Online Dating & Web 3.0 (Part 2)

Top Players and Rankings

Online dating, personals and matchmaking sites have been riding a boom for the past five years. According to the latest Hitwise data True.com is the most popular dating site in the US with 11% market share followed by Singlesnet.com (9.93%), Yahoo! Personals (9.13%) and Match.com (8.22%). True, founded in 2003, has 16 million members and an estimated 3.8 million unique visitors per month. The site is among the top 100 most-visited sites in the US.

According to Hitwise 50.8% of the visitors to the dating sites are male. Among the male users the popular sites are ManHunt.net, Adam4Adam, Gay.com Personals, etc. Among the female users, eHarmony, Love Access, Don’t Date Him Girl! and LocalHookUpz are very popular.

New entrants and Innovators

With the larger market reaching saturation in the US, sites are looking at creating niches. Sites like, SeniorPeopleMeet or SeniorsMatch are targeted at the senior citizens. Single Parent Love is targeted at the single parents.

TrekPassion and Golfmates are meant for users with a passion for trekking and golf. Golfmates has more than 3,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Europe. JDate.com is a leading Jewish dating site. MillionaireMatch is aimed at the wealthy and successful singles’ dating.

Green Friends is a niche online dating service for people who are into healthy lifestyles, who are vegetarians, and who enjoy outdoors.

Dating sites are also coming out with newer and improved features for better communication and networking among the users. MatchTalk featured under Match allow users to send signals online and enables them to speak over the phone using the MatchTalk number, without disclosing their individual identities.

Some of these sites also allow users to interact on a video platform and invite newer users into the conversation. True has signed up with Friendster, a leading social network, in 2006, to offer multi dimensional interactivity among online users. The coming days will see more of such alliance lending a multi-faceted look to the idea of online dating and matchmaking.

(To be Continued)

[Part 1]

This segment is part 2 in the series : Online Dating & Web 3.0
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