Online Dating

Christian Mingle is one of the top dating sites in the United States. The Drew Marshall Show is a Canadian radio spiritual talk show based in Toronto. What does these 2 businesses have in common? They have partnered to create a matchmaking contest called “The Dating Game”. This segment is an 8 week-long series that follows a contestant who is given a free subscription to ChristianMingle.com.

The first contestant named Danielle is 25 years old and is new to online dating. The series follows the experiences she has from joining Christian Mingle to the men she meets. A couple of weeks in she has met a man named Phil whom she really likes and who funny enough goes to the same church she does. The two have never met or seen each other before meeting online at Christian Mingle. Danielle and Phil have been on several dates and have decided they want to be exclusive and now pursued their relationship offline.

To find out more and to see who the next contestant is you can listen to the Drew Marshall Show On Saturday’s at 3:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Zoosk was made aware recently that possibly some of their members passwords were found on a third-party website. Zoosk takes security seriously and has launched an investigation:

So far, we have not found evidence of our network being compromised. Additionally we have not received reports of unauthorized access to members’ accounts...

To err on the side of caution Zoosk has required some members to reset their passwords.

Zoosk is smart to get on top of this potential security threat right away. Hopefully it is a false alarm but it is always best to take steps to ensure everyone’s information is safe. A number of dating sites have been targeted over the last few years including Plenty of fish which was hacked in February of 2011.

For more information on this potential security issue you can read the Zoosk blog.

Thanks to a $30 million marketing push in 2012 ChristianMingle now has over 8 million registered members of whom 154,000 pay to subscribe. A large portion on these members live in the Midwest and Bible Belt areas. Over half of the members (55%) are 37 years or older and a quarter of members (25%) are over the age of 50. In the last quarter of 2012 the amount of subscribers grew by 89 percent when compared to the same quarter in 2011.

ChristianMingle’s objective is to create long-term focused relationships. Currently the site doesn’t allow gay Christians to join in an attempt to balance the interests of its members. Spark Networks which owns ChristianMingle does have other dating websites for LGBT singles which cater to a more casual relationships. ChristianMingle’s main competition in the Christian online dating niche is eHarmony and ChristianCafe.com.

For more on this story you can read Business Week and to find out more about this dating site you can read our ChristianMingle review.

People's Park in Shanghai, China has become something of a legend.

What appears at first glance to be a flea market is in fact something much more unusual: a marriage market. Ageing parents crowd the walkways, examining personal ads, meeting with matchmakers, and hoping to find partners for their unwed children.

There is, of course, another way to find a spouse in 21st century China - a much more familiar one. Online dating has exploded in China, and is expected to break two billion RMB ($318 million USD) in total annual revenue by 2014. Online dating promises to revolutionize the way singles in China meet, and modernize the way China regards relationships.

The primary players in China's online dating scene - Jiayuan, Zhenai, and Baihe - all advertise specifically as marriage websites. The mean age of marriage is rising in the country, but marriage is still nearly universal and competition for partners is fiercer than ever.

Eligible partners are expected to have similar educational backgrounds and economic standing. Age and height are also importance considerations, as is residency. Those who hold a residency permit in a top-tier city have access to public services and employment opportunities that others do not, making them extremely desirable as spouses. Men are also expected to own a car and hold the deed to an apartment.

Thanks to China's infamous One-child Policy, it's becoming increasingly difficult for city dwellers to meet and marry. Fewer children means fewer potential partners. It means more parental attention focused on each child, and the pressure to perform well in school and at work that comes along with it. And it means fewer opportunities for children to socialize and develop their interpersonal skills.

Add all that up and you get a very competitive dating market, one that is well suited to the modern marvel of online dating. Chinese men and women, who are expected to be hugely successful educationally and professionally, have little time left for relationships. Online dating offers the perfect platform for stressed, overworked Chinese singles to connect.

Like any online dating site, the profiles of sites like Jiayuan, Zhenai, and Baihe provide snapshots of users' lives. In China, however, profiles focus on key screening criteria - like height, weight, monthly income, education level, marital history, and home ownership - instead of less the quantifiable characteristics like interests and personality that are commonplace on Western dating sites.

But as the online dating market explodes for entrepreneurs in China, all of whom are hoping to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities in the industry, major social change is coming along with it. Single men and women in China now have more freedom to choose exactly where, how, and when they find partners, allowing their decisions to be based on love rather than external factors.

For a list of dating sites with Chinese singles you can check out our Asian Dating category.

The Plenty of fish blog just released some current traffic statistics for their dating site. It's good to see a snapshot of what the user base of Plenty of fish is. Marcus Frind released the statistics to highlight how his dating site has grown and to be more open on the number of members POF has.

The user statistics released are based on active daily registered users. This means that the user must be logged into POF.com to be considered part of the statistic group. I am assuming that the numbers given are an average but it doesn’t say what the timeline is for that. It probably is for last month (January) but I am only guessing that he would release the latest numbers available. The user statistics could very well be for last year, last quarter or some other time period.

Plenty of Fish’s largest market is the United States with 2 million active daily registered users. This is followed by the United Kingdom with 550,000 and then Canada with 450,000. POF estimates that if you take the roughly 1400 dating site (non-adult) found in the United States and combine their paying members you will come out with 2.5 million subscribers. Combining these numbers together sounds like a lot of people and it is, but online dating has a lot of room to grow. The population of the United States sits at about 313 million with about 100 million people actually single. This shows that about 1/3 of the population is single. The United Kingdom has a population of about 63 million and Canada is close to 35 million. If we assume that the proportions of singles in these countries are about the same as the US then there are about 21 million single people in the UK and about 12 million in Canada.

In the US I figure that there are about 5.5 million people actively using a dating site every day. I came up with this number by adding Plenty of Fish’s 2 million active users with 2.5 million US paid subscribers, and then adding in an extra million singles for all of the other free dating sites that people use. This means only 5.5 percent of all singles in the United States are actively using an online dating site. Since about 78% of the US has internet access (according to Wikipedia) then this percentage only slightly improves to about 7 percent. The potential for growth in the online dating industry is still huge when your untapped market sits at over 90 percent.

I also found a few other related statistics. Plenty of Fish currently reports (from July 2012) that they have had 45 million members register since launch in 2003. Their current rate of growth is 40,000 new members signing up every day which works out to about 30 percent a year. Members of POF send out 20 million messages a day generating 7 million conversations. Currently the average age on POF is 35. In 2009 the average member was 40 years old.

To find out more about this dating site you should read our Plenty of fish review.

To help celebrate Valentine’s Day Christian Cafe let us know that they are offering price discounts on their memberships of up to 25 percent. Christian Cafe is the largest Christian owned dating site with many active members. They have won our own DSR awards several times for being the top pick in the Christian dating category. A combination of their large membership database, features offered and business ethics has made them one of the top choices we recommend to Christian singles.

The great thing is when someone first joins Christian Cafe, they offer them a 10 day free trial. This trial gives new members complete access to the dating site including communication with all other members. This way you can find out how well the service works for you before you consider purchasing a membership.

For more information on this dating site you should read our detailed Christian Cafe review.