Online Dating

A new "Dating Services in Canada Market Research Report" has been released in January 2015 by IBSWorld. The report requires payment to read the entire thing (no less than $725 US) but they did release a few interesting statistics for promotion that are worth mentioning.

According to IBSWorld the dating industry in Canada grew 6% from 2010 to 2015. They feel this rate is low due to the recent recession but the rate of growth is expected to increase in the next 5 years.

In Canada there are 255 businesses in the dating industry that employee 523 people. On average this means every dating business employees 2 people. In my experience the case more likely is that most of the businesses employee 1 person (the owner), a few probably employ 2 to 5 employees, and the very few employ 5 or more. The reason for such a low number of employees and high number of businesses is the relative ease and extreme low cost required to get into the dating industry. Free dating site software can be found online and web hosting can be found as cheap as $5 a month.

The report also mentions that revenue generated by the dating industry for the year in Canada is $153 million. This seems rather good especially with 255 businesses which would suggest that on average each generated $600,000 in revenue. This is not the case either. Most of these dating businesses probably either make virtually no money or only generate a few thousand a year in ad revenue. A few probably generate 10's of thousands, and even less generate hundreds of thousands or even a few million. I believe the majority of this revenue is made up of one dating site, Plenty of Fish. POF is located in the province of British Columbia, Canada. All of the other popular dating services are based in the United States. POF is a private company and no revenue numbers have ever been officially released. That being said they are one of the most successful dating sites in the world so I am sure their revenue for a year is probably 10's of millions of dollars. For comparison just take a look at the Match.com dating site. They are a public company owned by IAC and they reported the Match Group earned in the fourth quarter of 2014, $241.5 million US. That is only for 3 months so in a year they generate around 1 billion dollars. Now the Match Group is made up mostly of paid dating sites while POF is a free service which generates revenue from ads as well as paid upgraded memberships. I don’t expect POF to earn hundreds of millions every year but as I said, with their traffic I do see them earning 10’s of millions.

Is this latest IBSWorld report worth getting? It definitely would be an interesting read but the thing with the dating industry is that it is global. If you are opening a dating service you usually don’t just target one country. You would target continents as a whole like North America or Europe. If you are considering purchasing the document I would probably hold off and wait for the US version to come. The US is 10 times the size in population of Canada which is a much bigger customer base.

Let's talk about the Tinder problem.

On one hand, Tinder has been great for mobile dating. Tons of people are on the app, meaning no one is judging you for using it and your pool of potential dates is huge. On the other hand, there are so many people using it that it's difficult to find the needles in the undateable haystack. It's easy to dismiss the entire app as useless once you've swiped left on enough losers.

A new app called The League is hoping to solve that problem – by admitting only the most successful and ambitious users, and keeping everyone else out. Basically, it's Tinder for elitists, although founder Amanda Bradford prefers to say The League “curates members.”

"The best universities curate students. Employers curate their employees. Work and school are the top places where 20-somethings meet each other. So it makes sense for a dating community," she told Business Insider.

The target user is interesting and motivated, passionate and working towards achieving a dream, a young professional who is looking for something more than a hookup. So far the app skews slightly female. Users tend to be in their late 20s and have advanced degrees. All have successfully passed through The League's are-you-cool-enough algorithm, which Bradford says relies more on LinkedIn than Facebook.

If accepted, users are shown a handful of matches each day. At 5pm, a new batch of matches is available. The League ensures you aren't shown first connections or current co-workers, to minimize the potential for awkward encounters.

Accepted users also receive a “ticket” to give to another single friend. Others are put on a waitlist until they’re deemed worthy of entrance into The League. Admittance doesn't guarantee you a spot forever – if you fail to measure up to The League's exacting standards (by responding poorly and earning a bad “flakiness score,” for example), you will be deemed a “low-quality member” and ousted.

Bradford was initially hoping to raise $750,000 from investors, but interest in the app was so high that it's now raised $2.1 million in seed funding. For now, The League is limited to 4,500 beta users in San Francisco. Since November, the app has been responsible for pairing 20,000 people and 19 successful couples. Bradford is focused on growing her small team and expanding to New York City, where there is already a sizeable wait list.

Following NYC, Bradford hopes to conquer London and work her way through more of the world's most interesting cities. The League currently has no plans to come to America's smaller towns, where it's unlikely to find its hyper motivated, career-focused target market.

Is it too late to be talking about 2014?

We're already into February so the answer is probably yes, but I hope you'll forgive me. Especially if I include selected stats for 2015 as a peace offering. Do we have a deal?

I'll take your silence as a yes.

Match.com knows pretty much all there is to know about online dating – seeing as it's one of the biggest online dating sites around – so when Match speaks, I listen. The site closed out 2014 with a short infographic on some of the highlights of the year (including its 6 most popular members!).

It was (unsurprisingly) a busy year. 4.8 million pictures were added to the site, and 280 million photos were liked by users. Over 5 million (5.48, to be exact) dates were made, all around the country. Users in Albany logged in more than users in any other city, but Miami singles sent the most messages. Must have something to do with all the beaches and bikinis. The users who searched most outside of their city reside in Anchorage – which may, also, have to do with (Alaska's lack of) beaches and bikinis.

