Match Group

During a conference call about the IAC/InterActive Q1 2009 Earnings report, the owner of Match.com and CEO of IAC, Barry Diller, mentioned they had been talking to Yahoo about the possibility of purchasing their dating site, Yahoo! Personals (see Story).

With this latest news article from Bloomberg it looks like Mr. Diller is not planning to make any new purchases anytime soon.

Diller said in an interview yesterday that he has no plans to make any major acquisitions ... Diller said he would rather invest in IAC’s businesses than acquire large media companies, which he sees as overvalued.

Diller also mentioned at the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Communacopia conference in New York, that IAC has too much cash at the moment but he doesn't see a better return than investing in their own businesses. At the beginning of July 2009, IAC had $1.61 billion in cash and $95.8 million in long-term debt. The New York based company had also repurchased $300 million in stock since August 2008. Since the beginning of this year IAC stock has risen 31 percent to close above $20.

In my opinion these statements by Diller while not mentioning Yahoo Personals directly, makes it clear he has no plans to buy the dating site. By purchasing Yahoo Personals he would be investing in the dating industry, but not directly into one of his existing businesses which is what Barry Diller says he plans to do.

For more information on the dating sites mentioned, read our Match.com review and our Yahoo Personals review.

The new OkCupid blog called OkTrends had an interesting first post which looked at members sending messages on their dating site. I was surprised by the fact that only 32 percent of first messages (the person who initiated contact) ever got a reply. This is less than a third of all first contacts, and this is on a dating site which is mostly free.

Based on crunching data from tens of thousands of sent messages OkCupid spotted a sweet spot on message length and the chance of a man or woman replying to your message. The first thing they found was that most single's first time messages are way too long.

Almost 16% of first messages are over 2000 characters (roughly 400 words), and the average is 743! At least in terms of using your time efficiently, your messages should be much shorter.

What they found is, on average for a man to write to a woman, a message should be about 200 characters in length. This will give him the best conversion rate of 17.1% based on the average amount of time it takes a man to write a message. For example at this message length the average male online dater can scan profiles and write 10 messages in 1 hour giving them on average, 1.71 replies to their 10 messages.

For women message length is even shorter. A message length of only 50 characters gives woman a conversion rate of 30 percent. This means they can send 11.4 messages per hour and expect on average to receive 3.42 replies from men. First contact message from women seem to more serve the purpose of getting the man to notice their profile, rather than convey any real information.

For the full dating advice article, read OkTrends and to find out more information about this dating site read our review of OkCupid.com.

Match.com's Whitney Casey was on The Early Show Saturday Edition sharing some insiders secrets of what relationship experts find makes for a good online dating profile that will help you get notice and to avoid moves which will turn potential matches off.

First impressions count in online dating so your profile picture needs to be good. It should show your face clearly and smiling. Natural photos are best (instead of a head shoot from your local photographer). Black and white photos and photos cropped from others are not recommended.

Casey suggests to answer the who, what, when, where and why in your profile questions along with anything you feel strongly about like smoking or for example, you only date guys who are taller than you. Above all Casey says to be honest in your profile. Think of it as a type of resume.

For a video of this segment on The Early Show, visit CBS News and to find out more about this dating site, read our Match.com review.

We last looked at OkCupid's A-List membership when it was first launched in mid August (see Story). It is 22 days later and they still have T-Shits to give out to the first 1000 membership upgrades. If OkCupid is close to meeting 1000 paid users then they are averaging roughly 40 paid members a day which IMO are not exactly stellar numbers. I also notice there are no men's sizes left and only 3 of the 4 women's colors left. This shows that there are most likely a lot more men paid users than women. I wonder what the free membership gender split is on OkCupid? Quantcast estimates it at 56% male and 44% female for last month.

To find out more about this dating service which allows you to make your own dating tests, read our OkCupid.com review.

The Forbes website wrote an article called "The Top Online Meat Markets" which talks a bit about some current online dating statistics and lists the top ten dating sites according to unique visitors in the month of June from a tracking company called Nielsen (more famously known for tracking TV viewers). I wasn't really impressed with the title since they are referring to dating sites as meat markets. The term meat market is not meant as a compliment and it tells me the author is not very interested in the story and doesn't think much of the concept of online dating. He further expresses his point of view in this sentence:

Call it calculating, unromantic and maybe even a bit unnatural ...

For a media company whose authors are suppose to leave their opinions at the door unless the topic calls for it, I wonder how this piece got past the editor's desk.

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.