I am surprised at the Economist. They posted this article on Thursday about how Online-dating websites prosper in the recession. While this may have been true 5 months ago, it is not the case anymore. They should of really done more fact checking. Take a look at a few traffic monitoring sites like Compete.com and they show most dating sites in February actually stayed flat or lost 5 percent or more of their visitors, when compared to January. February is suppose to be a dating sites most busy month. Granted traffic monitoring sites are not 100 percent accurate but they do give you a rough idea when you take several of them in consideration.
The Economist should also realize that traffic alone does not determine a website success. Revenue and Net Income ultimately determines if any business will survive. Not once is this information mentioned. They talk about OkCupid and how their registered active users is up but no where do they mention how online advertising has dried up in the last few months, OkCupid's primary source of revenue. eHarmony is also mentioned but, traffic patterns do not support this. Plus, there is a huge goof in the article:
eHarmony, a wholesome marriage-oriented site with more than 20m paying subscribers.
eHarmony has had 20 million people register on the site since they launched in 2000, this is both free and paid members. In 2008 we had estimated eHarmony only has about 90,000 paid members at anyone time (see this page for more details).
Another thing the Economist should of considered is, none of the major dating sites have had a press release lately touting the continued growth during the recession. This is another sign things may not be as good as back in November-December 2008, when we saw press releases from dating sites like Match.com, eHarmony and Perfectmatch. This was when they talked about the recession and the increased growth they received.
For more information on the dating sites mentioned in this post, read our eHarmony review and our OkCupid review.
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