As Dating Pool Shrinks, Love Matches Grow

ABC NEWS - June 18 - Spark boasts 32 dating sites in all. Adam Berger, CEO of the Spark Networks, calls it "niche" dating. "Niche dating makes people instantly feel comfortable," said Berger. "They're among people who are just like themselves in many different ways." JDate, which caters to Jewish singles, is Spark Networks' most successful and popular web site. It claims 750,000 active users. While JDate may be the most well-known of the dating web sites, Spark's other niche web sites are booming. "ChristianMingle has probably been one of the sites that's grown faster than any other lately," said Berger. Subscriptions to Spark Networks sites cost from $9.99 to $39.99. The company maintains call centers where Spark representatives help love-starved subscribers find ways to improve their profiles and dates. The center takes more than 1,700 calls a day. FULL ARTICLE @ ABC NEWS

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Comments

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

If ChristianMingle is doing so well, why doesn't Spark release sales (and, more importantly, profit) figures for it? Spark does this for JDate on its own, the former AmericanSingles on its own - and then lumps the other 30 sites (including ChristianMingle) into one large category.

Why? What is there to hide? It's a public company, after all.

Re: "Subscriptions to Spark Networks sites cost from $9.99 to $39.99." What, per week, per month, per 3 months? (This was likely the reporter that messed up).

Our subscriptions cost from 25 cents and up.

See?:-) Without context, figures are meaningless.

[John Mao]

Guess they're still keeping their cards close to the vest. Just dying to see the juicy details, eh?

http://onlinedatingpost.com/archives/2009/05/christiancafecom-and-single-christian-network-merge/#comments

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

John, I think it's more about making claims about "growth" when it comes at the expense of things like, uh, profit. You know, that thing in business where you take in more than you put out?

We could triple our growth too, if we simply upped our bids and ad-spend. However, growth and users are useless without profit. So, if Spark has profit, then why not brag about *that* instead of just growth?

We make profit. Lots of it. Always have. And, we have no problem bragging about that.