Statistics

Catholic singles who are looking to marry are turning to their religious roots, according to a recent article in The Denver Post. Rather than looking for matches based on similar interests or careers, they look for people who hold the same faith, values, and outlook.

When it comes to dating, Catholics do have a lot of choice. In 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated there were 22.6 million single Catholics in the U.S.

Anastasia Northrop, who founded the National Catholic Singles Conference in 2005, explains the high numbers of single Catholics. She believes that "endless choices" have made it easy for people to shy away from marriage. She maintains, "people hesitate to commit because they want to keep their options open."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Northrop could be right. In the past five decades, the percentage of married men ages 35 to 44 has fallen from 88% in 1960 to 69% in 2007. For women, it has fallen from 87% to 72%. However, the popularity of online dating shows that people seem to be looking for partners, and a growing percentage of online daters are turning to religious dating sites such as CatholicMatch.com.

Perhaps the uncertainty of dating today plays a part. With the number of people remaining single through their thirties and forties, coupled with the high rates of divorce and broken families, people turn to religion for guidance and stability.

This is especially true for Catholic singles. As of 2008, the Pew Forum states that 78 percent of married Catholics were married to other Catholics. The only religious affiliations with higher same-faith unions were Hindus, 90 percent, and Mormons, 83 percent.

According to founders of religious dating sites like CatholicMatch.com, people look to religion because shared faith seems to boost chances of marital success.

Match.com in Australia (Match.com.au) has been in operation for 15 years now. They launched back in April of 2002 after buying out Soulmates Technology. To celebrate this milestone they have released some Aussie statistics about Match.com:

• More than 80,000 profiles are viewed every day.
• Everyday 16,000 winks and messages are sent. This equals to 6.5 million communications a year.
• 67% of Australian singles have never been married.
• 59% of members are looking for a non-smoker.
• 90% of members are okay with a partner who drinks on occasion.
• Gold Coast members are 45% more likely to have children than those members from Sydney.
• 64% of men are looking for a partner who has some tertiary education. With women it is 71%.

To find out more information about this dating site, read our review of Match.com.

Quepasa.com is a social network website with over 13 million members that services the Latino online community. According to Compete their traffic has increased 5 times to 275,000 unique visitors a month, over the last 6 months. Last week an announcement was made that Quepasa has partnered with the dating site Zoosk to make their service for singles the primary option to all of Quepasa members. This partnership benefits both companies. It gives Zoosk a large, new, and relatively untapped singles market and it gives Quepasa an additional revenue generating service.

Members of Quepasa can expect the dating service from Zoosk to go live by the end of this month.

To find out more about the dating site you can read our Zoosk review.

Earlier this month Spark Networks released their first quarter earnings for 2010. Revenue in this quarter overall dropped 12 percent to 10.5 million when compared to the same period last year. When compared to the last quarter in 2009, revenue dropped 5 percent. Net income for this quarter was $929,000. This is a 3 times increase over the same period last quarter of $311,000. Average paying subscribers for the whole company was 169,833. This is an increase of 1 percent when compared to quarter 1 of 2009.

Spark Networks dating sites that fall under the Jewish Networks banner (made up mostly of JDate) had revenue of $7.1 million. This is a decrease of 7 percent when compared to quarter 1, 2009. Some good news is found here because subscribers did increase 10 percent too 93,235. The last time JDate had this many subscribers was back at the end of 2007.

The other important division for Spark Networks is their Other Affinity Networks (the MingleMatch sites). For this quarter they earned $3 million which is a 10 percent decrease when compared to the same quarter last year. Subscribers were up though, by 6 percent to 68,124.

For the full 2010 Q1 release visit Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks Fourth Quarter 2009 Financials

The Skout dating application for the iPhone has reached version 2.0 and not only did it get some new features it also got a design makeover. New features include virtual gifts, a game called "Look at Me" which allows you to bid for attention of other members and a Wink-Bomb. The bomb allows members using Skout to reach hundreds of singles in your proximity all at once with location based dating and the GPS in your phone. With the app you can then find out who has been looking at your profile and think you're hot. With this information in hand you can then contact these people to meet up somewhere close by.

If you are interested in trying out Skout for your iPhone here are a few more interesting stats about the dating service.

• Skout was the first iPhone Dating Application
• Skout members send on average 100 messages in 1 month.
• Currently over 750,000 people have used Skout's location based dating option.
• A Skout iPad dating application is currently being developed.

Here is a sneak peek video of the dating app in action:

For a few more details read the press release. Here is our list of other dating sites which offer their services on mobile phones.

According to the Toronto Star, AshleyMadison.com has seen a huge influx of female newlyweds (women married 3 years or less). In March of 2009 there were 3,184 women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that were actively using the service. In March of 2010 the number had increased 4 times to 12,442.

When the service was first launched back in 2001 everything from the name to the color scheme of the website was designed to attract women. CEO Noel Biderman knew men would join the site easily enough; it was the women he was worried about. It seems Mr. Biderman did not have much to be concerned about. A number of experts are saying that the female infidelity rate has increased by 50 percent in the last 10 years. This is due to that fact that women now have much more exposure to potential partners through work and the internet than a generation ago. While men are cheating more as well, research suggests that about twice as many men on average cheat than women.

According to the Star, here are the Ashley Madison membership numbers as of March 2010: