It's official: Match.com Abandons Paid Dating… | Hacker News Reader

It's official: Match.com Abandons Paid Dating…

plentyoffish.wordpress.com

48 pointspeter12331 comments

I have a soft spot for match.com. I met my GF there 6 years ago. She was certainly worth the $25.

i have paid for match (and had a few dates via it) in the past. i have also used POF and one huge difference between them - people on match care to put up a bunch of pictures and actually fill out the damn profile. POF users rarely fill out profiles in my exp. What I'm trying to say is that if users are paying for the service they are very motivated to go ahead and actually use the service.

My wife and I met on match as well - I'd gladly do a commercial for it.

Signing up now. So far the interface is clean and easy to use. I have no clue if there are any hot girls on here yet though. Will report back with my initial findings.

I'm curious to see how this will stack up against OK Cupid, where I met little but cautious hipster emo girls whose photos came from webcams and off bathroom mirrors.

Match.com, on the other hand, is all blonde young professionals dressed in black. Their photos all have meat head guys cropped out of them, with just enough arm left in there to show you that they can get a guy like that.

"I'm curious to see how this will stack up against OK Cupid, where I met little but cautious hipster emo girls whose photos came from webcams and off bathroom mirrors."

OKCupid is the new MySpace? :-o

A little bit, sure.

Update: Is that a photo of Jason Fried on their upload directions page?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b124/bflora/fried.gif

Jason Fried: welcome

Frank Zappa: not welcome

You were able to sign in?

I tried signing up for an account, did not receive any ACK of its creation in my email, and it will not let me sign in.

Maybe they're still putting it all together, but the design sucks. No login, no browsing, no fun.

Update: I started running searches.

Search #1: Women, 24-28 within 30 miles of Chicago's main zip code.

EPIC FAIL.

Results: 18 profiles. 9 without photos. 9 with photos. None that I wanted to click on.

Search #2: Women ages 20-30 within 30 miles of Chicago's main zipcode.

SMALLER FAIL

Results: 45 profiles. 15 without photos. Five that I've clicked on to learn more about.

Of those five, one has no info and only a stock shot. That means it's either an early adopter guy testing it out or a Nigerian scammer in my book. Three aren't that interesting upon further look and the other one is gorgeous and seems interesting but is also about 4 years older than me. Not sure what I'll do on that front.

Not impressed.

It's official, a brand new dating site doesn't have many profiles.

I don't see why we should let them off the hook for that. Match.com has an enormous userbase. Surely they could have spread the word somehow through various means to provide me with more than 18 search results throughout the entire city of Chicago.

Maybe that's what they did? This wasn't an official announcement. The POF guy obviously watches this space really closely, it's not too hard to believe he found out about it while they were still in seeding mode.

No doubt this is a market segmentation play (or maybe a lead generation strategy), not really a new business model. Match.com also created chemistry.com to compete with eharmony.

This is a pretty tough new reality for online companies. Dating was one of the few services that consumers were willing to pay for. Does this mean that ads are the only revenue source for consumer-based sites?

Nope. Selling your data & lead gen is a pretty solid source of revenue, although some people won't like that.

If the largest site is free, who are the leads being sold to?

porn sites for people who can't get dates? viagra advertisers for those that can?

Venture Capital backed startups.

Believe it or not, that was a big part of Yahoo's business model in the 90s.

They're running adsense next to the profile I just made. That doesn't bode very well for them.

Will this be the downfall of plenty of fish? Most of his adsense income comes simply from other (paid) dating sites.

So it's kind of ironic that he helped create the very situation which may one day lead to the site's downfall.

without paid dating sites what ads will plentyoffish show?

It will never happen. If there is no paid dating site, plentyoffish will become one.

I think markus may be wrong. If you look at the partners page it just seems like downtoearth.com is just a lead gen site for all other dating sites...

it seems like a lot of paid services are developing free alternatives.

It's the same thing with most established businesses. Look at Proctor & Gamble, they have like 10 different brands of laundry detergents all targeted to different markets.

The way to monetize users should somehow be PERFORMANCE BASED rather than purely subscription based. Yes, subscription allows for great filtering of people..and yet, maybe it feels too costly at first (because the whole value/match is delayed to much later?). There must be a way to get money out of the HUGE satisfaction of finding the girl/guy when this happens - and this could complement (if not remove) the need for an entry cost to accessing the pool. For example, dance clubs make most money out of drinks (fun related) not from entrance fees (access to the pool of people). Maybe pay in order to go on a 2nd date? Pay every time you click on a profile (point system)? Pay a bonus when you find a match (how to prove...)? Do you know if this kind of stuff was ever tried or what do you think?

> pay in order to go on a 2nd date?

You haven't really thought this through have you?

That pretty much is the business model of "speed dating", no? If the speed dating event itself counts as a first date.

It doesn't, meeting someone anonymous for a few minutes isn't a real date. Once you've been on a real first date, you've already exchanged info if you plan on a second; no one in their right mind would pay someone after that point.

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