General News

Here is another story from my draft folder. Back in February, PC World looked at the matching algorithms of attraction and the business models behind some of the more popular online dating sites.

Here are a few interesting statistics which emerged from their review of the industry as a whole:

• For 2009 the dating industry is expected to top $1.049 billion and is likely to grow at a rate of 10 percent.
• It is estimated with free dating sites, at least 10 percent of new accounts created each day are from scammers.
• With paid dating sites, on average 10 percent of members pay for the service and stay for less than 3 months.
• In November 2008, online dating traffic as a whole was over 22 million with males making up 52.4 percent of the total number of visits (females 47.6 percent).
• Average time spent per visit to the top 10 online dating sites in 2008 was 22 minutes and 27 seconds.

A lot of the information mention in the article we have talked about before, so I will only discuss any new details. What we did learn, deals more about the hardware needed to run a busy dating site and the process of matching. For instance (WARNING tech talk coming), eHarmony has over 4 terabytes of information on more than 20 million registered members, each who have completed the 400 to 256 profile questions (eHarmony's profile has gotten shorter over the years). After a user signs up at eHarmony, a 10 Gig Oracle database is used to match you with initially, a few members. Apparently the real matching takes place later when your answers are matched up with thousands of other users who have answered hundreds of questions. The whole process takes almost 1 billion calculations and is done in a batch operation at the end of each day. This is a lot of calculations to find matches for a single user. It also tells me that while the initial database is probably filled with the most current users who are using eHarmony now, the matches which you may be more compatible with, will be given to you in a day or so from the much larger database. To give you an idea of the size difference between the two, the main database is about 400 times larger. eHarmony also says a members actions and outcomes on the site is stored and used to help determine matches. The example given deals with your geographical limit you set when you first filled out your profile. If you say, set it to 20 miles, but the eHarmony matching system sees you are viewing members who live farther away, then your location limit will be adjusted. This is because, eHarmony will assume location of a match isn't a deal breaker for you (so only click on those long distance matches only if you really want to travel).

PerfectMatch.com (which has 5 million members) has a lengthy profile as well when compared to most other dating sites, but it still only takes about half of the time to complete when compared to eHarmony's. For their dating site, Perfect Match uses 5 web servers and a number of SQL server database servers. A number of other servers are also used to handle messaging and marketing needs. According to the company, PerfectMatch.com's matches happen right away, there is little to no delay.

PlentyofFish.com is also mentioned and the article. According to the author, POF wants to keep things simple when it comes to the profile and searching. The thing is, POF does have a Chemistry test which for some reason is not mentioned. Plenty Of Fish also has been promoting this fact lately due to their new Serious Member paid membership. Serious Members must take the chemistry and personality test to qualify. Hardware wise, we learned that Plenty Of Fish uses 3 web servers, 5 messaging servers and 5 database servers. Their database of user information is 200 GB. For the year the total cost to operate is only a couple hundred thousand dollars with the majority of the money spent on bandwidth.

For information on some of the dating sites mentioned here, read our eHarmony review and our Perfect Match review.

On April 30, 2009, President and CEO of AshleyMadison.com, Noel Biderman talks with the hosts of the View about the online dating service he founded. It is interesting to note that all of the dating sites which deal mainly with matching members up for intimate encounters, that Ashley Madison seems to be the one which is ok to talk about on prime time TV. People who use Ashley Madison are looking for someone to have sex with but not a relationship. This is pretty much the same thing as the members of such sites as Adult FriendFinder, Fling.com and Sex Search are looking for. Yet you will not find these sites talked about on The View, CNN, Good Morning America and the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

In the clip, The View starts off the discussion with one of the TV commercials produced for Ashley Madison. It shows a man and woman scantily clad and kissing with the following message being presented near the end This couple is Married ... But not to each other. It is similar to a commercial which was denied by NBC to be aired during the last Super Bowl (see Story). Of course all the hosts are up in arms about the concept but, I have to hand it to Noel he came off pretty good in the interview and answer each question well. The hosts also discussed how the actual site works and if there is any type of security (The Craig's List Killer was mentioned). Barbara Walters also asks Neil about his own marriage and what he is going to tell his 2 children (aged 1 and 4) what he does for work when they grow up.

Early in February we posted a poll asking our users; on average, which type of online dating site gave you better overall results? Well, the results are in. On May 10, 2009 with 278 votes in total for the poll, 45 percent or 126 voters told us paid dating sites on average gave them better results. On the other hand, 55 percent of the voters gave free dating sites the nod (152 votes). It is not quit an even split, but it is fairly close.

