Bringing Ladies' Night to Web site

To veteran Internet users it may seem a bit ‘passe’, but according to eMarketer.com online dating is growing in markets worldwide.

Since new singles come along all the time, the dating business is definitely here to stay. However, research shows there is a lot of room for growth for online dating and matchmaking Web sites.

The biggest challenge for new online dating sites is that the ratio is usually very lopsided.  Typically membership consists of 90% men so online dating services have to build a site that will attract women.

In France, Match.com reported that 55% of its new users are women, compared with 40% in most other markets like North America.  About half of single UK men and women said they had used an online dating site in the past 12 months in 2007, up from the roughly one-half of men and one-third of women who said so in 2005, according to PARSHIP’s “Singles Survey 2008: Media Summary UK” report, conducted by Innofact.

Worldwide, 97 million people visited Web sites devoted to matchmaking in December, according to comScore data cited in the Herald-Tribune article. That was down 10% from a year earlier.

That is probably not due to the dating that occurs on social networks.  Consumers can date online for free on social networks, but those same consumers were unlikely to have paid for dating site subscriptions.

Online dating site users are looking for a pool of other people who are serious about dating, and pay for access to that pool.  The social network pool may be larger and free to use, but not everyone is there to swim.