Online dating sites face a challenge that other e-commerce sites don't face. As Match.com marketing VP Melanie Angermann explains it, people have always been willing to talk about, say, buying a book or shopping for clothes on the Internet. However, she adds, "No one wanted to tell anyone that they were on a personals site. It had this huge legitimization issue."
But this has been changing, says Angermann, particularly in the last year. Bolstering that claim, comScore Media Metrix figures agree: the number of visitors to personals sites grew 29 percent between November 2001 and April 2002; in December 2002, 26.6 million people - or about one in five single adults - visited personals sites.
However, Angermann notes, "We're still not all the way there in getting rid of the personals stigma. Socially it's very legitimized, everyone's heard about it. But there are still a lot of people who say, 'I think online dating is great - but it's not for me.'"
First Mover Advantage
Dallas-based Match.com has done as much as any site to lessen the personals stigma. Media Metrix identifies the site as the category leader, with 5.7 million visitors in December 2002. Its closest competitor was Yahoo Personals, with 3.9 million monthly visitors.
Match's revenue statement from the third quarter of last year says the site has over 650,000 subscribers, each of whom pay $24.95 a month - a 158 percent increase over the same period in 2001. Match's third quarter revenue was $33.4 million.
Jonathan Gaw, an analyst with research firm IDC, says that Match attained its large user base partially through "a very advantageous deal with America Online." But Match's AOL alliance is only one of many portal relationships the site leverages for distribution; others include MSN, Excite, EarthLink, Netscape and BET.
Furthermore, Match had the first mover advantage, launching in 1995. The site's early start and wide distribution have combined to give it what Gaw calls a critical component of personals success: a large member base. "Users want to go to where there's the most choice," he says. "Just like an online auction space, if you're a buyer, you need to go to where all the sellers are."
Word-of-mouth endorsements also help on the marketing side. "Once [a personals site] gets to a certain size, you hardly need to do any more promotion because it just promotes itself."
Match's early success caught the eye of larger companies. In 1999, Ticketmaster acquired Match. It was fortunate pairing for Match: Ticketmaster drives traffic to the site through CitySearch, its online network of local entertainment guides.
Ticketmaster is controlled by USA Interactive, whose chairman, Barry Diller, aggressively promotes e-commerce - particularly online personals. In March 2002, Ticketmaster acquired Soulmates Technology, an international online dating network that operates in approximately 30 countries. Soulmates provides Match with a global reach; the site now helps matchmaking in places like Denmark, Singapore, India and South Africa.
The Power of Mainstream
Niche dating services abound on the Internet. Successful narrow-focus sites include CatholicSingles.com, which claims more Catholic singles than other site, and Jdate.com, the leading online Jewish dating site. Personals sites with an even narrower focus include DoggieDating.com, which helps pet owners ("We offer members who are not afraid of commitment. How do we know? They are pet lovers") and Iowa-dating.com, which helps singles in cities like Cedar Rapids and West Des Moines.
In contrast, Match offers a big tent. Users can search by zip code, age, physical preferences, lifestyle practices, relationship desires or any of an exhaustive list of personal preferences. The site also has communities that offer gay, lesbian and senior venues to find partners.
On the other hand, Match does not cater to as open an audience as those of distinctly urban personals sites, like the Village Voice or the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Whereas the Bay Guardian has a section devoted to men, women or couples seeking partners, Match prohibits "solicitation of multiple of additional partners." Match requires its members to be unmarried.
In contrast to the large urban sites, a perusal of Match personal ads reveals less nose piercings and more references to traditional dating. In the Match section detailing "success stories," after a couple hit it off, one happy member wrote that he "got down on my knee and proposed to her," resulting in a June wedding.
As IDC's Gaw noted, "The Village Voice site might appeal to a certain style of person, whereas Match.com might appeal to a more suburban person."
As Match's Angermann puts it, "We take pride in having quality members and we're very strict about our standards on our site. We've found that our users are very serious about looking for a great date for this weekend, or something a lot more long lasting." She says the site reads and must approve of all member profiles.
One may or may not prefer Match's more mainstream feel, but from a business perspective it appears to be the most profitable way to run a personals site. By setting up the site to avoid practices that some might find unusual, it helps present Match as a socially acceptable place to meet a partner. If using the Internet has been viewed as a strange way to mate search, then arguably Match's more traditional feel counteracts this, creating a comfort zone for a larger percentage of users.
Dating Technology
Like most personals sites, Match enables its members to correspond anonymously with other members using a double-blind e-mail system, keeping their real e-mail address hidden to protect their privacy.
Match's search technology includes a two-way matching agent called Venus, which helps users find like-minded users. A 31-year-old woman, for example, may be looking for a man between the ages of 25 and 35. She can look at the profile of any 25 to 35-year-old man - but some wouldn't be interested in women in her age range. Using Venus, she can narrow her search to just those men who would be interested in a woman in her early 30s. She can set Venus to search for users who fit a long list of her preferences, focusing on only the most likely matches.
Trial members of Match can post a three-day profile for free, allowing them to search the database and explore the system. However, if they want to communicate with potential dates, they must subscribe. Match's Angermann said she couldn't reveal the conversion rate of trial members, but various reports say the industry average is somewhere between 15 to 40 percent.
Not Just For Geeks
Online personals sites like Match are clearly e-commerce's rising stars, but they may be affecting more than Internet business. Some analysts suggest online personals are changing courtship itself. They say that, by shifting the partner search away from random meeting, by presenting each user with several choices, online personals make dating more efficient, and hence more "market like." Additionally, personals sites are set up to encourage both men and woman to be the initiator; on sites like Match both men and women play the roles of "asker" and "asked." Even the gender division is roughly equal: Media Metrix says the population visiting online personals is 54 percent male, 46 percent female.
Perhaps the biggest social change is the popularity of the sites themselves, which have shifted from being perceived as an odd place to mate search to being visited by one in five single adults. As Angermann says, "It's not just for geeks anymore."
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
