Online Dating Goes Mainstream
from the yeah,-we've-heard-this-before dept
MSNBC has decided to come out with not one or two articles about online dating, but a whole series of six articles on the subject. I’m not quite sure how one fills six whole articles about online dating, but I guess we’ll find out over the next few weeks. Today they released the first two. First is the general discussion about how online dating has become mainstream. It talks about the various players in the space, and how people are flocking to all the different services. Companies are making “super margins” on online dating, but some wonder if the growth will continue. They point out that a “success” means a lost customer – though, the sites respond that a successful match is worth more than the lost customer in good publicity. The article also had one surprising (or so it seemed to me) stat: about one-third of online personals users are married (in fact Yahoo even has a category for such people). The second article is about how there’s no longer a stigma attached to online dating, especially for people under 30. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, as I know plenty of people under 30 who won’t go anywhere near an online dating site. As I’ve said before, it’s the type of thing that is clearly great for some people, but not at all right for others.
