The Soulmate Manifesto: Uniting All Soulmate Believers in an Effort to Solve Dating | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Online Dating Services | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Jupiter Media estimates that about 20 million singles are currently using online dating services. Jupiter projects by 2004, 40 million people will be using these services. In 2003, the online dating sector grew 37% to a $313 million market. Despite increasing social acceptance of online dating services, there are several weaknesses in the current business model.
Weaknesses of Online Dating Services 1. Physical Appearance Can Not Be Judged The first disadvantage of online dating ads is physical appearance can not be judged accurately. Many studies have stressed the importance of physical attraction for romantic relationships to start. This is particularly important to men. Many online dating services allow members to post pictures. However, only a small percentage of members do post their pictures along with their profiles. The main two reasons for the lack of interest in posting pictures are related to privacy and the lack of technological knowledge. One of the big advantages of online personals is anonymity and posting your picture defeats this purpose. Also, in order to post pictures, a member must either have a digital camera or scanner. Connecting these devices maybe difficult for some people. After having a digital picture, a member must have a clear and easy way to upload it to the site. Pictures come in different sizes and need to either be cropped or shrunken to fit the default size dictated by the online dating service. As a picture is modified, its quality or size decreases reducing the information used to judge physical appearance. In addition, most pictures are headshots so body types are hard to judge. 2. People Can Be Dishonest or Exaggerated The second disadvantage is people are able to be more dishonest online. Studies of online communities have shown that dishonesty occurs often. People can exaggerate about themselves making them more attractive than they really are. 3. Financial Cost Most sites charge monthly fees in order for members to contact other members. These monthly fees usually range from $20-50 dollars. Added to the cost of these monthly fees is the cost of meeting for a date after online contact has been initiated. If people do not own a digital camera or scanner, they must purchase one if they wish to post their pictures. This will add a few hundred dollars to the cost. 4. Lack of Detailed Profiling With the exception of the leading online dating services, most online dating services do not supply enough personal information to allow members to judge each other accurately. Most do not allow members to write in detail information about important issues such as family, religious beliefs, or career. Only the leading services have questionnaires allowing members to indicate how important each profile parameter is to each member. Most online dating services use very simplistic matching technology and are only able to match simple profiles. The drawback to detailed questionnaires is that they are very tedious to fill out, scaring most members away. 5. Inadequate Membership Size In order to attract new members, online dating services must have a large database of members. Ambiguous reporting of the size of the database exists with the leading online dating services. Even when a company reports that they have millions of members, only a small percentage of members are active or subscribing members. Some people are on or visit multiple online services inflating the membership numbers. To inflate total membership numbers, some sites do not allow or make it difficult for members to suspend or delete their profiles. Members also forget to suspend or delete their profiles, inflating the numbers as well. What good is a member if he/she has not used the service in over 3 months? Online dating services like virtual communities follow the McCluff rule. The bigger the network the more valuable the network becomes. Apply this to online dating, the bigger the membership size, the better the odds that members will find their soulmates. From studying the membership acquisition rates of online dating services as well as virtual communities, a large amount of marketing and sales budget must be invested to reach critical mass. Because these sites are businesses and the two leading services are run by publicly traded companies, they need to make money either through membership fees and/or advertising. Revenue is also needed to offset the technology cost of maintaining these services. These costs include bandwidth, servers, web/database administration, and programmers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Below is the estimated membership growth history for Match.com, the leading online dating service. The recent spike in growth may be due to the acquisitions of Kiss.com and Udate.com in late December 2002. The majority of reported members are non-subscribers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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According to Match.com, as of the end of 2002, currently only 653,180 members are paying members. This number is worldwide, so the probability of you finding your soulmate near you is very small. Remember that only half of the members are of the opposite sex. In order for two members to contact each other, both members must be subscribers. Below is a graph of our estimated numbers of Match.com subscribers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Because it is one of the most profitable divisions of Ticketmaster, a publicly traded company, I doubt it will be free anytime soon. Yahoo! Personals, the second largest service, is part of Yahoo!, a publicly traded company also.
6. Membership Retention Is Hard Initially, online dating services are not very profitable businesses and take a long time to build critical mass to make them attractive to most singles. Maintaining and growing membership is a challenge because once a member finds a significant other, they tend to not use the service anymore. 7. Lack of Privacy Due to Advertising To make up for the small number of active subscribing members, online dating services claim that their web sites have the most stickiness compared to other sites. Matchmaker.com reported that an average member spends an average of 90 minute per day at their site. Scanning through each profile takes a lot of time. Internet media measurement companies report that online dating web sites are the stickiest, surpassing leading portals like Yahoo! and AOL. Combining this stickiness factor and access to detailed personal profiles that visitors and members have posted, advertisers can effectively direct banner or e-mail ads. Thus, a lot of money can be made through direct advertising at the expense of members' privacy. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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