Online Dating

ISMT 101 Project

Group

name: Spy (L4)

Online Dating

graphic from http://online.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Online_Dating_Tips

Coordinator:

Tsang Hang Fung 07088946

Group members: Li Chi Lung 07178765 Chung Pui Yan 07142560 Au Kai Man 07103760 Tsoi Yiu Chun 07138909 Chan Tsz Kwan 07133462 Chu Wai Yee 07140275

Spy-Online Dating

Tsoi Leung Sing 07098915

Table of Content 1. Executive Summary …………………………………………………………………..P.3 2. Background of Online dating………………………………………………………….P.4 3. Business Opportunities………………………………………………………….…….P.5-6 4. Success of Yahoo! Personals………………………………………………..………...P.7-8 5. Analysis of real case example in different countries………………………………….P.9-11 6. Analysis of Questionnaires ……………………………………………………… ….P.12 7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..P.13 8.References……………………………………………………………………………...P14 9.Appendix……………………………………………………………………………...P15-16

P.2

2

Spy-Online Dating

1. Executive Summary Online dating is an online service that enables individuals or a group of people to meet in the network and get known to each other. There are companies setting up websites and provide matchmaking services through the use of personal computers, the Internet, or even cell phones. With the advanced technology and widespread of use of the Internet, people can easily meet and date others online, even across the borders. In the following report, there will be a background of online dating and Match.com will be used to illustrate the development of online dating. As this online business is so successful, the reasons behind and business opportunities will be analysed. After discussing about the online dating business in the U.S., the focus point will be moved back to Hong Kong. The famous Yahoo! Personals will be deeply illustrated. By analysing some real true love stories happen online, it is believed that the online dating service can really match people across races, ages and distance. Though online dating seems to be so successful, it is worthwhile to investigate how we, local students view this dating platform and what challenges will matchmaking sites face.

http://freeonline-dating.net/images/free_online_dating_service/free_online_dating_service_250x251.jpg

P.3

3

Spy-Online Dating

2.Background of Online dating Online dating was originated from computer dating system and was first established in the early-to-mid 20th century. It became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, customers had to fill in some forms about their interests and preferences, then computers would do analysis and matching. Nowadays, online dating becomes a trend and many people start to meet with new people on the Internet. In the U.S. alone, there are close to 1,000 such sites led by Yahoo! Personals, eHarmony and Match.com. To know more about how online dating develops, we’d better have a look at the leading online dating service provider first-Match.com. Match.com is an online dating website that has more than 15 million members and the website is serving more than 37 countries in different languages. Match.com is the first consumer-oriented matching site started from 1994. In the early 1995, Match.com released a free beta version for the public. In 1996, Match.com set up a subscription system, and this system had allowed the company to make a lot of money. However, the revenue of Match.com was decreasing in the recent years, this might imply the online dating business was contracting in some of the regions. Although Match.com ‘s performance is not as good as the past, it is still making revenue. So, the market of online dating is still quite remarkable and promising.

P.4

4

Spy-Online Dating

3. Business Opportunities Online dating is a rapidly growing business and there is a lot of potential for it to succeed. According to the statistic of Scientific American, online dating was only a $40-million business in 2001. However, that figure is expected to break $600-million with more than 800 businesses in 2008. It has grown 15 times for these 7 years. What makes this business so successful? This can be explained by the extension of market and improvement of online dating technology: 1.Extension of market: In 2007, many prominent studies showed that people aged from 44 to 62 were interested in online dating and the number of users had soared. Meeting new friends or finding true love online is no longer an activity for youngsters. The online dating population becomes larger nowadays. In the U.S. alone, tens of millions of people are trying to find dates or spouses online every day. Moreover, people value time beyond all the things nowadays. They prefer online dating instead of face-to-face dating. As Internet provides them a pool of potential matches, they can find their true love more easily and quickly. Therefore, more people are willing to pay the fees and use this service. Besides the U.S. market, many matchmaking sites are now eyeing on China and India. As there are millions of singles there and the income of those people generally increases. This will be a great business opportunity for matchmaking sites. 2. Internet Dating 2.0 - Improvement of online dating: Although online dating provides lots of benefits, someone still afraid of people lying online about their things. However, the development of Internet Dating 2.0 can tackle the probP.5

