Bambi Francisco at MarketWatch asks why dating sites are still charging when social networking sites like Myspace offer free access to multitudes of singles.
She asks why would a consumer bother paying to be in front of Match's 15 million members around the world when they can find more than 100 million on MySpace, and even more on YouTube?
Yes, I know the paid sites provide some vetting and qualifying, and they cost about $1 a day. But there are no hard statistics on the success ratio of transactions, such as lasting relationships, let alone marriages. And, even Spark Network CEO David Siminoff predicts that the repeat business in online dating will go up from 2.7 times per person.
Match.com generated $248 million in sales last year and is on a run-rate to generate $312 million this year. (Spark Network's CEO David) Siminoff says that his network will do about $70 million in sales. And, he's estimating that privately-held eHarmony and Yahoo Personals generated about $165 million and $100 million, respectively. Just adding those big four alone gets you closer to $600 million. Still, that's chump change compared to the roughly $12 billion in advertising online.
Bambi says mass-market dating is dying and the solution is to niche-fy. That's exactly what Spark Networks is trying to do. Date warehouse or niches, what do you think?
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