What can both types of dating sites do to improve their results in the poll? I think this comes down to better prevention of scammers operating on dating sites. There are two steps that need to be done here. The first step is when someone joins. Most dating sites allow people from all Countries to join. I think this needs to change, especially in North America where there are only relatively a few Countries. A lot of scammers tend to live in other Countries, especially where the standard of living is not high. Plus, very few members of dating sites in North America are actually looking for singles outside their own Country, let alone their city. To help in this, dating sites like Match and eHarmony should not allow visitors who are using IP addresses from outside North America to join. Additionally, some sort of background check needs to be done on the members personal information, and the profile should be marked once the verification has taken place. Paid dating sites should have the lead in this area since the larger ones make enough money to implement these types of measures. Plus, they already have a form of verification by having people pay for a membership. Payment processing companies need to make sure your information is valid.

If the scammer gets by the first step then the second step needs to take over. This step is better automated and adaptable moderation tools that scan messages looking for members who are intent to scam or defraud others. If found, then the profile needs to be red flagged for a human moderator to review. Once you know a members intentions are not good then kick him or her off.

So how can just paid dating sites improve their results? There are a number of ways but I think the main way to improve paid dating is to open up the communication process. On some sites, paid members will contact someone not knowing that they cannot reply back without paying first. This can go even as far as some services not allowing guest members to view mail messages. This means the member who paid, gets frustrated sitting there not getting a number of potential replies and the guest member not able to see messages and wondering if they are from members or just a welcome message from the dating service. Paid dating sites need to start allowing guest members to reply for free to a paid members message. Instead of charging for more features, paid dating sites need to open the communication process and offer more to members to stay relevant.

So how can just free dating sites improve their results? One answer I think is actual customer service. Unfortunately this costs money and with the recession and online advertising tanking it may not be possible. The other problem with free dating sites is, that there is just so many of them. It is hard for people new to online dating to tell if a free dating site is good or not, especially if the dating site owner has populated his website with fake dating profiles to make it look more popular than it actually is.

While I have removed the poll from the homepage this poll is still open for voting. We will visit it again in 6 months or so to see what the results are at. If you haven't voted yet, go here for to express your opinion.

To see a list of all our dating site reviews, check out our Review List. For just free dating sites, look at our Free Dating Site category.

This story was originally from December 28, 2008 and has been in my draft folder ever since. I thought it was about time I should finish it up.

As we know FriendFinder Networks Inc. (formerly Penthouse Magazine) filed to go public in late December, 2008 and intends to list under the symbol FFN, on the New York Stock Exchange. (see Story). In order to do this they released some financial and subscriber numbers for investors. Lets review the reason for the IPO first. Penthouse bought FriendFinder Networks from Various in December 2007 for $500 million (see Story). Since then Penthouse decided to change their name to FriendFinder Networks Inc. for a number of reasons including to help market themselves as a Social Network to would be investors. The main reason for the $460 million IPO is FriendFinder:

Facebook announced late last month their new Open Stream API to developers. What this means is, Facebook user information now can be shared with other websites and software. Don't worry, users will still have full control on who can see and use their information. Apparently permissions will work similar to how the current Facebook Application system works.

This is good news for dating sites. It means we will probably see in the coming months or year the ability to transfer over information from Facebook when we create a profile on a dating site. Not all dating sites will do this initially but I bet one or two of the popular ones will test it. Dating profile quality is important for a successful dating site and it does suffer when people join multiple dating services. Who wants to type in the same information over and over? When this happens, less information typically is included in the newer profiles by the single as they grow bored entering the same information again. I am sure online daters would much rather store their profile information and update it in one spot. Facebook has enough members (over 200 million global users) to make them a prime candidate to offer this type of service.

For more on this story, read the Facebook Developers Blog and check out the Online Dating Insider for further insight into how Open Stream may help the dating industry.

The rumor was first posted 5 days ago on Online Personals Watch that Userplane is closing its doors. Userplane provides websites with features like chat rooms, instant messaging and bulletin boards. Dating sites are a main source of their revenue. David Evans of the Online Dating Insider also mentioned hearing some buzz as well but hasn't confirmed anything. It seems like we are all waiting for our emails to be answered. The Userplane website is still up but no information has been posted which confirms or denies the fact that they are going out of business. Since it has almost been a week and the fact that we haven't heard anything from Userplane, I take this as a sure sign that they are in fact closing the doors.

If you are a dating site looking for a chat provider or are, or was, a customer of Userplane, take a look at Toska. They offer easy to implement solutions which are 100 percent hosted by them. They are currently offering a 15-day trial and a extra 10 percent lifetime discount for all current Userplane customers if you sign up before May 15th.