5

Spy-Online Dating

lems of deception and attract more people to use it. (i) Virtual dating Virtual dating takes care of the safety concerns that prevents many people from meeting in person. Many companies like Omnidate allow users to go on virtual date. Users can choose any animated figure to represent them and meet others in a virtual restaurant. They can chat and develop relationship with others online. Virtual dating is popular among users as it allows you to relax, have fun and really creates a bond with a person before meeting in real life. By dating virtually, people can understand each other and withdraw a relationship which is unsuitable. This can save their time and avoid deception. (ii) Certification system To avoid people lying online, a company, HonestyOnline offers a certification system that takes the lies out of online. It has a database to check the personal information of the users such as marital status and it can even show up at your house, snaps some profile pictures to ensure the online profiles of users are reliable. This brand-new system is attractive to users as they can find the right person with reliable online profiles. This is a great business opportunities because it is still a new element in Hong Kong online dating business.

P.6

6

Spy-Online Dating From http://www.virdating.com/

4. Success of Yahoo! Personals Besides the U.S. dating websites mentioned before, Yahoo! Personals is the best-known online dating websites among the local students, according to our survey. Actually, the popularity of it cannot be observed only from the sector of teenagers, but can also be seen in other sectors like the working class. The following will be the reasons why Yahoo! Personals can be so successful in Hong Kong. The first reason is that Yahoo! Personals belongs to Yahoo! Hong Kong. As Yahoo! Hong Kong is one of the most commonly-used search engines which provide a variety of services like auction and e-mail services, it makes use of this advantage to promote Yahoo! Personals by increasing exposure of Yahoo! Personals in its home page. There are often banners in the home page of Yahoo! Hong Kong, promoting Yahoo! Personals. The image of Yahoo! Personals will gradually be positioned in the mind of the HongKongers. Thus, Yahoo! Personals becomes more popular.

Ad advertisement in the home page of Yahoo! Hong Kong

What’s more, Yahoo! Personals targets Hong Kong users. By targeting Hong Kong users, Yahoo! Personals can formulate specific promotion strategies that appeal to Hong Kong users. For example, knowing that many Hong Kong teenagers still do not believe in online dating (which is shown in our questionnaire results), Yahoo! Personals emphasizes its measures to ensure the photos uploaded by users are taken by the users themselves. Yahoo! P.7

7

Spy-Online Dating

Personals also invites renowned celebrities in Hong Kong to share some tips for online dating. The celebrities include local singers and DJs, who are popular among Hong Kong teenagers. All these measures make Yahoo! Personals more tailor-made for HongKongers and they become more willing to use Yahoo! Personals. Furthermore, Yahoo! Personals often organizes gatherings for users. These gatherings are held 4-5 times a year and provide a platform for users to know one another. Many users appreciate these gatherings and there is always positive response from users. One example of the gatherings is that Yahoo! Personals once cooperated with the Ocean Park to organize a visit to the Ocean Park for users. These are the factors that make Yahoo! Personals become the most popular online dating web sites in Hong Kong. It is believed that Yahoo! Personals, which is going to celebrate its 6th anniversary this year, will continue to develop rapidly in future.

Advertising poster for the Ocean Park event organized by Yahoo! Personals and the Ocean Park

P.8

From http://www.personals.us/

8

Spy-Online Dating

5. Analysis of real case examples in different countries Scenario: HK (Yahoo! Personals) In the following cases, some real examples are shown that how users date online by using Yahoo! Personals and they get married finally. 

Story 1: Mickey & Wai (Personals no : 582842 & 177700)

“I saw Mickey’s advertisement last year and was deeply attracted by her beauty and grace. From that day on, watching her advertisement and sending her e-mails had become my daily habits… Through mutual understanding, we fell in love on the date of the Christmas Eve. Until February of this year, my courage made me propose marriage to her. Thank God, she promised me! We would get married on October 4 this year. Hence, I would like to share with you the joy and unreserved thanks to Yahoo! Personals which gave me a good wife, and let me find my happiness and love.” said Wai.



