In a recent review of online dating websites, we concluded that many companies in the industry can benefit significantly from employing Whirlwind Index.

A summary of our findings can be found below. For further details of how this applies to your business, please do get in touch.

Background

Five years ago, internet dating was something that for many was scary and even weird. In recent years this has transformed into being an industry that is generally trusted and here to stay. Most of us can now tell the story of our own or a friend's "internet dating adventure".

In the UK alone, the number of people who have used internet dating websites has gone from the thousands to millions, with a number of individual sites having several million UK subscribers. It is certainly a sizeable market.

The Problem with Growth

Back when dating sites had tens of thousands of users and perhaps a few thousand joining each week, it was easy to put people in touch. Generally, what was provided was the ability to see people of the desired sex, within a specific age range and geographical area (e.g. county, nearest large town) and had recently joined the site.

This "browsing" approach worked well enough for users, especially in places like London, but as this has grown, so has the difficulty of "sorting the wheat from the chaff".

With so many users on a site, it takes a significant time to browse through, finding out who shares important factors such as leisure interests, and is also nearby. This manual approach doesn't work, and so, with such large numbers, a fuzzy matching solution is needed.

Who is using matching, and should we?

A review of the industry shows that very few sites offer any form of matching. Notably, the two significant global brands, Match.com and Yahoo Personals, do use matching, and seem to provide a satisfactory service where reviews can be found.

There are also 3 UK sites that we know of that do. These include Guardian Soulmates and Timeout Dating. Both are based on the same system, which is non-fuzzy, and warns of up to 50 seconds to find your matches.

And, of course, there is Genuinely Looking (based on Whirlwind Index), which does full fuzzy matching, as shown in our dating example.

Beyond these five, there are many many sites who do not use matching. These include sites with user numbers both in the thousands and also in the millions. Larger sites in this category include DatingDirect, Pocado/LoopyLove and Friends Reunited Dating.

We believe that everyone should be aiming to compete with or exceed the matching offered by Match, Yahoo and Genuinely Looking.

How would we benefit?

Sites currently not employing matching technology are suffering costs in both financial terms, and also in good-will.

These businesses incur opportunity costs in:

• Users leaving the site without having subscribed when there were good potential matches that would have had them subscribe.


• Users opting out of weekly newsletters because of 'email fatigue' - getting emails where not one of the profiles was deemed worthy of a click.


• Loss of free marketing and good will, where users level of satisfaction is either not sufficient for them to tell their friends, or, is sufficiently poor that they actively recommend against your site.

They are also extra infrastructure costs in:

• Sending emails that don't result in a response?


• Providing bandwidth and servers for people to browse the profiles and photos of users that are clearly not a likely match


• Paying IT staffing costs for managing more servers

In conclusion, we believe that there is significant reason for most dating sites to investigate how matching can be applied to their business. The column on the right indicates the specific areas that the Whirlwind Index covers.