PRNewswire -- Aug 23 -- PerfectMatch.com appears prominently in the "Must Love Dogs" movie trailer and throughout the extensive television campaign. PerfectMatch's remarkable growth in 2005 has been driven by partnerships in entertainment with Sony Pictures' "Hitch," the Dr. Phil Show and Lifetime Television, as well as major online brands MSNBC, iVillage and drugstore.com. PerfectMatch is a premium "relationship" site and continues its impressive growth while the "casual" dating space faces an industry-wide slowdown. A primary reason for the slowed growth within the casual dating space is the emergence of the savvy Internet dater. "Casual sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals are terrific to introduce users to online dating," Mr. Dahl, CEO, stated continued. "As singles gain confidence, we can expect them to graduate to a community of like-minded people. At PerfectMatch, singles can do that because we have a community of genuine people looking for real love and sincere 'relationships.'" PerfectMatch.com(TM), is preparing for another sizeable growth increase in 2006 with the release of a book "Finding Your Perfect Match" authored by PerfectMatch relationship authority Dr. Pepper Schwartz (Penguin), and a partnership with NBC Universal's "The Break-up" starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.
The full article was originally published at Red Nova, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Match and Yahoo Personals, along with True.com I might add (a relationships site with a slightly broader perspective), allow users the freedom to decide what kind of relationships they are interested in. eHarmony and PerfectMatch are focused on people who are 'very single' and very motivated to hook up for a longer term relationship. Examples of full-on casual dating sites include Adultfriendfinder/Passion.com (Alexa rank has gone from 100 to 45 over the prior 12 months), Sexsearch (Alexa rank grown from 1500 to 600), Mate1 (15,000 to 2,000). Eroticy and IwantU are plugging along as well. Morals aside, full-on casual dating sites are here to stay. This segment is alive and kicking and not to be ignored.
I don't think straight hooking up was ever really "in." And for that matter, neither is straight, full blown "soul mate" searches.
The market studies I've seen reveal that the extremes of the dating market only account for maybe 40% (20% on each end), whereas daters who indicate an interest in both short/long term relationships account for 60% of the market.
Pushing people down a rigid relationship path rather than allowing the consumers to decide for themselves what is best... that seems to be what is "out."
My two cents anyway....
Thx,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Chief Psychologist, TRUE.com
Posted by: James Houran | Sep 01, 2005 at 08:12 PM