NBC5 -- Apr 13 -- "Well, there are a lot of things that online dating does well," said Mark Thompson of WeAttract.com. "Arranging marriages is not one of them. You see lots of happy couples. But what they're not going to tell you is that out of about 2,000 people they match up, only one couple is actually going to get married." Advertisements, some say, are in need of regulation. "These companies should be following the FTC guidelines for advertising," said Glenn Hutchinson, also of WeAttract.com. "If they're really prominently showing couples that have gotten married through their site, then they need to be very candid about how frequently that occurs and how many users actually find those happy marriages." Many Web sites do not share success rates.
The full article was originally published at NBC5, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Online dating holds great promise. The sites that deliver will prosper. The sites that do not will pull the rest of us down. Most sites do deliver. The industry just needs to do a better job of reporting success stories.
I don't know how a website is expected to know their success rate. I receive comments from members all the time saying, "Please remove my account, I have met the most wonderful person on your site and we want to see one another exclusively."
They are now gone and whether they get married or not, how am I supposed to know? I respect each person's privacy and although I clearly invite members to submit a success story if things work out for them, I hear of far more successes than are actually reported.
When folks tell me explicitly they are leaving the site because they are getting married or have gotten married, I ask them to share their story. Some indicate they don't wish to be publicized in a success story.
There is no way to keep statistics on successes. There is no way to require members report their successes. We do have 250 success stories listed online and receive about 10-15 new stories each month. We do display the date they were posted. But there is no way we can know how many folks there are that just simply don't report their successes.
When I ask members, "How did you hear about our site?" They might say, "My friend, uncle, cousin, mother, father met their spouse on your site." But no, I didn't hear about that success story.
To think that a site should know this information or be required to provide stats on it is ludicrous.
In the article, I do agree with Deanna Mason. The trumped up advertising mentioned, sickens me: "I've seen all these commercials, you know, they're like, 'It's scientifically proven, find the love of your life. You will find your husband on our site,'" Mason said. "You know, 'The most marriages of any site online. And I think, 'Well you know, why am I not finding this Mr. Right online?'"
When this particular website started advertising that they had the most marriages of any site online... I asked myself? How do you know this? Did anyone call MY website and ask me how many marriages my site has had? Did anyone do any kind of survey with me to see? NO! I see this as blatant false advertising! And from a site that caters to Christians. It is sickening. There is no way to tout that you have the best results unless we all put our results in a pot and compared. And as I said before, there is no way to know these values unless you require your members to tell you why they are leaving and even if they do leave because they are dating, that is not a success yet. Seldom do they come back and tell you they have gotten married or broken up.
One thing commented on again that I disagree with is this:
"Well, there are a lot of things that online dating does well," said Mark Thompson of WeAttract.com " Arranging marriages is not one of them. You see lots of happy couples. But what they're not going to tell you is that out of about 2,000 people they match up, only one couple is actually going to get married."
How does this Mark Thompson know this? Maybe he can spout these statistics about HIS website, but certainly not mine.
And what is a match? Is it when a member does a search and pulls up 2,000 potential matches? Or is a match only if they send more than 5 online mails to one another, or meet offline? What exactly is considered a match? So how can you say that of every 2,000 couples matched... I don't even know what a "match" is when talked about in this regard. If I pull up a list of 15 potential members, are those all matches? My site says, "here are your matches," but they certainly are not official matches if those 15 members never write to me and nothing comes of it. It is impossible to spout off any statistics.
Back to the first website that touts they have the most success stories anywhere.... their misleading advertising needs to be stopped. I receive complaints from my members all the time that they joined that site and that they hardly received any matches. They were at the beck and call of that site to get any matches, unlike our site where they can pull up their own matches 24 hours a day based on a detailed questionnaire, 2-way matching, excludes and includes. One member said of THAT site, "Great advertising campaign, poor implementation."
Sincerely,
Nannette Thacker
Owner and Developer
http://www.ChristianSinglesDating.com
Posted by: Nannette | Apr 18, 2005 at 02:56 PM