On the pop culture and technology fronts, hashtags continued to take over the Internet. The most used in one profile was a whopping 44! Selfies also continued to be a dominant force in the online sphere. 5,613 Match.com profiles contained the word “selfie” in 2014. Strangely, the only thing that came close to it was Disney's smash-hit kids' flick: 5,501 people said Frozen was their favorite movie of the year.

That's it for 2014, but Match.com has tirelessly turned out new stats for 2015 – even though we're only one month in. Following the holidays, singles feel an extra boost of motivation to join online dating sites. The busiest day of the year for Match.com tends to be January 4^th, with the best of the blitz occurring at 7:52pm CST. Certain cities feel an especially strong call to post-holiday online dating:

• Columbia, South Carolina
• Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Jackson, Mississippi

Interestingly, all in the South. What's happening down there that makes everyone rush to romance after New Year's?

And just who, specifically, is joining up this year? According to Match, the average age of single men who join the site during the busy season is 35. Match also saw an uptick in certain groups signing up in 2015:

• Single Parents: up 45%
• Singles Who Work In Education: up 46%
• Single Bowlers: up 47%
• Curvy Single Women: up 50%
• Singles Quitting Smoking: up 45%
• Singles In The Fashion Industry: up 47%

So if you're into mid-thirties Southern fathers who teach for a living and bowl in their spare time, 2015 could be your year.

Luckily, we live in the age of technology – so if you forgot to make plans for Valentine’s Day (and unfortunately it lands on a Saturday this year) – you might want to look to the app store for help.

If you are looking for a last-minute gift or card, here are some apps to try:

Red Stamp Cards - Need a thoughtful Valentine's Day card in a hurry? Snap a photo and you can quickly create a unique card for your Valentine with this free app. Cards can be tweeted, texted, emailed or posted to Instagram and Facebook.

BloomThat - If you forgot to order flowers and the local grocery store’s selection looks a little tired, this app can help you out of a last-minute problem. (And they can deliver their hand-crafted bouquets via bicycle in under 90 minutes, as opposed to florists where there is an 8-hour delivery window.) For iPhone users only.

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us and eHarmony has decided to have a free communication weekend to celebrate the lovers holiday. The event runs from Thursday February 12th to the end of day on Monday February 16th.

Valentine’s Day is dreaded by some and welcomed by others. It doesn’t matter which of the categories you fall into as we are in the internet age, so finding a potential partner has never been easier. Dating services like eHarmony are just a few clicks away on your laptop and thanks to smart phones you can now join these services via dating apps wherever you happen to be.

eHarmony specializes in long-term relationships. With their advanced matching system and in-depth research eHarmony is in a unique position to offer member’s very high quality matches. Thanks to their commitment to finding what makes love tick, on average 438 marriages happen every day in the United States because of matches made by eHarmony.

To join all you need to do is sign up as a free member (no credit card is required). From there you need to take the eHarmony personality test which includes multiple choice questions designed to help the matching system to determine who your ideal matches might be. Doing these 2 steps requires about 45 minutes of your time but it is well worth it. Once completed you then will receive your first batch of matches. You can then review your candidates to figure out which ones you would like to communicate with. With free communication events the following features are not included: secure call (a phone service), profile photos, and skipping the guided communication process to go straight to email .

For more information on this service and how the dating site and app work, please read our review of eHarmony.

This month, Tinder began rolling out its new premium service Tinder Plus in select European markets, and the feedback hasn’t been good.

The popular dating app surged to the top of the online dating market when it launched in 2012, attracting users who had never thought of signing up for an online dating site. Its easy-to-use format and free game-like service offered more entertainment than dating stress, and users flocked to check it out.

But in an effort to make money from this hugely successful endeavor, it was only a matter of time before Tinder’s owners developed a paid model for the app – opting for a premium service over adding distracting in-app advertisements. (Although the company has strategically lent its brand to marketing campaigns, like Gillette’s facial hair survey and Domino’s Pizza Valentine’s Day campaign.)

But Tinder Plus has not been greeted favorably, at least in its initial roll out – and the free service is suffering as a result. Although Tinder Plus is not set to launch in the U.S. until March, and prices are still to be determined, the company needs to find a new strategy - considering the backlash it has gotten in markets where the roll out has already taken place, such as the U.K. Tinder users who are not opting to pay for Tinder Plus and want to stick to the old free version of the app have been leaving bad reviews in the iTunes store (enough to drive the free service’s rating down to one and a half stars).

The problem has to do with new restrictions to the free service. Once a user has swiped a certain number of times, they are blocked for 24 hours from seeing any new profiles, unless they want to pay for the new Tinder Plus service. Since most users log in to Tinder multiple times a day to swipe through matches, this puts a serious hindrance on Tinder’s competitive advantage. Other dating apps that have restrictions on the number of profiles a user can see per day – like Hinge - have been easing up on their requirements, and seeing a surge of new downloads as a result.

With all the promising new free apps coming on the market, such as Bumble (started by an ex-Tinder employee), Tinder will need to think outside the box to keep its market share. After all, any online dating app or site’s currency is their user base. If Tinder loses theirs, then they stand to lose a lot more than the revenue from the premium service. Perhaps they should stick to advertising deals, or instead of taking away features from loyal users, offer more enticing new features.