Online Personals 'Success'

Mar 22 -- A writer asked me for numbers of 'successes' on online dating sites.  Here are my thoughts.  Success can be defined at 8 levels...  Online dating sites basic 'promise' is to put compatible singles in front of each other, in the real world, on a first date.  The first level of success is with two singles IMing or both emailing each other.  Then, talking on the phone.  #3 is a big step, meeting face to face, and I think most of the people who make it to phone conversations make it to face to face meetings.  Then perhaps they decide to date, repeatedly, make it to 3 months, then 9 months, then to a prolonged committed relationship, then marriage.  8 levels of 'success' if you like.  Now how do the user numbers match up?   

20+ million online daters (not including social networks) for 2006 leading to several million paid online dating users.

1. two people IMing/emailing online - several million daters make it this far
2. two people talking on the phone - 5+ million with at least one phone encounter
3. face to face meeting - 5 million meet face to face
4. active dating, 3 dates or more (sexual) - 4 million actively date one person or more
5. 3 months relationship - 750,000 make it into an ongoing relationship of 3+ months
6. 9 months - 250,000 make it to 9 months with at least one person
7. fiance/prolonged relationship/15 month - 100,000 have prolonged committed relationships
8. marriage - 50-75,000 marriages will result from online dating introductions this year

What do you think?  Way off?  Close?  Your comments please...   Please add your informed opinion and have your own stab at the numbers.  - Mark Brooks

Comments

[Alexander Shetinin]

Mark,

You and Fernando will make a cute pair building theories with no basis and with no mean to verify them.
A cumulative effect of your multiple assumptions makes them useless beyond what you call level 2. That means if you estimates are off even a tiny 10% on every level, your finanl conclusion will be accurate +/- 100% or useless in other words.
And by the way, why did you stop at 8 levels? How about the divorce percentage of those who met and got married through a dating site? A really interesting and innovative question would be: do compatibility tests provided by some site improve a quality of marriage or not?

[Fernando Ardenghi]

Have you seen Men In Long-Term Relationships Experience "True Love"?
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16838242&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=true-love-does-exist-official--name_page.html

Also

http://onlinedating.typepad.com/industry/2006/03/men_in_longterm.html#comments

Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

[Fernando Ardenghi]

Alexander, you wrote: "A really interesting and innovative question would be: do compatibility tests provided by some site improve a quality of marriage or not?"

Thanks, actually I am the inventor of a "high precision online dating method".
Unfortunately I live in a South America's country but I hope that sooner I could reach an agreement with an actual online dating site or other partner to world launch the method I had invented. Will be interesting to prove if "only high level on personality similarity between mates / couples could be the core of relationship stability and satisfaction == Dyadic Success." for 26_and_more_years_old_persons interested in serious dating.

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

[Alexander Shetinin]

Fernando, did you notice such a little remark at the article you refer to "The research, by psychologists at Bath University, was commissioned by Match.com..."????
Does it need any further comment?
What Mark calls a 'successes' on online dating sites is really not a %%% of marriages but the number of lasting ones. Only time will be able to provide a reliable answer. Numbers say that 70% of marriages doomed die by year 5 to 10. In 5 to 10 years, when u become a world-renown INDEPENDENT scientist and u conduct this kind of research, your results can be trustworthy.
As for Match.com, it's all PR, PR and more PR at any cost.
I had a group of certified psychologists working for my dating web site, improving usability & attractivness and conducting some research on a dating front. It's such a delicate matter that the answer always depends on how one puts a question.

[Mark Brooks]

So, offer up an alternative for these numbers and for success levels. I'm no oracle. Just giving it a shot. ;-)

fyi...eHarmony quotes as having an independent source qualify 33,000 marriages in one year from their site. http://www.eharmony.com/singles/servlet/press/releases?id=45

Mark Brooks
Editor, OnlinePersonalsWatch.com

[Brian Erickson]

I would suggest the measure of success is much simpler. Success is when a member feels that the time and money he's invested in online dating was worthwhile.

[Sam Yagan]

What's the going estimate of total subscribers of online dating sites?

My back of the envelope calculation:

(Total Revenue) / (1/Churn) * (Average Monthly Cost)

500,000,000 / (8) * (25) = 2,500,000

Sam Yagan
CEO
OKCupid.com

[Mark Brooks]

Looks good. :-) I think the industry does $600M+

$600 million
average membership tenure is 2.6 months
average membership is $22 per month
Therefor average take is $57
$700 million / $57 is 10 million users
However, 10% of them are on more than one site, and 10% come back for a second try some time during the year, so, several million paying members...

Mark Brooks
editor, onlinepersonalswatch.com

[Markus]

Sam,

I think your numbers are off, the comscore report from 2 years ago said that eharmony accounted for ~40% of dating revenues. So i'd guess the average price point is around $35.

500,000,000 / ((8) * (35)) = ~1,800,000

Match.com has 1.2 million world wide
americansingles 200k world wide
eharmony has around 300k world wide
Yahoo has less then match.com according to comscore.. So lets say 700k ?

That is only 2.4 million subscribers world wide and the USA can't possibily account for more then 70% of the total.

More then 1.8 million subscribers in the USA per month is not possible. Comscores guess of eharmony's revenues and signups along with match.com's and american singles filings gives us insight into about 75% of the market.

[Fernando Ardenghi]

The USA industry does $600M+ per year
$600 million per year OR $50 million per month
IF average membership is $22 per month

$50 million / $22 is 2,272,727 monthly_paying_subscribers

average membership tenure is 2.6 months
average take is $57.20 == $22 * 2.6 months

annual income per subscriber is $22 * 12 months == $264
$600 million / $264 is 2,272,727 annual_paying_subscribers

Defining Online Dating Success is not the same as Defining Marriage Success / Dyadic Success

Online Dating Success

* 13_to_25_years_old_persons (teenagers) not interested in serious dating; Fun Online Dating is the same as Social Networking == ENTERTAINMENT
"Fun Online Dating Success" is a high level of instant gratification; Big Databases full of profiles where any new member can find the persons he/she is looking for.

