Dating Services

A year after laying off 15% of its staff, Zoosk is ending things with another 40 employees. The break up will see the San Francisco-based dating platform part ways with 1/3 of the company.

Despite $61 million in funding, Zoosk has hit hard times. The old-school web dating app first hit it big building extensions for MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, and Bebo. Two years after launch, it reached 40 million registered users and 12 million active users. Bessemer Venture Partners, ATA, Crosslink, and more offered millions in funding. Other money came from selling subscriptions for premium features, like additional ways to contact dates.

Despite its early success, Zoosk has struggled in recent years. The company has found it difficult to adapt to the changing, increasingly mobile-focused times. Apps like Tinder, Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel now dominate the market, edging out older dating services that haven't evolved to incorporate modern technology.

Zoosk has felt the sting severely. The company was forced to abandon its plans for an initial public offering in 2014, after filing for a $100 million IPO. At the same time, its founders stepped down and former CFO Kelly Steckelberg became CEO. The management shuffle was followed by a layoff of 15% of the company in January 2015.

Circumstances have failed to improve, leading Zoosk to its latest decision to let go another 40 team members. Steckelberg gave TechCrunch this statement:

“This reduction will increase operating efficiencies and streamline responsibilities as we prepare to bring several innovative product announcements to market in 2016. Our optimism for these developments that we expect to positively impact our growth does not diminish the reality of today’s news felt by our staff. We are committed to treating the impacted colleagues with respect and support during this transition.”

Zoosk is not the only one suffering in the current climate. As funding becomes harder to find, a number of startups are having to part ways with staff to stay in business. The online dating market is particularly difficult to compete in, as there are so many options for consumers.

Britanny Carter, an analyst for the research firm IBISWorld, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the issue. “In terms of revenue, the online-dating industry has matured," she said, "but there are too many players and not a lot are generating sufficient revenue for these sites.”

Unless Zoosk has a major overhaul in store – something that can drag the dated service back into relevance – it may be doomed. It's best hope now could be a buyout from a bigger dating company. For more about this service you can read our review of Zoosk.

It's the busiest time of year for online dating. The stretch between Christmas and Valentine's Day is peak season for tech savvy singles. Some are scoring big while others are striking out.

With any luck, you're in the first category. Your date card is so full it's practically become a full-time job. Things are looking up for 2016.

Or maybe not. Maybe you're in the second category, sending message after message into the ether and getting nothing back. That's no way to begin a new year. Fortunately, the folks at Zoosk have compiled some simple suggestions for changing your luck in their "7-Step Guide to Landing a Date."

Here are the highlights:

1. Suggest a date activity if you're really into the person. A recent survey of 3000 Zoosk members revealed that suggesting a movie date increases the response rate to your messages by 91 percent. Other compelling keywords include the beach (59 percent) and a park (39 percent).
2. Send messages in the morning if you're a man and in the evening if you're a woman. Men increase their chance of a response by 10 percent if they send messages between 9 am and 10 am. Women, on the other hand, are nocturnal creatures. Their messages are best sent between 10 pm and 11 pm.
3. Reply within 24 hours. The internet isn't exactly known for its patience. Of those surveyed by Zoosk, 94 percent said they expect a response within 24 hours. Playing too hard to get can easily backfire when more options are only a swipe away.
4. Highlight your individuality. What makes you unique? Your special characteristics are what separate you from the vast sea of singles online. Embrace your glasses, flaunt your tattoos. Just stay away from overtly sexual messages, which Zooskers give a digital thumbs down.
5. Watch the character count. Men aren't picky when it comes to message length, but women expect more effort. Forty percent of the female users Zoosk surveyed said they prefer messages that are longer than the 140 characters of a tweet.
6. Expect to send multiple messages. Establishing rapport online takes more than a single sitting. Around half of singles polled said they exchange five messages before meeting a new suitor in person.

What's step 7, you ask? Start adding dates to your calendar.

Follow Zook's seven rules and you'll set yourself for a 2016 that's brimming with romantic possibilities.

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The 2015 Editor's Top Pick - Over All Award recipient is POF.com. This is the hardest category for us to determine and it was a real close call this year but in the end we at Dating Sites Reviews felt Plenty of Fish deserved the Editor's Top Award.

2015 was a big year for the largest free dating site Plenty of Fish. The biggest POF news (and not the reason for the award) is IAC purchased the company for $575 million. Why did the owners of Match.com spend so much? It has to do with the amount of users POF has, and how well they interact with each other. Since 2003, POF has had more than 100 million singles from around the world register for the dating service. Everyday more than 3.5 million singles log into the service to search for and communicate with other members. In total this generates about 9 million conversations a day and results in every 120 seconds a member confirming to POF that they have started a relationship.

