Online Dating

Earlier this month, on The Today Show in a segment called Today's Relationship, they talked about online dating and the recession. Match.com, eHarmony and OkCupid were all mentioned in regards to how they have since an increase in visitors since September 2008. Sam Yagan of OkCupid even had a short interview where he talked about how OkCupid has seen a change in how members are using their dating site.

I noticed last month Perfectmatch offers a guarantee to its paid members. The guarantee is only available for the 2, 3, and 6 month memberships. There is no guarantee for a 1 month membership.

Here are the details taken from Perfectmatch's website, broken out by membership length:

Six Month Plan

During a six month subscription, you will receive a minimum of eight Perfect Matches. If Perfectmatch does not provide you with at least eight Perfect Matches, they will extend your membership for two months (at no cost to you), AND will continue to do so, until they have met this minimal commitment and you are satisfied!

Three Month Plan

During a three month subscription, our most popular plan, you will receive a minimum of six Perfect Matches. If Perfectmatch does not provide you with at least six Perfect Matches, they will extend your membership for two months (at no cost to you), AND will continue to do so, until we have met this minimal commitment and you are satisfied!

Two Month Plan

During a two-month subscription, you will receive a minimum of four Perfect Matches. If Perfectmatch does not provide you with at least four Perfect Matches, they will extend your membership for two months (at no cost to you), AND will continue to do so, until they have met this minimal commitment and you are satisfied!

8 perfect matches in 6 months doesn't seem like a lot of matches to me but they also mention extending the membership every 2 months until you are satisfied as well.

To find out more about this dating site and it's guarantee, read our in-depth Perfectmatch reivew.

Well it has been about a week since Plenty Of Fish (POF) offered its users a paid option that upgraded their profile to serious member status (see Story). There have been mixed reviews from the members of POF. Some complain about the 100% Free tag line on the site should be removed, while others have wondered if users with the badge would receive any more mail as claimed on the POF upgrade page. Most are just shocked that the site has started a paid membership upgrade. I haven't found any glowing recommendations of it yet.

Some members also have been angered that POF have been giving some upgrades away to get the ball rolling. The problem is, some of these giveaways have been to people who didn't know they received them. This has angered many long term POF members who felt left out. I think POF should of offered the upgrade free for a limited time to users that have been using the site regularly for a certain period of time. The upgrade would be offered for free but the user would still have to initiate it. I also would have made the free serious member upgrade for the 3 month term only. With a set of rules in place on who gets the free upgrade people would have less to complain about (but I am sure some still would).

Spark Networks had a disappointing quarter 4 in 2008. From the press release:

2008 was a mixed year for us. We achieved moderate annual revenue increases in Jewish Networks and Other Affinity Networks, improved Contribution margins to 74%, cut Operating Expenses by 19%, drove annual Adjusted EBITDA to record levels at a 28% margin and returned capital to stockholders by using cash flow to repurchase 21% of the shares outstanding at the start of 2008 ... we are disappointed with second half trends and in particular the fourth quarter, as revenue and subscribers decreased sequentially in each online segment. 2008 revenue, excluding General Markets, was flat while fourth quarter revenue, excluding General Markets, declined 3% sequentially. Jewish Networks was flat in 2008 but saw its third consecutive quarter of declines.

General Markets was Spark Networks flag ship dating site once, Americansingles.com. For over the last year American Singles has lost a large number of members. Spark Networks current flag ship site is JDate, the online Jewish Network.

I found an article that looks at the technology used to make some of the popular online dating services like Yahoo Personals, eHarmony, PerfectMatch and Match.com give members a quick and smooth experience.

These online dating services run on a curious mix of technology, science (some say pseudoscience), alchemy and marketing. Under the covers, they combine large databases with business intelligence, psychological profiling, matching algorithms and a variety of communications technologies ... to match up lonely singles -- and to convert one-time visitors into paying monthly subscribers.

The author first looks at the business models behind online dating, with the main choices being subscription based memberships and advertising supported. He then lists 4 steps which make a successful dating site, not only in terms of revenue for the owners but for the actual members of the site as well.

1. A perfect match, served up fast - This refers to the hardware technology behind the scenes that has to deal with millions of member records and the processing power needed to calculate matches for everyone.
2. From "just looking" to "paying customer" - The different marketing techniques used to convert a free member to a paid member.
3. Make a high-quality connection - Connecting members through communication.
4. Weeding out cheats, scammers and married guys - Including automated and manual approaches.

The last thing the article tackles is the question: Does online dating sites work?. Basically it is unknown if online dating produces better long term matches than meeting single people in more traditional ways. What online dating does do, is it allows you to easily meet other single people online, in the comforts of your home.

eHarmony never wanted to open Compatible Partners but as specified in the terms of a settlement in November 2008, they must open a dating site for gay people by the end of this month. We have been told that the site will work like eHarmony's current site which involves a long profile questionnaire to help in the matching process. At eHarmony you do not search for other singles. All matches are given to you by the dating site. As far as we know there have been no plans to update eHarmony's matching algorithm to take into account the differences in a gay relationship for Compatible Partners.

It will be interesting to see how popular the new dating site will get. It has gotten a lot of media attention but delivering a product for this type of niche never was a goal for eHarmony. I don't see why a gay single would want to join?

When Compatible Partners goes live, we do plan on doing a review, so stay tune.

Update: Check our our new review of Compatible Partners.