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Online Dating & Web 3.0 (Part 1)
Overview
Online dating (including Matchmaking, Personals and Matrimonials) is making waves across the world. In this era of online networking, dating on the net has revolutionized the age old profession of matchmaking by making it more affordable and convenient to the masses. According to Hitwise there are more than 1,421 sites in the Lifestyle – Dating category in the US.
Online dating services started catching up in 2001 and have grown phenomenally over the next few years to emerge as a $500 million-plus industry in 2005. According to Marketdata the dating sites make up 49% of the dating services industry. At least 15% of the U.S. Internet users visit an online dating site each month. The online dating services market is expected to be $650 million by 2008.
JupiterResearch estimates that approximately 10% of Internet users visited an online dating service at least once in 2006, a fall of 6% over 2005. A study conducted by Cornell University on online dating sites found that 52.6 percent of men lied about their height and 64.1 percent of women lied about their weight. Nearly one-fourth of men lied about their age also. Industry insiders believe that the flurry of new age dating and introduction sites have earned the industry a bad name as many of them have failed to live up to the initial hype and have resulted in consumer dissatisfaction.
Europe
The European online dating sites have also been growing at a scorching pace and the number of users of dating sites has grown from 4% of total internet users in 2005 to 6% in 2006. According to JupiterResearch, the number of paid users is forecasted to rise from 2.8 million in 2006 to 6.0 million in 2011. Revenues of European online dating sites are expected to double from 243 million euros in 2006 to 549 million euros in 2011.
Asia
Online matchmaking and matrimonials is a booming industry in the developing economies of India and China. The Chinese are experiencing an online dating boom and sites like Baihe.com, Yeeyoo.com and Meetic.com.cn are experiencing phenomenal traffic growth. iResearch forecasts the Chinese online dating market to be $80 million and growing.
According to pluggd.in the Indian matchmaking and matrimonial sites had over 7 million registered users in the fiscal year 2006-07 and is projected to grow by 2.5 million to 9.5 million users by the fiscal year ended 2007-08. Some of the popular Indian matrimonial portals are Shaadi.com, Bharat Matrimony, SimplyMarry and Rediff Matchmaker.
This segment is part 1 in the series : Online Dating & Web 3.0
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The last online date I had was in 1999.
By that I mean, if you can find honesty in anyone that is putting a profile together, that’s fine, but it’s unlikely any of us are really truthful about what we are as far as beliefs, looks, position and society.
Even with as much connecting that we do, the reality is we don’t quite communicate the truth very often.
Good post.
Jason, what an interesting perspective. I’ve never done online dating, but I believe that many of the acquaintances I’ve made through blogging are extraordinarily honest about themselves. That said, I don’t dispute your suggestion (and the studies that Sramana cites) that people aren’t being accurate on dating profiles.
Do you think people are more likely to be inaccurate on dating sites than elsewhere? I suspect they are. Most of us are more insecure about dating than other areas of our lives. It would be interesting to take 1,000 people and do a comparison of their dating profiles vs. their FaceBook profiles. Are there any willing researchers out there?
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[…] doesn’t have much of a presence in the Online Personals or Dating space. It could look at acquiring a site as a large portion of the newspaper personals have shifted from […]
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[…] paying users can contact users they meet through Yahoo! Personals and exchange contact information. Online Dating is a major category, and Yahoo has a reasonably strong position in it. However, they would need to make acquisitions to defend their position in the long […]
Don’t forget us so called ‘niche’ websites, were coming along with a very targeted product for our audience.
[…] Online Dating & Web 3.0 (Part 1) | Sramana Mitra on Strategy – Overview. Online dating (including Matchmaking, Personals and Matrimonials) is making waves across the world. In this era of online networking, dating on the net has revolutionized the age old profession of matchmaking by making it more … […]
Online dating is a great tool that can create a relation between a lot people and they can share everything like their feelings, thought, ethics, culture etc.
I hope that it is a best way to convert our sadness to happiness.
Thanks.
Overview of online dating information…
Review online dating personals for information is more convenient than trying to find someone with the time and effort. We all know what can lead to unpleasant surprises, it is certainly one of the advantages of online dating. Dating Online familiarity…
Some of the free dating websites are starting to rival the paid ones. The only upside to a paid site these days is if someone is paying then they are probably more genuine and trustworthy.