Are dating Web sites past their prime?

By Paul Smalera
WashPost
Sunday, June 27, 2010

How many marriages a day do Internet dating sites generate? Last year, the Wall Street Journal tried to cut through the hype and found that the claims put forth by major players such as eHarmony, Match.com and Plenty of Fish were dubious at best. And yet eHarmony's latest news release can't help but crow about a three-year-old Harris Interactive poll that said, "On average, 236 people are married in the United States every day as a result of being matched by eHarmony." Really? By the latest national marriage figures, that would mean it's driving nearly 4 percent a day. If that's true, might I suggest the site look into hooking up its customers with caterers and ministers? Because it stands to reason that it's losing a golden opportunity to grow the business.

And growth is what the paid online dating business is sorely lacking. There's no question that as the Internet matured, many singles flocked to paid dating sites and made them attractive things to own and build. But as Business Week pointed out, most subscription-based sites have been battling a downward trend for a while. And since last year, Match.com's traffic has been flat at best.

As Techcrunch notes, Match.com does most of its growing these days by buying competing Web sites, rather than reinventing the world's oldest dance. Match.com is also becoming Yahoo's official personals service, with the portal ditching its homegrown brand. In the same vein, eHarmony found itself last summer trying to explain how a 20 percent increase in registrations led to a 33 percent drop in traffic.

The numbers suggest that while singles in search of a match may post a profile, they're not finding who they're looking for. EHarmony and Match.com own 30 percent of the audience for all dating sites, and, taken together, their recent histories pose a troubling question for both their parent companies and those who prefer "scientific matching" techniques to real-life church socials: Has paid Internet dating peaked?

(More here.)

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