Having spent some time working in the online personals biz and having used most all of the sites both personally and professionally, I can tell you that the following joke ad from College Humor is dead on. It’s especially true for the smaller sites like the ones that have the racy ads on Facebook.
Your best best is sticking with the major players like Yahoo, Match, and eHarmony (personally I dislike eHarmony, but it works for a lot of people). Some of the niche sites are OK too, like JDate.
First it was my friend Jason and his wife Randi. Jeb and I got Jason online. He did the rest. They were married a few years back after meeting on Match.com. Now it was my friend Lisa and her new husband Jeff. They also met on Match.com. The wedding was today. It was a nice wedding. Though I didn’t go to their wedding, my ex-girlfriend Bing also met her husband on Match.com. The product definitely works. I don’t know anyone that’s met their spouse on any other service.
I’ve been a Match.com user for years. I really enjoy the service and am a big believer in it (and the whole matchmaking segment in general). I’ve gone from being an evangelist for Match.com to an employee. I’ve resigned from my business development position at Verizon SuperPages.com and accepted a position at Match.com as Director of Business Development. I’m very excited. The matchmaking business is fascinating with a lot of exciting things going on.
Techcrunch digs into a new feature launched by Yahoo Personals. The feature allows users to customize the way search queries are returned to them. It’s about time. I love this feature. I wish more players would do this. While it could go much further, it’s a step in the right direction. It will make my time on YP much more efficient.
Another point made in the article involves physical attraction and is a dig on eHarmony. For the record – looks matter and eHarmony sucks.
Certainly this stuff helps some people find a match. But basic human nature seems to be more visual when it comes to attraction. People don’t necessarily want to fill out an excrutiatingly long personality profile to help them sort through potential matches, then to find out there’s no physical attraction.
Kudos to Yahoo. If we get those users off of eHarmony and onto Yahoo and Match, the matchmaking world will be a much better place.
This is perhaps the best company motto I’ve ever seen. It belongs to online dating site Online Booty Call (definitely NSFW). From their latest press release:
Reaching the one million member mark with only a single reported marriage is a tremendous accomplishment. We don’t ask for your life story because we don’t care. We think online dating should be easy and fun and not a lot of work. We want members to party and have fun. Our motto is: ‘Finding the pieces without the puzzle.’
I would never have found this if not for the efforts of Dave Evans. Thanks.
Susan Mernit (Yahoo! Personals) responded to an overview of new online dating sites by Mike Arrington. She is asserting that personals sites will operate side-by-side with social networking sites. I’m a big believer in online personals, but I don’t agree with her. Heavy social networking users are not the same folks that are heavy personals users. Social networkers, who tend to be younger, are getting by without personals. As these folks age into what Susan refers to as a “lifestage event,” it remains to be seen whether or not these users will find the need to use personals sites. This is complicated even further by the likelihood that social networking sites will improve their dating functionality over time. The personals sites need to find a way to work with the social networking sites to get to these younger users. It will likely mean new revenue models and having to share a bigger piece of the pie.
13-year Internet Marketing Veteran with Extensive Experience Taking Products and Partnerships from Idea to Marketplace
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