Online Dating

According to OPW Plenty of Fish had a Christmas party in which 40 employees went to a high class resort for 2 days and nights. It's good to see that the company values their employees. One of the many ways in which a company can help drive success is to make sure that their employees are happy and passionate about the company's product.

By the way, the last time we had an employee count at POF was in 2009 and it was only 4. They certainly have grown in a few short years.

eHarmony is having a free communication event this weekend which starts Friday, December 30th and ends on Monday January 2nd at 11:59pm. It has been a while since their last event so those of you interested in giving eHarmony a try, now is the time to do so. With the recent holidays and the New Year being celebrated on Sunday you can expect dating services like eHarmony to be extra busy; which means more singles to meet online.

For those of you who have not heard of eHarmony's free communication weekends (FCW), they allow new and existing members to communicate for free. Remember it is also free to create a profile as well so there is no cost or credit card required to enjoy this event. The only features not included during this promotion are photos, Secure Call (a phone service) and skipping to email in the guided communication process.

The last FCW happened during Labour Day in September (see Story). From our count this will be eHarmony's 36th free communication event.

To find out more about this online dating site you can take a look at our eHarmony review.

So how many people visit Plenty of Fish (or POF as now the dating service likes to be called) in a month? Unfortunately they did not release that number but they did share some other related statistics which may help us figure it out. In November of this year the dating site had 6 billion page views and over 32 billion images served. According to Alexa, in the last 3 months the average page view per user was about 30. So this would mean that Plenty of Fish had about 200 million visits in the month of November (6 billion / 30) (this includes repeat visitors). Now Alexa.com statistics are not always exact but at least this gives you a rough idea.

We also found out that instant messaging on POF produced almost 30 billion page views. All of this traffic (including the actual dating site) is run off of just 11 web servers in which it is estimated 6 are only needed. So, what is the total cost to run the web services for POF? Well, according to the Plenty of fish blog it is just shy of $70 thousand Canadian a month.

To find out information about the dating site please read our review of Plenty of Fish

With over 5 million registered members, Christian Mingle has become the largest and fastest-growing online community for love-seeking Christian singles.

"Gone are the days when online dating was considered taboo - even in the Christian community," says Ashley Reccord, Christian community manager for ChristianMingle's owner Spark Networks. "One of the amazing gifts of our age is that the internet can virtually erase many of the barriers to finding new relationships with people who share your interests and values."

ChristianMingle believes that one's faith is a deeply important part of who a person is, and that religious beliefs are a driving force behind what Christians look for in potential partners. The site is free to join, but don't let the low price tag fool you - it offers a fully featured dating service that is secure, private, and highly interactive. Members meet via email, chat rooms, message boards, and instant messenger which encourages a sense of community and creates an engaging social atmosphere.

Users can also connect and discuss their faith on Believe.com, ChristianMingle's faith-best content destination. Believe includes video and audio resources for the Christian community, as well as a "Verse of the Day" and a "Bible Study of the Day." Users can also browse a searchable Bible, prayer requests, and a church directory.

Nearly two million singles joined ChristianMingle in 2011, the site's most successful year yet. To celebrate their expansion, increase awareness of the site within the Christian community, and share members' success stories, ChristianMingle has launched the "Good News!" campaign, a series of online videos and television commercials that highlight the personal stories of couples who met on the site. "Every day, ChristianMingle members send over 100,000 messages," said Tre, one of the men featured in the advertisements. "I sent one of those messages and met my beautiful wife."

The "Good News!" campaign also reaches out to churches across the nation, to provide resources for group leaders and pastors. ChristianMingle hopes that their outreach efforts will do more than bring Christian singles together on the site - they hope to create a safe and active faith-based community for members with shared values that goes well beyond dating and marriage.

"ChristianMingle believes that marriage is important, but also that relationships and community are important," says Matthew Barnett, a pastor and ChristianMingle Advisory Board member. "ChristianMingle serves as a great resource for singles looking for companionship in like-minded Christians who share the same belief system and interests."

To find out about this dating site, please read our ChristianMingle.com review.

