OPW -- Aug 6 -- Back in January, Match.com launched a 100% free dating site DownToEarth. "DownToEarth.com features a unique RealRatings™ tool and zero tolerance for lewd behavior and inappropriate photos to keep daters honest when creating profiles and posting pictures", stated the official press release when the site was launched. I signed up for DownToEarth today to see how it compares to PlentyofFish.com and OkCupid.com. This is one of the profiles you can find on DownToEarth. Pretty lewd, isn't it? Here's another and another 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,... Is there a profile approval process in place? Has DTE been laid out to pasture? DownToEarth traffic is down 30% over last 3 months according to Alexa. (Full Disclosure: Plentyoffish is a client of Courtland Brooks). - Irena Brooks
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I think this site was just an experiment on IAC's behalf to see if a free dating site would work for them. But without full corporate support and marketing resources they aren't going anywhere. It's also there in case POF or other free dating sites (such as ours) starts to kill Match they can more quickly change their strategy. My prediction is this site will never make any progress.
Posted by: Brad Pliner | Aug 06, 2009 at 03:37 PM
Match is very good about experimenting and trying new things out. VIP Matchmaking Service. MatchLive (events). Online speed-dating. Pictorial body-type matching. All tried and pulled.
Chemistry.com, MatchTalk and Daily 5 have been tried, refined and remain.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Aug 06, 2009 at 08:44 PM
I agree with Mark, I have a lot of respect for Match and the various innovative ideas and concepts they have tried and tested over the past few years. I particularly admire the 'Daily 5' and 'recommender' features (although I think the original idea was pioneered by YesNoMayb)
However the bottom line is that it takes a lot of time, money and resource to provide a high quality vetting service where every profile, photograph and message is personally vetted by a skilled customer service agent BEFORE it gets posted onto the site. Users are the core asset of a dating site and therefore it makes sense to ensure you display them in the best possible way if you wish to make them appealing to your customers!
For those sites that either cannot afford or choose not to implement such a strict vetting procedure, this will naturally affect the quality of profiles on a site AND in turn, users perceptions of the site itself.
For this reason, users who are serious about dating and wishing to meet genuine likeminded people, tend to gravitate to paid for sites with higher quality (i.e. vetted) profiles.
One has to wonder what impact non-vetted profiles like the ones highlighted above are having on prospective users impressions of the type of users they are likely to encounter on DownToEarth - wouldn't make me sign up!
Posted by: Matthew Pitt, MD, The Dating Lab | Aug 07, 2009 at 05:18 AM
The Alexa chart is for daily traffic rank (compared to other sites) so in reality their traffic is down much more. The higher you rank in Alexa, then proportionally more traffic is needed to increase your traffic rank.
Compete has DownToEarth traffic (unique visitors), down about 40 percent when compared to the sites highest point.
I'm curious to see in the next few months if traffic will level off or not for the dating site.
Posted by: Tom | Aug 07, 2009 at 10:56 AM