Lavalife

An article at the Globe & Mail looks at the increased popularity of online dating since the downturn in the economy which started in the fall. They include a couple of reasons for this. The main point mentioned is, people rather use online dating first to filter out the duds (their word) before spending good money on an expensive dinner.

It's a pretty good deal at $25 a month to go out and meet people online, versus going out and spending 50 to 100 bucks per night and possibly not meeting anyone.

The other reason they suggest is bad times makes people re-prioritize what is important in life. I agree with both of these points, plus I think online dating is also a good distraction from bad times. Nothing legal gives you a better high than when you find someone that gives you that butterfly feeling in your stomach.

The article also gave us a few more statistics of some of our reviewed dating sites. Lavalife member registrations are up 11 percent from November with Toronto leading the charge with a 20 percent increase (Lavalife is based in Toronto). Messaging among members on Lavalife is also at a 6 month high. At the same time Plenty of Fish has had a banner year with a 77 percent increase from December 2007 until December 2008. Apparently about 900,000 people log in every day. A poll at Date.com also discovered that almost 50 percent of members are now spending more time on their dating site making sure they have found Mr or Miss Right before they go out on a date.

There is a promising future for mobile dating as predicted by Juniper Research. They claim the value of the chatroom market and mobile dating will grow to almost $1.4 billion by 2013. For the most part revenue will be generated by subscriptions but event-based charging (like paying a fee to contact someone or virtual gifts) and advertising will continue to become a larger part of the revenue stream.

... many companies which have migrated to this approach are seeing conversion rates amongst customers buying premium rate goods and services which generate revenues significantly in excess of those achieved under flat rate subscriptions.

By 2011 it is predicted less than 30 percent of mobile dating customers will be on a flat rate subscription model. China and Japan currently have the largest number of mobile dating customers.

There is no mention what the 2008 revenue is for this market. Currently from our reviewed online dating services, Match.com (called matchMobile), Date.com, Lavalife, DatingDirect and Shaadi.com all offer a mobile phone service along with their dating website. Other sites like MeetMoi also offer location based mobile dating based on the GPS in your phone (with lots of privacy options of course). With the rise of 3G and the large bandwidth it provides I expect to see the rise of video mobile dating as well.

For reviews on dating services that offer a mobile/cell phone dating service check out our new Mobile Dating Category.

On Wednesday January 7th Lavalife announced their search for Canada's 10 most eligible singles. This is the third year in a row for the event.

All singles have to do is sign up for free to become a member of Lavalife.com, have a great photo and a creative and engaging "In My Own Words" profile. The deadline to enter is Tuesday, February 3, 2009.

On February 18, the judges will announce 30 semi-finalists. At this point the public can visit Lavalife and vote for Lavalife's 2009 Top 10 finalists. On March 11th Lavalife will announce the 10 winners.

The winners will receive a 3 day trip to Toronto and tickets to Lavalife's Red Hot Affair. The grand prize is $10,000 and the runner up will receive a all-inclusive trip for two to Negril, Jamaica, courtesy of Bel Air Travel.

For the full press release, read it at Newswire. For more information on this online dating site, read our Lavalife review.

Recipient
Lavalife

It was no contest this year for the Editor's Top Pick - Canadian Award. The dating site, Lavalife, continues to be the choice for singles in Canada and it's easy to find out why. Join for free and do a search for singles in your area. You will find many online and many more who visit the dating site regularly. The thing with Lavalife is finding out when a member was last on is easy. You can tailor searches by online activity, plus this information is displayed right in the profile summary of search results. You never have to wonder if the person you are sending a message to on Lavalife is an old member who doesn't use the site anymore. A lot of dating sites tend to hide this information since it can show how many inactive profiles they do have.

The other big deal with Lavalife is they allow free members to reply to paid members messages. This means as a paid member you do not have to worry about sending a message to a free member as with other popular dating services like eHarmony. If you don't get a reply to a message, you know this is because most likely they are not interested. Not because they do not want to pay for the dating service.

Lavalife is divided into 3 distinct dating communities based on relationship types. So it doesn't matter what type of dating service Canadians wish to join. There are communities for singles with casual dating in mind, or singles who wish to have a serious relationship or for those who want an intimate encounter. These are 3 services for the price of one.

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

This Years Runner Up for this award include (in no particular order): Date.ca and Canadian Personals.

Lavalife Prime was launched in June 2007 and had an advertising budget of less than $1 million. It started as a free service where singles of the age 45 and older could come to meet other singles online. Agneta Owen, a marketing consultant for Lavalife Corp. expected it to attract 25,000 members by June 2008. They almost doubled their goal. This means Lavalife had planned to spend $40 per member ($1,000,000 / 25,000 expected members) and ended up spending only $20 per member in advertising dollars. Recently Lavalife Prime started to charge it's members (see Story) so it will be interesting to see where membership levels drop too. On average paid dating sites can expect 10 to 20 percent of its free members convert to the paid service.

The over 50 crowd is a valuable market. This age group are usually at the height of their income level and make up roughly a third of the population in North America. Does Lavalife Prime offer what older singles are looking for? We will have to wait and see. This segment of the market already has a number of successful dedicated sites. Lavalife Prime would have to compete with these as well as the established dating services like Match.com and eHarmony. Prime hopes with their spin on the dating service experience and their sprinkling of social networking features, that they will come out on top. The relative unique feature of Lavalife Prime seems to be the section "My Life Experiences" in the profile. It contains the members pictures and videos of different memories or experiences they may of had through out their life. This is then presented in a picture time line.

We expect to do a full review soon of Lavalife Prime.

Update: Check out the new Lavalife Prime Review.

I've added another coupon code to our coupons page. You can now save 15% off any Lavalife subscription when you sign up using the code 780121.

For more information, read our review of Lavalife.