Competitor Research: Online Dating websites
Online dating websites, also known as the Cyber dating sector is now a major mainstream industry. It dominated by three major companies which operate several brands, well known on the web today. In the west, there are two major companies that operate brands that have become well known known names almost as famed as the major social networking sites. This is a testament to how mainstream online dating has become.
Spark Networks
This company with a market cap of around $85.29m is a name you might have company across. It is known for operating niche dating websites. As we can see from its market cap, this certainly does show that niche dating is not only a market that should be catered for, but also
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This website is in a similar format to Christian Mingle, but specifically catering to those of the Jewish faith. According to research now, this website has been responsible for almost 52% of marriages in the United States. So it has made quite an impact in the Jewish community.
Although its main focus is niche communities, to compete with its main competitor, Match, it does operate its own mainstream dating site Spark. This is marketed as a fun site for serious daters.
The Match Group
The Match group is perhaps the biggest name in online dating. It runs a number of websites that are mainstream names in the dating industry. Although by market cap, it is the second largest group in the world and third worldwide you will certainly be familiar with its portfolio of products.
The four of its biggest websites/apps are very much in the mainstream. They include Match, Ok Cupid as well as free dating website Plenty of Fish and the social match making app Tinder.
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Ok Cupid, receives much of its revenue through advertising although it does have a premium subscription often (where Ads are not shown to subscribers). Since its acquisition, it has been marketed as a dating platform in a mid-market tier, being a place to meet people of substance.
Plenty of Fish
Often abbreviated simply as POF, this website has one of the biggest memberships of any dating sites with over 3 million active users. It started like as the original free dating website. Although it now does offer subscriptions giving users access to premium services such as read status of messages. The biggest selling point of POF is that no-one ever must pay to message anyone, which might explain it large userbase.
It claims that everyone knowns someone who started as relationship on Plenty of Fish. However, the website is light on features and is not known for its security features. Even the website itself has been penetrated by hackers.
It was founded in 2003 by Markus Frind as a small independent website. According to official statistics put the average monthly traffic figure at around 2,912,368 people. This makes its advertising revenue particularly lucrative.