Online Dating Insider

Revenues were $9.27 million, an increase from $3.09 million in 3Q 2002. Lossses of $2.53 million for the quarter are attributed to heavy investment in market share.

MatchNet plc owns American Singles, JDate, Glimpse, and CollegeLuvTM.

The heavy losses make me wonder if anyone is really making any money in online dating, despite the large amounts of money being spent by subscribers.

link to press release

Instant Messaging Planet reports that AOL will be launching a new online dating service, Love.com, that will rely heavily on AOL's AIM instant messaging system. Spring Street Networks and RealBranding are also taking part in the site's development. (See AOL Readies IM-based Dating Play.)

AOL's Love.com website has the following to say about the upcoming service:

New love.com online personals. It's the coolest way to quickly find a new friend, a hot romance, or the love of your life - and only love.com uses the power of AOL® Instant Messenger service to make it fun and spontaneous.

With AOL having an instant brand name, and huge resources with which to promote its new site, I suspect that Love.com will very quickly join the ranks of the top online dating sites. AOL will also benefit from having the AIM angle, helping to differentiate Love.com from the online dating competition.

Today's Wall Street Journal features one of the more informative articles about Online Dating that I've seen in a while (see SWF Seeks Attractive Head Shot - subscription required).

The snapshots in personal ads have traditionally been fuzzy and half-baked: Guys standing next to their cars. Or with their shirts off. And of course, the popular "ex crop," a photo featuring the forearm of a significant other who got mostly, but not entirely, cropped out.

I've noticed the exact same things myself! People are really bad photographers, and maybe also they have no clue as to which photo is good and which one is bad. With the increasing popularity of digital cameras, one would think that people would be able to get better photos of themselves for online dating purposes, but so far I haven't seen many.

The WSJ article also mentions the important rule to never appear in a photo with kids unless they're your own. (A lot of men, looking through ads, see a woman with a kid and assume that means it's hers. Women shouldn't have a kid in the photo unless they want men to think they are single moms.)

MatchNet PLC dating services including americansingles.com and jdate.com now let surfers search by "most popular." Not surprisingly, the profiles that pop up first are invariably the hotties, as opposed to people with the most amicably written profiles.

No surprise there. Luckily, when there's a demand for something, entrepreneurs will step up to the plate and attempt to fill it. The article talks about some companies that are trying to make money by offering portraits for online dating.

This will also mean that portrait photographers will have to break one of the traditional rules of the trade, which is to never let the customer have a negative. Increasingly, people will be getting a portrait taken for the sole purpose of acquiring an image file, the digital equivalent of the negative. I suspect this new arrangement will be a win-win situation for both photographers and clients.

In this somewhat humorous opinion article at The Scotsman, Just trust me, I've checked it with the experts, the author expresses some doubts that in five years, fifty percent of single people will meet their partners online.

I would rather throw myself head first into the miserable pit that is spinsterdom before internet dating again. What happens in the web pages of the damned is that you put a picture of yourself and a few details such as what you do, your favourite film, etc, and you wait to get e-mails from potential suitors.

The up-side is that you do get lots of offers. Sadly, these often come from people as desperate as yourself. Most you don’t even bother to reply to as they are from people old enough to be your grandfather or have listed Phil Collins as their all-time favourite artist. Sometimes they say things like: "My wife ran off and left me with five children to look after. Would this bother you?"

Then what happens is you get another e-mail from them a day later saying: "Why didn’t you reply? You just think you are too good for me, don’t you, don’t you?" To which you think this person must at least have some common sense because he has just hit the nail right on the head.

As you can tell, the author is a woman. It's interesting how men and women have vastly different complaints about online dating, but I suppose that's the subject of a future post.

MingleMatch, which manages and maintains 20 niche dating sites, announces a new color coded dating scheme.

the Color Code Relationship Profile is generated as participants answer a 45-question profile. Each profile places the individual in one of four core color groups -- red, white, yellow, or blue -- with the possibility of a secondary color of varying strength. With each primary and secondary color, an individual is given a detailed picture of what each color means. Knowing these personality traits, motivators, and idiosyncrasies creates a higher level of self-awareness and an understanding of how to relate to others.

It's too bad that the press release doesn't include any sort of scientific evidence regarding these color profiles.

link to press release