Trends
The United States generated $957 million in revenue in 2008 from online dating services The U.S. online dating market is expected to increase spending to $932 million in 2011.
At the end of November 2004, there were 844 lifestyle and dating sites, a 38 percent increase since the start of the year, according to Hitwise Inc. However, market share was increasingly growing by several large commercial services, including AOL Personals, Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and eHarmony. By 2007, many prominent studies show that Baby Boomer interest in online dating had soared.
Most recently, it has become common for online dating websites to provide webcam chats between members. In addition, as the online dating population becomes larger, sites with specific demographics are becoming more popular as a way to narrow the pool of potential matches.
The most successful niche sites pair people by race, sexual orientation or religion. The 20 most popular dating sites in 2006 as ranked by Hitwise include JDate (for Jewish singles), Christian Mingle, ChristianCafe, Manhunt (same sex introductions), Love From India, Black Christian People Meet, Amigos (for Latino singles), Asian People Meet, and Shaadi (for Indian singles). In March 2008, the top 5 overall sites held 7% less market share than they did one year ago while the top sites from the top five major niche dating categories made considerable gains.
In addition to niche sites, there are more general sites for the online dating beginner. Time magazine notes that leading the scene are Match.com and eHarmony.com. Match.com bases its matchmaking on the Myers-Briggs personality test. Conversely, eHarmony pair people up using their "secret key dimensions of compatibility" which are grouped into core traits and vital attributes. Match.com has a more open policy, whereas eHarmony.com only pairs up straight matches, however, offers another site for gay matches.
One of the "hottest trends in online dating" is the babyboomers on the top dating sites. Around 30% of America's 80 million babyboomers are single.
Since 2003, several free dating sites, operating on ad based-revenue rather than monthly subscriptions, have appeared and become increasingly popular. Several newer sites such as OkCupid are beginning to offer more full featured dating services for free, and are starting to compete with staples in the free dating site world such as PlentyofFish. Due to the level of competition between free dating sites, as well as the overall drop in traffic to and revenue for dating sites generally, some sites are branching out into self-service advertising. This represents a break from traditional externally sourced ads and is just one of the ways that the revenue models of free dating sites are evolving.
Especially popular in Eastern Europe, some sites offer full access to messaging and profiles, but provide additional services for pay, such as bumping profiles up to the top of the list, removing advertisements, making paying users' profiles appear several times in different places in the search results, and giving paying users a more advanced search engine to work with (in one real example, free users may only search for persons of specified age, gender, orientation, and city, while subscribers may search for any and all parameters listed in profiles, such as height, weight, interests, etc.). Also, this model generally allows users to switch between free and paying status at will and without having to do anything, simply providing advanced features for a set period of time whenever the according payment is received. Ease of payment is also generally higher, with such sites accepting a variety of online currencies, letting users charge the payment to their cellular phones, etc. Such sites earn revenue from a mix of advertising and sale of additional options.
Online daters may have more liberal social attitudes compared to the general population in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Online Dating Service
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