The concept of purchasing virtual goods may not have been around for long, but it has now become one of the fast-growing types of business online. According to the Inside Virtual Goods report, the overall market for virtual goods in the US is on its way to hitting $2.9 billion in 2012 - that's up from $2.2 billion this year and $1.6 billion in 2010.

The virtual goods industry first exploded on Facebook with the popularity of games like FarmVille and CityVille, in which users purchase currency that can be used within the game. Facebook also added a virtual gifts feature that allowed users to buy and send gifts to one another.

Dating sites quickly picked up on the success of the virtual goods game. Plenty of Fish offers "Goldfish Credits" for purchase in packages of 100, 215, or 500. With Goldfish Credits, users can send gifts to other members or find out if someone has opened their messages. Gifts are publically posted on the recipient's profile for 3 three weeks before disappearing. Each Plenty of Fish member also receives 2 virtual roses when they join the site. Roses are sent when composing a message, but each rose may only be used once during a 30 day period. Because they are a rare commodity on the site, roses are considered an especially strong indicator of a user's interest.

HOT or NOT was also an early adopter of virtual goods. The site offered virtual roses ranging from $2 to $10 that could be sent to prospective dates. Though more expensive, the $10 roses became the most popular option because they sent the strongest signals to the recipient. HOT or NOT also found that the recipients of virtual gifts were four times more likely to respond to the sender than users who did not receive a gift.

To date, Zoosk is one of the biggest virtual goods success stories. Zoosk Coins are a virtual currency used to purchase a range of features on the site. According to the site's FAQ, Coins can be used to "purchase Gifts, arrange for a Special Delivery, receive a Delivery Confirmation for your email messages, and Boost your profile." Gifts are cute graphics, like flowers and pets, that can be sent to other members. Special Delivery alerts a message recipient with a pop-up when they have received a message from a user who has purchased the feature. Delivery Confirmation notifies the buyer when their messages have been read, and Boost is a feature that puts the purchaser at the top of someone's search results or in a special place on the homepage of other interested users.

Virtual goods seem poised to become more popular than ever on dating and social networking sites. It looks like your holiday shopping list just got a little bit longer.

For more on this story you can read TechCrunch. For information on the dating sites mentioned in this article you can read our POF.com review and our Zoosk.com review.

As of November 2011, Badoo had:

• 130,000,000+ current users
• Members in 180 countries
• 127,503 new users per day
• 1,411,665 photos and videos uploaded daily

Add all that together and what do you get? The biggest online dating success story of 2011.

Badoo is taking the world by storm according to TechCrunch. It's a truly global, multi-lingual phenomenon, with location-based social networking functionality that is bringing people together to chat and flirt all around the world. In fact, if Badoo was just a site for social networking, it would be the 4th largest in the world. But Badoo is so much more.

Knowing that each user's needs are different, Badoo takes on different roles in different countries. In the UK, it's primarily used for casual dating. In the Czech Republic, it's a marriage site. In Indonesia, it's a safe space for burqa-clad women to explore self-expression. The site has been used for everything from making friends to throwing parties. Thanks to that ability to be so many different things to so many different people, Badoo now brings in $100 million per year in revenue.

Their success story began in 2006 when, rather than seeing Facebook as competition, Badoo set out to fill a gap that Facebook had left in the market: helping strangers connect. Badoo then offered all of it's core functionality for free, giving users a full experience without the big price tag that comes along with many traditional dating sites. For those who want even more out of the site, paid subscriptions are available that unlock special features like the ability to see who has viewed your profile. A system of micropayments is also in place to help users improve their search rankings and become more visible.

Jessica Powell, Chief Marketing Officer of Badoo, believes that the site's success stems from its flexibility. Unlike sites that are specifically designed for dating, Badoo creates a space in which users can connect in any way they want. It's more like real life, she says, when "meeting new people" can be anything from being introduced to a friend of a friend, to saying "hi" to a stranger at a bar, to flirting, to going on a date. Badoo reflects the offline world because people want to meet real people, not pages of meaningless data.

The site's strategy of "real world meets cyberspace" seems to be working - Powell says that 50% of the conversations on Badoo now lead to an offline meetup, and at the rate Badoo is going, that number is only going to increase.

For even more information about this dating service you can read our Badoo.com review.