Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Adult Dating Market Players

E-COMMERCE -- July 8 --  Last year adult dating sites' growth rate was about 70%. AdultFriendFinder.com is the most popular adult-oriented dating site drawing millions of unique visitors per month. Besides AFF, there are many other sex-oriented dating sites including Fling.com, SexSearch and IWantU.com. Similar to the traditional dating sites, users lie about their personal information – age, marital status and appearance, so what you see may not be what you get. Sometimes men pretend to be women and women pretend to be men. Specialists suggest that up to 30% of all dating profiles are misleading.

The full article was originally published at E-Commerce, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: People tell white lies.  iDaters should ask 'is your photo up to date' and 'is your profile and marriage status info accurate.'  Sometimes profiles can be online a looong time. Users will join and cycle in and out of relationships (and their idating memberships) and neglect to update their profiles. ProfileHelper.com, LookBetterOnline.com and e-cyrano.com help users put their best profile forward.  IWantU is dead and dying at this stage. (Full Disclosure: Fling is a client. The Founder of ProfileHelper.com is on the Courtland Brooks team.)

See all posts on FriendFinder     See all posts on SexSearch
See all posts on Fling.com         See all posts on IWantU.com

'Adult' Dating Sites Flourish

WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE -- Mar 1 -- Amid sluggish growth for dating Web sites, a different kind of matchmaking service is thriving online: so-called adult dating sites that dispense with courtship and urge members to head straight for the bedroom. With names like AdultFriendFinder.com, SexSearch.com and IWantU.com, adult dating sites purport to help users find one-night stands, swinger parties and other sexual escapades. "We enable someone to express themselves sexually in a place that doesn't make them feel dirty," said Andrew Conru, FriendFinder founder. He estimated that about half of his site's members are "actively seeking a sexual partner." Others take advantage of features such as chat rooms and blogs. Others are merely interested in being a "voyeur into other people's lifestyles." AdultFriendFinder's traffic rose 67% in January from a year earlier, according to Nielsen. SexSearch.com, the second-most visited adult dating site, tripled its traffic to 3.2 million unique visitors in January while running online advertisements that promise "real people, real sex." Nielsen said traffic to InterActiveCorp.'s Match.com, the most popular of the traditional dating sites it tracks, grew 7% to 4.5 million unique visitors over the same period. Holly Fabian, 40, of Warren, MI, joined AdultFriendFinder "as a joke" to browse the amusing content. She received 150 emails in 24 hours and discovered a man who shared her interests.  They met for dinner, and have been dating for the past two years. 

The full article was originally published at WSJ Online, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: It's a rarity that the press write about the casual dating sites, much less Wall Street Journal. 

Techies, not Trekkies, Present the Future of Dating

COURIER POST  ONLINE -- Feb 28 -- When I showed up in Miami Beach for the internet dating convention I found hundreds of modern-day Cupids -- the people who run dating Web sites, speed dating companies, self-help services and matchmaking businesses. "There is a huge societal problem. People aren't finding the right matches. Marriages are failing," said Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. "In some sense, we have a chance to change that."  Dating companies really do believe their duty is to help people find happiness in a partner (or partners). John Gray, author of the biggest selling relationship book in the history of the world, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," was at the conference to deliver shocking news: "Men and women still don't understand each other." But the conference wasn't all about boring dating.  There also was a lot of sex talk. More sites, like AdultFriendFinder.com and IWantYou.com, now deal with the sex side of dating. "No one talks about these groups, but they're there," noted Brooks, who knows more about online dating than anyone in the world.  "We're in the business of love, but by default we're in the sex business."  So what will dating look like in 10 years?  According to Brooks, we will be carrying Star Trek devices with speech recognition capabilities that will allow searches for nearby dates anytime, anywhere.