For the last 12 years POF has remained popular due to the fact that it not only has free communication but because the service is easy to use. It does have a paid upgrade option for additional perks but the service's core features (profile, searching, and sending messages) have remained free. POF also continues to pour resources back into the service and is constantly tweaking their matching algorithm to produce better results. This is also noticeable in the POF dating apps as well, by the new features you see with every update and by how easy they are to use.

Read our review of Plenty of Fish for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Match.com

We’ve all heard (or seen via Instagram) the news about Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton dating. They met as co-workers on the set of reality TV show The Voice, and now, since they both split from their respective spouses, they have become a very public item.

But what does it mean to work alongside the person you’re romantically involved with – do many people do it, or is it just something most people think about?

If you have been wondering (or considering your own workplace affair), Match.com has crunched the numbers for you to reveal a few facts on the subject. They surveyed thousands of singles in their latest “Singles in America” study, and revealed information on workplace dating.

Following are some interesting stats that Match found in regard to workplace dating:

• According to Match, one-third of singles have dated someone they work with, and more than half say a happy relationship is more important than their career.
• Of the 35% of people Match surveyed who have dated someone they work with (37% of males, 34% of females), 55% of them don’t even try to hide the romance – much like Gwen and Blake, who have been documenting it themselves via Instagram.
• An almost equal number of men and women (57% of males, 56% of females) say that a happy relationship is more important to them than their careers.
• The majority of people surveyed agree that flirting with a co-worker is totally fine (75% of men and 66% of women) - but do it after work. Forty-three percent of people surveyed said they prefer to flirt with colleagues after work rather than during the day at the office (39%). And a whopping majority of 92% said they would never flirt with their boss.
• Don’t put it in writing – only 14% of people said they have flirted with a colleague via email.
• Men are more likely to act on their feelings, regardless of the potential consequences. Forty-three percent of men vs. only 35% of women are inclined to flirt in the office. Fifity-seven percent of men vs. 29% of women fantasize about having sex with one of their co-workers, and 46% of men vs. 15% of women would consider having a one-night stand with someone they work closely with.
• Of the people surveyed who admitted to dating someone at work, 65% of them have had a one-night stand, 56% have had a friends with benefits relationship and 80% think about sex at least once a week.

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The recipient of the Editor's Top Pick - Innovative Award for 2015 is Plenty of Fish (POF). This online dating service has kept itself on the top by being an innovator. In 2015 POF reached more than 100 million users and has on average 3.5 active users everyday.

In the past year POF.com received a number of updates. One of the most important is the website went responsive. This means it can now be viewed on a smartphone's browser without all the pinching and zooming. Depending on the screen size of the device viewing pof.com, the website will automatically rearrange the layout along with adding and removing interface items to give the user the best possible viewing experience.

The POF service itself saw a number of new features added. One of the more popular ones was the ability to add photo's to your profile from Instagram. The POF App (iOS and Android) had the most work done on them since they had the most new features. Upgraded members (ie paid users) now have access to VoIP Calling. This means you can contact other members using the dating app for voice calling but still keep your phone number hidden for the extra bit of safety. The POF app also now can send you push notifications on your phone. This means if you are using another app while you get a new message from a potential POF match, you will be notified right away via a popup window with the message along with the ability to reply to the message.

Read our review of Plenty of Fish for more information about this online dating service or visit Plenty of Fish directly.

This Year's Runner Up for this award is: Tinder

Recipient
Passion.com

The 2015 Editors Top Pick - Sexy Award recipient is Passion.com. This ultimate hookup dating service has over 60 million profiles from the United States alone and over 5 million from Canada. If you are looking for an intimate encounter then this popular FriendFinder Network service is a great place to start since they have so many active members.

Passion is free to search and view snippets of profiles. To communicate and view photos, videos and full profiles it is required you become either a paid member or, you can unlock one profile to view and communicate with for a small fee. As a full paid member you can communicate (email, chat, video, etc..) with any member, and any member (including free ones) can reply to your communication. This is one of the reasons in which makes Passion.com so popular since most adult oriented dating sites only allow paid members to communicate fully with each other.

Passion.com is all about the community and the service let's them express themselves in as many ways as possible. There are user blogs, forums, and interest groups. There is also the Sex Academy and member contests. Plus members can have top fans and run live webcams. With your profile you can also receive questions about yourself from members which you can answer (and post publicly), have testimonials, and create your own Bling.

Read our review of Passion.com for more information about this dating service or visit Passion.com directly.

There was no runner up in 2015 for this award.