyst at IBISWorld, used Australian Bureau of Statistics data and industry surveys to review and crunch data on the global sex services industry. He determined that the $1.2 billion industry has seen a 6 percent ($74 million) decline since the global financial crisis started. Brothels, tobacco and alcohol are usually recession proof but that doesn't appear to be the case this time.

Some analysis like Butler think that the popularity of adult dating sites have taken business from the sex industry. Adult dating sites make it easier for consenting adults to be frank about what they want and need in terms of sex. It has never been cheaper for like-minded individuals to organise casual liaisons with the rise of adult and casual dating services.

About 1.5 million men and women now have accounts in Australia with sites such popular dating sites as RSVP, Match.com and eHarmony. Most of these singles are not looking for casual sex and are intent on finding a partner for a long term relationship. Adult FriendFinder, one of the more popular casual sex dating sites reports on having just over 892 thousand profile listings from Australia.

For more on the story, read The Sydney Morning Herald.

Sam Yagan indicated that an iPhone application was in the works for OkCupid earlier this month (see Story), and now it is out (much sooner than I was expecting). This is a full featured dating application that offers:

• Sending and receiving of your OkCupid mail messages.
• Instant Messaging with members.
• Updating your profile and photos.
• Spend time answering those famous OkCupid match questions.
• Search for users.
• Search for matches based on your current location.
• Find out who has been checking you out.

Stella Magazine commissioned the research company, YouGov, to survey 2,000 men and women who lived in the United Kingdom and had been on a date in the last year.

What did they find out? Well, if you are 55 or older, you belong to the group who most actively dates online. 62 percent of men and women over 55 have joined a dating site. At the other end of the demographic age range, only 21 percent of 18 to 24 year old British singles had ever joined a dating site.

55 and older singles also went on more dates from online dating than other age groups, an average of 8.2 dates to be exact. They also formed more long term relationships because of these dates with the average 55 plus online dater having 2.1 relationships.

The 45 to 54 age group did find the most sexual partners online at 2.6 partners per person but, 55 year olds and older came in second at 2.4 sexual partners per person.

For more information on this story, visit Telegraph or, you can pick up a copy of Stella Magazine this Sunday.

For UK singles who are interested in finding a dating service to try, take a look at our United Kingdom Dating category and our Dating Over 50 category.

The 50 plus singles crowd is not necessarily looking for casual dates. They are looking for a long term relationships that offer companionship. This group of online daters still is being reported as the fastest growing group of singles on dating sites. In the last U.S. Census, seniors are also a growing demographic. It was reported that there are 95.9 million single people in America. 15.8 million (16.5 %) of these people are 65 years or older (see Story). Let's see how some of the more popular dating sites are performing in this demographic.

Match.com is reporting 16 percent of men and 17 percent of women members are 50 or older. Match.com also reported 1,403 million paying subscribers in quarter 3 of this year so this means there are about 236,000 members on Match who are at least 50.

eHarmony's first quarter of 2009 saw a 20 percent growth in users 60 and over when compared to 2008. While we don't have any actual subscriber numbers, we do know that the average age on eHarmony is 35 and that they have been getting about 3.6 million unique visitors per month on their dating sites (US, UK, and Canada).

In the last 5 years Lavalife.com more than doubled its members who are 45 or older. In response to this surge in members, LavalifePRIME was launched in 2007 and now has more than 70,000 members.

To find out more about the dating sites listed here please read our eHarmony review, Match.com review, and our LavalifePRIME review. For more dating site specifically for seniors, check out our Dating Over 50 category.

What services are included in the mobile dating market? Basically anything designed to be accessed by a cell phone for the purposes of finding and communicating with a date. This includes mobile phone applications (think iPhone Apps), mobile internet services (accessible via the phones web browser) and text based services (Twitter like).

The global mobile dating market appears to have a bright future indeed. In 2007 the industry was worth $330 million already (Juniper Research). By 2008 it had jumped over 60% to $550 million and by 2013 it is expected to double to $1.3 billion.

In part what is driving this industry are the capabilities of the phones themselves. As more people get GPS enabled smart phones and as the dating software become more sophisticated, yet easier to use for the user, more people are willing to try out these services. Still, mobile phone dating is more about instant gratification. It is considered a tech-savvy young adults tool, who is not looking for so much a long term relationship, but a casual fling or hook-up. This is why most dating profiles on a mobile dating service contains only a few questions since it is designed primarily to get the user to be able to search for matches as soon as possible.

Here is a list of a few dating applications usable on your phone:

• DateCheck - For background checks. You can search criminal records and if they own property, etc...
• Skout - An iPhone app that uses the iPhones GPS to offer a real-time location based service for online daters.
• Radaroo - A Twitter app for meeting singles.
• Zoosk - A dating site which integrates with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The free dating site OkCupid is also planning to launch a free iPhone dating app in the near future which will offer a location based service. Sam Yagan, CEO of OkCupid.com says that the main challenges is to create a big enough user base in which to work from and to try to get people to the same place and at the same time.

For more on this story, read Chicago Now. For dating sites which offer services for your phone (web based and applications), check out our Mobile Phone Dating category. Our Zoosk review can be found here.