Memberships

Mate1.com’s CEO Liz Wasserman was on the Cyber-Dating Expert Radio Show in August. From listening to the show, we learned several new things. First of all, Mate1.com is a family business launched in 2003. Mate1 is a privately held company and they currently have had over 25 million members registered since launch. About 1 to 2 million members are active at any one time on the dating site. Currently Mate1 is available only in English but there are plans on translating Mate1 into other languages next year sometime.

At the moment Mate1.com offers a 3 Day trial for under $2 and then a monthly subscription for $49.99 USD. They plan to add a 3 months, 6 months and 12 months membership subscription plans soon. Mate1.com has always been free for women to reply and contact any paid member, but this will change soon.

The big news is Mate1.com plans to switch to the freemium business model . This means all the basic services are free on the dating site like creating a profile, searching, replying to any mail message and contacting paid members. The only real thing you will not be allowed to do as far as we know is initiate contact with other free members. You will have to purchase a membership for this (at this point we are unsure if chatting will be available to free members). This freemium model is virtually identical to what Mate1.com was offering women on their dating site except now it is for men and women.

Wasserman did say on the show that in about a week, the new membership model will go into effect. The radio show was posted on August 29th, 2009, just over 5 weeks ago. When I logged into Mate1.com today, I was still presented with the old membership upgrade page and no way to access my mail messages. Obviously things have been delayed, I wonder why?

We did also learn that Mate1 does block certain ranges of IP addresses from different countries that a lot of spam and scammers come from. They also use technology from Iovation to fight fraud. Iovation technology works by taking a digital finger print of a computer. If this computer has been flagged as a potential scammer then the computer is blocked from the dating website.

Mate1.com is also planning to integrate social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter into their dating site. First up is a new Facebook application called "Connect More" which allows you to see which of your friends, friends are members of Mate1 and if they are actively looking for a partner.

For more information, listen to Cyber-Dating Expert Radio and to find out more about this dating site, read our review of Mate1.com.

First the largest free dating site PlentyOfFish.com, decided to offer a paid upgrade service 6 months ago (see Story) and now the second largest free dating site, OKCupid is doing the same. Members who upgrade their free membership on OkCupid are called A-List users. As an A-List user you get the following 10 perks:

• The ability to attach photos to messages.
• Create both public and private photo albums (reminds me of an adult dating site).
• Store up to 5000 messages.
• Send messages to users who have a full inbox.
• Save multiple search settings.
• Access to A-List forums.
• Ads removed from the website.
• Advanced search features.
• Give awards to other users and read and write reviews about them (testimonials).
• A little more exposure (you may be placed in the special A-List Matches column of results).

A few of the perks have left me scratching my head. First of all I am not sure why someone would want to store 5000 messages. I know there are some OkCupid fanatics who will want this but, it is not really a selling point for general use users. Sending messages to users who have a full inbox is also a little weird, at first I thought, why would I want to send messages to someone who doesn't even check their mail? On my second read through, I realized this feature is aimed more for users who file away all messages they receive (for the 5000 message users) and not for the user who's mailbox is full because he never logs in.

In terms of advance search features, A-List members can now filter by Match Questions, Data Persona and Popularity Ratings. You can also custom order your search results by personality traits. Another nice feature is the Similar Users option. If you have found someone you liked and they are already taken you can use this option to find other people who are just like them.

The cost to become an A-List user is $9.95 USD per month and you will be auto billed every month until you cancel. The first 1000, users are also offered a free T-Shirt in a number of different colors. I was offered one today when I visited the signup page. Dave over at Online Dating Insider blogged about OkCupid A-List users on August 12th, which was 5 days ago. I guess this means that the A-List user memberships are not really flying off the shelf yet.

It appears that free dating sites are hitting a wall in terms of revenue generation. Online advertising dollars were in decline before the economy turned south and since then, we have seen the 2 largest free dating services start to offer a paid membership on their websites. Both of these dating sites offer their paid members some useful feature but I think they missed the point of online dating, as I had mentioned in a previous post about Plenty Of Fish going paid. Users of online dating sites want to be noticed. They are on a dating website for a reason, to find a partner. The best way for a dating service to do this is by displaying their profile to more interested members. Both dating sites visibly mark members who have upgraded but as far as I can tell none allowed me to search just for these type of members. I also think these members should be displayed higher in search results than free members (if they fit reasonably within the search criteria). This not only would give upgraded members more responses, it is also a winning scenario for free members since they would be seeing members who are most actively seeking a partner first.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of OkCupid.

I got an email from someone tonight complaining about how Be2.com makes you jump through hoops to cancel a membership. Apparently you need to request cancellation of their services via fax. And the fax must contain the following information:

• full name
• address
• email-address
• username
• date of purchase of Premium Membership
• total sum
• reason for cancellation

I found more information about the new Match.com Platinum membership package that will soon be available to all members (from this Story). Match.com already has information available under the Help section when you log into the dating site. It is under the Searching and Dating section and the topic is called Platinum. The first thing I saw was this new membership package is available in some test markets. This means most members will not see the new package in the upgrade area but some of you will. Please comment on this story if you have any pricing information or where the test markets are. The help section also confirms that with this subscription 100 percent of Match.com members will be able to respond for free to your emails and Instant Messages. I'm glad they included IM in the package. Platinum members are identified by an icon on their profile (visible to only non paid members). The Help section also mentions that free members can contact you for free. This is a huge bonus for members. Most paid dating sites who allow free members to contact other members only allow this once the paid member has initiated communication. Match.com definitely has taken a bold step here and turned their dating service partially free.

The Platinum membership may also be purchased as an add-on to any existing membership. No cost information is available at this time. I believe also the Platinum subscription package is available to only online daters in North America.

While I was on Match, I noticed the new Smart Search feature has received an additional upgrade. The results page has been updated to include a Refine Your Search section. This allows you to easily refine your search scope for the following attributes, photos available, age ranges and location ranges. For each attribute range it also gives the total number of profiles which fit within the range.

For more information on this award winning online dating site, read our Match.com review.

As with North American dating sites (see Story), the European online dating sites have seen a boost in memberships during the downturn in the economy. Match.com International UK and European dating sites saw a pre-tax profit of £3.67m ($5.6 million US) in the year to December 31 2007. The year before they saw a loss of £2.19m ($3.4 million US). In the third quarter this year Match International saw a 6 percent increase in paying members. For the next few years Match foresees Europe driving it's growth as the North American online dating market slows. Last year the UK and Scandinavia was where Match.com International saw its best growth.

Other dating services like those run by WhiteLabelDating.com saw members grow over the last year in the United Kingdom by 250 percent to over 1 million members. Nielsen Online is also reporting a 15 percent increase in unique visitors to online dating site November 2008, when compared to 2007. For European dating sites in the last year the total number of visitors have increased by 20 percent. The year before it was 9 percent.

For the full story visit The Telegraph. Read our Match.com UK review for more information on this popular dating service.

Markus Frind, CEO of Plentoffish.com, blog has a post today called Lots of changes lately…. In his post Markus mentions 5 interesting points he has noticed in the dating industry. I think he may need to add another point to his list. The reason for this is he also asks the question:

Here is a question for everyone what are the best merchant accounts to use?

Merchant accounts are used by websites who offer paid services or goods to process credit cards, online cheques and debit cards. Markus has hired a few people lately and is obviously working on something. I wonder if he is planning to offer a paid membership that has some added benefits? Maybe he is adding some other type of dating related service? He hasn't given us any real hints. The merchant account could even be for a whole new project which isn't even related to PlentyOfFish.com.

Has anyone else heard any rumours?

Comment below...