International Dating For Internet Nationals
Say
sheesh in Chinese!
Hitting
the web has never been easy and hitting the right date is easier than done. But
with internet, any national can date any other national across the world and
with the advent of emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India, dating
industry has arrived internationally, says the market analysts. According to Online
Personals Watch, dating industry’s leading business analysis website, china leads the
pack with expected revenue of $315 million by 2014. Chinese market has been
dominated by the Nasdaq listed Jiayuan.com, which claims to have over 60
million subscribers. This says the arrival of local online rivals for the
American businesses, www.e-llure.com, who are swimming in the foreign markets to
have a bigger share in the pie. International dating scene has been picking up
slowly for the past decade and has caught a gigantic ride for the last couple
of years with multifold revenues and millions as subscribers. Markets such as
Europe and China will become the mainstream revenue centers for many dating
businesses that will capitalize on these newer geographies.
East
Vs West
Internationally,
specifically in the eastern part of the world, dating has been an off culture
attitude compared to the west. Dating has never been considered as an off
stigma in the west while the eastern philosophy gives dating a rather different
perspective. This made the local players jump into fray making the western
dating businesses a run for money. Knowledge about the local culture made the
home grown entrepreneurs market their products well.
Considering
the Indian market, one of the largest and fastest growing in terms of dating
demographics, is showing a growth of over 20% year on year. According to an
article in India’s leading newspaper, Times
of India,
dating industry is significantly different when compared to the western
market. India being a country which respects the culture and traditional
heritage, has offered internet solutions respecting the sentiments of its
people. Market leaders like Bharatmatrimony.com and shaadi.com have been a dating site of the
sort which caters to the marriage market. Conceptually, speed dating or round
robin dating would be a taboo for a country which still places marriage at its
center. This gives opportunity for sites such as e-llure.com to
differentiate their products when entering into Indian or Chinese market.
Business tie-ups with startups such as twomangoes.com or mymitra.com will make sense for the western dating businesses that are looking to
foray into Indian dating industry.
Social
network or International Dating
Facebook
with over 500 million subscribers have challenged the way the world socializes
itself. Social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter etc. are giving
dating businesses a hard run as the reach of the social networking websites
have penetrated well into the international scene. Many Facebook
applications as
well as other social networking websites have become the key for the dating
businesses to get into the social media dating scene to gain international
visibility. International dating as a market place has shrunk and many veterans
in the online dating industry says that the business now should have to take
the app route by introducing their applications catering to their customers who
live across borders.
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 1/10th 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.
Speed Dating Is Fast, But Is That Profitable?
New day, New Niche
Thanks to Rabbi Yaccov Deyo, man who
seeded the concept of speed dating. Being a comfortable and fast dating
mechanism, speed dating has been preferred by millions across the world. It
gives the high flying and time starved people the required opportunity to meet
and greet the prospective singles. Though speed dating was started way back in
1998, it has picked up fast in the last decade. According to marketresearch.com, dating industry has grown over $2.1 billion out of which online
speed dating contributes to over 10%. This comes to a whopping 200 million
dollar for a niche industry. It is quite significant for a niche dating to
garner that much revenues making the industry leaders to look into this sector
quite closely.
Is there a need for Speed?
Basically, speed dating has been
preferred by many singles. This type of round robin dating allows singles to
meet multiple personals at an amazing pace. It saves a lot of time, effort and
money. Many singles who have been to speed date events and parties opine that
speed dating will grow multifold to be the mainstream dating approach. With
technology enabled speed dating sites, brings the curtains down for the fewer
hassles that were present in speed dating industry. iPhone and Android
applications are growing in larger number favoring online dating and speed
dating is also slowly catching up in online space. Speed dating also augurs
well for the world that is looking for quick solutions to most of its problems.
It gives the required bandwidth to the individuals who want to meet multiple
prospective partners without the hassle of spending hours and days. Online
speed dating is a milestone in speed dating enabling people to save their face
along with time. This is a good sign for the dating industry which has been
facing the slump like all other industries for the last couple of years.
Emerging winners
There are many established players
such as speeddate.com who have been
in the industry for long and making right moves. A few emerging winners such as
e-llure.com who have made one stop shop for all kind of dating needs including
speed dating will make the market interesting, says industry observers.
Preferentially, businesses that offer multiple methods of dating have bigger
opportunity and vision to capture the market than the exclusive niche ones.
Though the niche businesses revolving around the speed dating do a brisk
business, one stop shop like e-llure.com will be the
site to look out for once the world outside USA catches the dating craze that
was prevailing in the early years of the last decade. Numerically backing this
by a WikiDot article, online dating websites like Match.com had grown phenomenally
from $49.3 million in 2001 to $200 million in 2005, but this growth has been
staggered for the last couple of years owing to multiple factors such as
recession, market saturation, escalating subscription costs etc. This gives
opportunity to newer players with unique and strategic value propositions to
garner the market share both inside and outside USA.
International Online Dating Offers a World of Opportunity
Online
dating has become a revolutionary way for single people that are interested in
meeting other single people to do so. Through international
online dating, singles can now meet potential love interests that are not
even in the same country and have long distance relationships of a kind that
would not have been possible even 20 years ago. Online dating is just another
amazing example of how technology has advanced the way that we interact with
other people--through phone calls, texting, and the Internet, the computer age
has revolutionized human interaction.
What if
your soul mate is out there in another country, but because of the distance and
location, you never meet them?
Modern
technology allows you to avoid this unhappy fate by providing you the
opportunity to meet and communicate with people that are thousands of miles
away, making the chances of meeting that special someone much greater.
Even if
you do not happen to meet that person of your dreams, you will have the
opportunity to react with somebody from another culture that is very different
from the one that you are used to. Interaction with other people gives you an
opportunity to gain knowledge and experience, even if things do not work out.
There
are billions of people in the world, and rather than limit yourself to only
meeting a few thousand local ones, you can extend your reach to any place in
the world! Online dating can be a great learning experience for you, as well as
a possible chance to find the person of your dreams. After all, everyone in
online dating is available.
E-llure has higher standards
Unlike many other free networking and internet dating sites, E-llure has higher standards for the content and prospects provided in our network…both from our members and from our affiliate advertisers. Since we truly care about helping our members find meaningful relationships, it is our aim to avoid purely sexual profiles by both professional and personal advertisers without being judgmental about a person’s lifestyle. We hope that this will increase the chances of you contacting genuine, compatible individuals who are interested in making the same connections you're looking to make!
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