Numbers beyond laughter and smiles

Rock ‘n’ rolling numbers

Online dating industry has grown leaps and bounds for the last 2 decades, especially the last decade after the advent of web 2.0. According to industry market research provider ibsiworld.com, social network aided tools and newer technologies such as mobile computing has led the dating industry to be the fastest growing business in United States of America. It has its tentacles flourishing all across the world such that more than 14000 websites employing over 16,000 people bringing over 2 billion US dollars as revenues in 2011. Industry experts estimate this to be 1/10^th of the market that is available and the industry is poised to grow beyond $10 billion within 5 years. This estimation is possible with the advent of newer avenues of revenue streams such as Smartphone applications and web 3.0 based marketing techniques.

Small Vs Big

As there are umpteen number of dating websites, it has its own challenges in its growth considering the competition that is prevalent today. Big and established dating websites vie for the bigger share of the pie by growing both organically and inorganically,                 www.e-llure.com . Organic growing methods are such as offline marketing promotion and social marketing techniques have been the key. Inorganically, couple of acquisitions signals the consolidation in the internet dating industry to make the big players grow bigger in size.

Smaller websites are finding their feet with the help of theme based dating. According to a blog by businessinsider.com, smaller dating websites find a unique problem and try to solve it by offering solutions in a particular way. This is welcoming sign for the industry as it augurs well for the industry as well as the consumers. For an example, veggiedate.org tries to match singles practicing vegetarianism. This kind of market segmentation invokes good response from the online daters and creates higher barriers to entry for the competition to entry by giving first mover advantage to one who first pitches the idea.

End of Brick n Mortar world?

Web technologies have revolutionized the dating industry. According to a survey by WallStreet Journal, couples who meet online have been rising 20% year on year. As there are multiple niches in the dating industry, fastest growing one is the homosexual industry where the homosexual dating industry rises over 60% every year bringing in millions to the websites that cater to this category. There are multiple internet based personals websites such as e-llure.com and there are many new websites that comes cropping every day to this already competitive and a potential multi-bagger industry.  Flipside of the industry also needs to be noted as there are multiple showdowns happening every day due to low barriers to entry and strong competition by the big players who have been part of the industry from last decade. Surge in the online dating industry clearly signifies that the older methods of dating such as meeting the prospective date over a drink at a pub or at dinner for a restaurant are getting redundant and those with access to internet and newer technologies such as mobile and tablets have higher chances of finding their date.