Statistics

Match.com released a list of the top 25 most affordable cities in America for dating. In each city the average cost of a typical date was compared, which was a casual dinner for two plus two movie tickets. Pittsburgh came out on top, since it was the cheapest at just over $77 for a typical date. Los Angeles rounding off the list at number 25, with a couple needing to spend $126 for the same date. Here is the complete list of the top 25 most affordable cities for dating:

1. Pittsburgh
2. Detroit
3. Sacramento, Calif.
4. Phoenix
5. Indianapolis
6. St. Louis, Mo.
7. Tampa
8. Orlando
9. Houston
10. Charlotte, N.C.
11. Atlanta
12. Denver
13. Cleveland
14. Miami
15. Portland, Ore.
16. Minneapolis
17. Seattle
18. Philadelphia
19. Boston/li>
20. Dallas
21. Washington, D.C.
22. Chicago
23. New York
24. San Francisco
25. Los Angeles

For more information on the topic, read the press release. To find out further details about the dating service, read our Match.com review.

Unfortunately Spark Networks has continued their downward trend. Revenue for Q2, 2009 was $11.2 million, which is a 25 percent decrease when compared to $15 million from Q2, 2008. This is also a 7 percent decrease in revenue from Q1, 2009. Revenue dropped due to continued declines in subscriber numbers from JDate and the General Markets dating sites. Average paying subscribers for Spark Networks as a whole in quarter 2, 2009 is 163,217. This is a 3 percent decrease when compared to the last quarter and a 14 percent decrease when compared to the same quarter last year.

JDate saw revenue drop 18% to $7,1 million when compared to the same quarter in 2008. This is the result of subscribers falling 10 percent to 82,769. The Other Affinity Networks had revenues which totalled $3.3 million and 65,409 subscribers. Compared to the same quarter last year, revenue fell 3 percent while subscriber numbers increased 3 percent. General Market Networks saw the worse of it. Revenues dropped 68% to $701,000 and subscribers fell 58% to 14,022 when compared to quarter 2, 2008.

The planned decrease in revenue for General Market Networks is largely attributable to an 85% decrease in the marketing spend for this segment in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.

For the full 2009 Q2 release visit Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks First Quarter 2009 Financials

The Cron.com in Houston, Texas took a look at online dating and how a number of dating sites have experience growth during the past year, as the global economy has shrank. Most of the stats we have heard before in other articles, including some from Match.com (see Review) and eHarmony which both saw memberships increase in the high teens percentage wise when compared to the previous year. New facts we learned, included finding out that OkCupid has seen a 75 percent membership increase since September and that the professional matchmakers at It's Just Lunch have seen a 16 percent growth in the last 6 months.

The Houston Chronicle also included a number of success stories from different couples which lead to marriages. There was testimonials for It's Just Lunch, Together Dating and eHarmony.

The Wall Street Journal in an article called "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots" attempts to find out if some of the statistics are true, in regards to the number of marriages a dating site claims to have generated. eHarmony is targeted because of their claim that 236 members get married everyday (see Story). I believe this works out to 2% of the total number of Americans who got married last year met through the site. Match.com is also mentioned due to stats they released recently (and then pulled) that says 12 couples got married or engaged everyday on their dating site (see Story).

The author, Carl, in a way defends the dating sites published stats when he says that:

One obstacle to further research is that newlyweds are hard for researchers to find. So online-dating companies looking to tout their success as matchmaking yentas have sought novel ways to enumerate marriages.

Less than 2 percent of Americans get married every year. To perform a survey and to get an accurate sample size 1.76 million phone calls would need to be made says Dr. Gonzaga of eHarmony. That would be a costly endeavor, so dating sites are forced to find creative ways to come up with some marriage numbers. The closest thing to an election-quality poll Carl could find was a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, which in 2005 reported from a poll of 3,215 adults, that 3 million Americans found a long term relationship (not necessarily marriages) through a dating site.

I notice the other day that eHarmony has now hidden their traffic statistics over at Quantcast. This is what you see now:

On eHarmony's Quantcast profile page you still get to see the US demographics and how many unique visitors they had last month but, the daily traffic and trends graphs are not available to the general public anymore. eHarmony first became Quantified by Quantcast last summer (see Story). A website being Quantified means that Quantcast directly measured the traffic data. It is not based on estimates as other sites may be on Quantcast and other traffic measuring services like Alexa, Comscore and Compete.

Over the last year eHarmony has become a much more open dating service, they have started several blogs and answered customer complaints in their forums. I hope that the fact, eHarmony has hid their daily traffic statistics, it is not a sign that they may have decided to reverse this trend.

For more on this matchmaking service, read our eHarmony review.

Here is the results from a poll that 1,000 Zoosk members took about Virtual Gifts. This information is probably similar for members of other dating sites.

• Only 15 percent of members have ever sent virtual gifts.
• 76 percent stated they were more likely to respond to a potential match who sent them a virtual gift.
• 71 percent send virtual gifts which reflect their personality.
• Traditional virtual digital gifts (flowers, chocolates) make up 37 percent of all gifts sent. Gifts that show off a person's wild side (martini, etc...) make up 27 percent. 23 percent of all gifts are warm and fuzzy (teddy bear, etc...). Finally, 13 percent of virtual gifts are seasonal.

To find out more information about this online dating service you can read our review of Zoosk