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Facebook can kill Match & eHarmony if it decides to

Dave Evans opines,

How could the dating industry respond to Facebook adding a dating feature? Go ask Match or eHarmony to add just 5 new questions to their profiles. That would take three months of meetings just to agree on the questions, then fighting to get added to the development schedule, then testing and QA, then finally rollout. Maybe less but you see what I’m getting at. This is the reality of large companies that lack the nimbleness of smaller scrappier startups. I’ll give it to Match that DownToEarth was a pretty solid skunkworks project, but DTE dropped 100k visitors in April, that more traffic than 95% of all dating sites. So much for the great experiment. Side note: Even in this economy, Match US growth is up 10% last month.

via You Got Your Match in My Facebook, dated June 23, 2009.

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    Comments 2

    1. Fernando Ardenghi wrote:

      “Facebook can kill Match & eHarmony if it decides to”

      I do not think so!

      The only way I see to kill Match&Chemistry, eHarmony, Yahoo!Personals, True and PerfectMatch is offering a high quality compatibility matching method to dissatisfied/past customers of those online dating sites, trying to steal their users; and to prospective customers of Offline Proposals.

      I think in less than 3 years the Online Dating Market will divide into two well-identified branches.

      13-25 years old persons (teenagers) not interested in serious dating; they will use the service for fun, sometimes merged with social networks, like Facebook dating applications.
      Teenagers are used to send a lot of traffic with emails, photos, videos, or simply stay in chat rooms for hours. They will need exclusive CONTENTS for members. They will want to be 24hs a day online or pending of their cellphone / smartphone / netbook or other computer. Each person will have its private Truman Show. Everybody will be Truman for 5,000 “friends” (casual acquaintances / fans). Mobile applications will serve as a complement to leverage those fun sites.

      AND

      26-and more years old persons interested in serious dating. They will need quality CONTACTS (compatible real persons) like the ones provided by actual off line dating proposals, reliability, Code of Ethics, Legislation and Special Services (professionalism): the next generation of serious dating will be more scientific than ever, most probably the 16PF5 test for personality profiling in different languages (or similar test) will be a “must have” in compatibility matching.
      An over 26 years old single who wants “compatible real quality contacts” needs professionalism / scientific matching techniques and allowing friends / parents / neighbours / relatives / fans or other social networking users to be involved in a private matter as building a personal relationship with future in mind will add an “interested third parties ingredient” in a process that only concerns TWO PERSONS.

      The U.S. market becomes saturated with more than 1.500 sites and free dating sites and competition from popular social networking sites attracts cost-conscious singles.
      - Top_5_sites_by_revenue (Match&Chemistry / eHarmony / Yahoo!Personals / True / PerfectMatch) have a revenue of USD816.1 million (90% by subscriptions, 10% by ads)
      2 sites with a revenue less than USD10 million per year <= USD 20 million
      3 sites with a revenue less than USD5 million per year <= USD 15 million
      7 sites with a revenue less than USD1 million per year <= USD 7 million
      23 sites with a revenue less than USD100.000 per year <= USD 2.3 million
      260 sites with a revenue less than USD10.000 per year <= USD 2.6 million
      400 sites with a revenue less than USD5.000 per year <= USD 2 million
      800 sites with no revenue at all.

      - All_free_sites (PlentyOfFish, OKCupid, SinglesNet, DownToEarth and others) have a revenue less than USD35 million.

      * The U.S. Dating Market (and the world market) remains enormous, there are more than 93 million singles but all paying members (subscribers) are not more than 5 million.
      * Top_5_sites_by_revenue offer some kind of a proprietary compatibility matching method but they reach "as low as" 3 or 4 persons high compatible per 1,000 persons, so in a 10,000,000 persons database, you have as many as 30,000 / 40,000 persons to contact, that means a whole precision less than anyone could achieve by searching on one's own!

      - Owners and CEOs of Online Dating sites are more worried about on how to:
      . attract prospective customers,
      . convert them into paying members,
      . retain them as paying members as much as possible, if not, leave them as free users to increase database.
      * Popular social networking sites did not hurt at all top 5 online dating sites. Free online dating sites only exist to send prospective clients to paid online dating sites, and paid online dating sites are not performing as expected for their paying members.
      It seems they are only good for fun, for instant gratification, for entertainment purposes but not when a serious dater is looking for a long term relationship with commitment. Online dating sites Compatibility Tests are only fueled by big marketing budgets and not by serious scientific evidence.

      * Online dating sites should had killed offline dating proposals (chains, professional matchmakers, etc) since some years ago, but offline proposals are still alive and with good health.
      * Divorce rates are still high.

      Online Dating Industry Success Indicator will be to kill all type of offline dating proposals and to lower Divorce rates.

      Regards,

      Fernando Ardenghi.
      Buenos Aires.
      Argentina.
      ardenghifer@gmail.com

      Posted 25 Jun 2009 at 8:04 pm
    2. Pyke wrote:

      “Facebook can kill Match & eHarmony if it decides to”

      FB has critical mass, yes, but I assure you it won’t go into online dating. Why?

      A. Several third-party FB apps have tried, and none of them are above the status of “barely surviving”. The fact is that there’s nothing viral about finding dates on the Internet. (c.f. Engage.com)

      B. Going there will force FB to deal with identity verification, background checks, romance scams and other PR risks. Why will FB want to risk having themselves in a headline, “Woman scammed $50K by date from Facebook”?

      Posted 11 Jul 2009 at 11:29 am

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