Lucrative in Love

Filed in archive Business on February 23, 2006

THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER -- Feb 12 -- With about 89 million singles in the U.S., the search for love is most intense between New Year's and Valentine's Day. Traffic typically increases by 20% in January and February, said Kristin Kelly, Match.com spokesperson, but the online dating industry is big business year-round. In 2006, it is estimated that U.S. consumers will spend about $521 million on dating Web sites' subscription fees, outpacing all other categories of online paid content. The Washington region is one of the hottest markets for online dating. There are nearly 200,000 Match.com subscribers in the area, making it the third-largest market for the dating company. Yahoo! Personals and Match.com are offering new and more expensive services that allow daters to conduct more targeted searches with a series of compatibility tests. Rochelle Adams, spokeswoman for Yahoo! Personals, said there continues to be "exciting opportunities with providing tools and technology to singles." FULL ARTICLE @ THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Mark Brooks: The number of monthly uniques visiting dating sites is down because social networks are sucking many of of them up. They add their profiles, hang out, and then realise that social networks are for friendship, internet dating is for dating, and they convert over to dating sites. Social networking sites are good for online dating. They've sucked up many uniques but dating sites are reporting improved conversions and higher revenues. How could this be? Social networks are a great precursor to online dating. Manu users who might not have considered online personals in the past will start with a social network and then 'upgrade' to a paid site to get more focused attention.