* 26_and_more_years_old_persons interested in serious dating; They need quality CONTACTS
"Quality Online Dating Success" same as "Offline Chains Dating Success"; any new member will be matched with compatible real persons. More interesting than finding the person you want to date is IF that person_you_want_to_date really WANTS to also date you, AND IF after several dates you and your_prospective_mate begin to invest time and effort building a personal relationship with future in mind.

Defining customer satisfaction: IF a Serious Online Dating Site delivering quality contacts is or will be Quality Norms ISO 9001:2000 certified/audited, it will always wants their customers to succeed in finding someone:

- the very satisfied customer who leaves the site because he/she succeeded most probably will recommend the site to 10 or more persons!!!

- dissatisfied customers leaving the site because they did not succeed in finding someone (compatible real person) surely will speak against the company to 100 or more persons!!!

I will recommend

T == total monthly paying subscribers == new_&_renewal monthly paying subscribers.
A == monthly paying subscribers leaving the site because they succeeded in finding someone.
B == monthly paying subscribers leaving the site because they did NOT succeed in finding someone.

customer satisfaction == (A - B) / T

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

[James Houran]

Hi all,

Yes, Mark is right in that eHarmony tried to show that marriages through them were of higher quality than those which started without them. However, that study was ridiculous and was discredited in an academic journal article.

Mark is also right in that eHarmony now quotes as having an independent source qualify 33,000 marriages in one year from their site. http://www.eharmony.com/singles/servlet/press/releases?id=45.

But, we'll just have to wait and see if this study is an improvement over their previous research methods. Almost no one examining the issue of relationship quality and "compatibility" conducts proper statistical analyses.

For more reading see:

Houran, J., Lange, R., Rentfrow, P. J., & Bruckner, K. H. (2004). Do online matchmaking tests work? An assessment of preliminary evidence for a publicized ‘predictive model of marital success.’ North American Journal of Psychology, 6, 507-526.

Thx,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine

[Bill Broadbent]

And Doc, based on some of your previous arguments, 50% of the relationships that lead to marriage may indeed lead to divorce - so that number goes down again. In the end, there are millions of people meeting - some meetings are good - some are not. But people are meeting people they would not meet on their own and that's great regardless of which program they are in. Everyone thinks they have a better mousetrap - but ultimately the mousetrap is all based on two people being in the same system at the same time and then connecting. For some people eHarmony rocks, but I know other people that think it totally sucks. Some love Match - some despise it. I think match.com had a great idea in promoting a book on meeting the right person in a specific time period, but I think picking 90 days was major judgement error. If they would have promoted 12 months - and gotten a higher number of people to committ to a one year membership - the odds of someone finding success in their program would surely have gone up substantially. When people stay 2-3 months in most programs - it seems they are simply rolling the dice.

[James Houran]

Bill,

I absolutely agree with your basic ideas, but I do become personally disgusted when companies use phrases like "scientifically proven" and "based in science" in a cavalier fashion. My academic colleagues who also study topics like cyberflirting, compatibility, and attachment feel the same way.

However, back to your point about the power of the Internet in bringing people together. I completely concur! Check out a piece my February editorial in Online Dating Magazine that addresses this very fact:
http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/2006editorials/02-onlinedating.html.

Thanks,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine

[Bill Broadbent]

Link was broken Jim. Hope all is well. I understand your concern - but you know it's just marketing talk. I mean what is ever really proven with science? How many things are pitched and believed as scientific truths that end up being shot down with an other scientific theory later? I still can't figure out if red wine is good for me or not. One guy says yes - the other scientist says no. For some reason, I've been buying the guys story that says its good. Now I need to find that scientist that says a quart of ice cream a day is good too. And the funny thing is, if I looked hard enough, some Dr. Doe is probably claiming it cures cancer. (Of course the FDA wouldn't allow that - no bucks in cures - only residual treatments.) In the end, I would expect that somehow his scientific study would probably have been commissioned by some ice cream company. Funny how in science you can always generally end the equation in "=$". And $ = always seems to come back to marketing and sales.

[James Houran]

You never fail to crack me up, Bill!

Yes, many studies are conducted with an eye towards application and profit. But, that doesn't really bother me too much -- competition in the scientific world works much the same as it does in the corporate world and can motivate progress.

Yet, with all its faults related to "the bottom line and what is motivating the study in the first place," the scientific method is still a really good tool for separating fact from fiction. Disparate results come about for a myriad of reasons -- differences in designs, samples, confounds. Fact is, we all know that there are always mediating factors when it comes to general principles and findings -- much like your example with red wine (by the way, the answer is "it's good for you in moderation unless one already has alcoholism and then there are no health benefits"). Yes -- those icky confounds and mediating factors at work again!

Finally, weird the link didn't work. Let;s try it once more:
http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/2006editorials/02-onlinedating.html

Thanks,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Research Psychologist
Online Dating Magazine

[Brian Erickson]

Thanks for bringing up the FDA. I see a lot of parallels in the pharmaceutical and dating industries. Both industries exist to address negative aspects of the human condition; illness and, for lack of a better word, loneliness. Its obvious the pharmaceutical industry has learned that it can maximize profits not by curing, but by merely treating illness. I wonder how long before the dating industry follows suit and sites begin intentionally recommending matches that aren't "right" but merely "close enough" in the hope that people will return to the site sooner.