Story 2: Shirley and Dick (Personals no : 686948 & 1245111)

“I don’t mind my friends knowing my husband and I were met on Yahoo! Personals. The reason is that it is such an amazing memory for both of us. It is unbelievable that I can find my beloved on Yahoo! Personals. My husband also said his own heart had waited for me for ten years. Although I have met a lot of people on Yahoo! Personals to make my life more interesting, the ultimate fate is that I choose him. I remembered that our first conversation in phone had lasted for two hours. Afterwards, on Chinese Valentine’s Day, his special P.9

9

Spy-Online Dating

arrangement created an enjoyable night for me. After that night, He always sent SMS to me, so I decided to be with him. I remembered my statement on Yahoo! Personals was “I don’t believe love is at the first sight, however, love is out of your control. ” Thanks to this platform, I can meet my love here fortunately. I would like to take this opportunity to give the first Valentine’ s Day present to my husband, ‘I DO. Holding your hands till death’.” said Shirley.

Analysis: Yahoo! Personals is so successful because it goes hand in hand with Yahoo! Messenger. Once you have found a suitable person, and if you don’t want to contact with your target directly by phone, you can chat with him/her through Yahoo! messenger which is so convenient.

Scenario: U.K. (matchMobile) 

Story 3: Christopher Lytle and Elizabeth Adams

Christopher Lytle remembered a perfect first date with his wife, Elizabeth Adams: a System of a Down concert, followed by drinks and a walk on the beach. The couple’s relationship, now in its third year, began with a text message. The pair met in 2005 through matchMobile, an extension of the popular dating site Match.com. Although they had been exchanging messages for several weeks, their first meeting was spontaneous; Adams suddenly found herself with an extra ticket. Although most of the popular dating sites launched mobile apps around five years ago, they soared in popularity as Web-enabled phones became the standard.

Analysis: Metropolitans usually have busy and hustle daily life, they need to use the phones all day. Would they be willing to keep talking at night? Probably not. Therefore, they may try P.10

1

Spy-Online Dating

another way of communication, such as text messages on MSN. Moreover, they can use their mobile phones to visit websites any place they like. They can date through web-enabled phones which are more convenient than before. Scenario: Brazil and America 

Story 4: Cinthia and Craig Cinthia is an articulate environmental auditor from Brazil. She was 29 when she met

Craig, a 27-year-old American aerospace engineer, through Christian Cafe, an online dating service. Craig was 27 and had dated a lot in search of the right person; Cinthia had an active social life but had dated less frequently. “Craig and I met by a fluke really,”Cinthia recalled. She matched all the categories Craig was looking for-except geographic. He was looking for a woman in his state of Colorado but forgot to type that in the day we hooked up. He told me that when he saw my profile and my response to the standardized questions, he said to himself, “If I could pick a wife, this is how I'd expect her to answer.” After two months of frequent e-mails and phone calls, they found they had much common on the important issues of life, like faith, values and long-term goals. After that, Craig flew to Brazil where the pair spent four days getting to know each other. Seven visits and one year later, in September 2003, Craig and Cinthia married and now they live near Denver.

Analysis: This is a case which proves that online dating can flatten the world. Boundaries are no longer a problem. Even though you are living in different countries; you can still chat with your beloved through various online communication softwares. Anyone can look for a suitable person in your home country as well as other countries which means you have a greater chance to find a true love.

P.11

1

Spy-Online Dating

6.Analysis

of

the

Question-

naire Popularity of online dating in Hong Kong From the former part, it can be seen that online dating has achieved a great success in the US. So, is this business achieving the same result among teenagers in Hong Kong? To find out the answer of it, an online survey has been carried out. (See Appendix for the detailed result of the survey.) The survey is targeted on local youngsters and it can be seen that most of them are familiar with online dating but just a few of them have tried browsing those websites. One of the reasons behind is that they are not familiar with those websites which provide this service. This shows that Hong Kong companies are not spending enough to develop this profitable market. Another important one is that they do not trust those websites. This might due to the many cases of fraud found regarding the use of Internet to make friends. These cases drove away many of the potential users of the online dating. So it is believed that the companies in Hong Kong may learn from their counterparts in the U.S. to improve the service to make it more reliable. Finally, the general impression of the interviewees towards online dating is quite neutral. This is because most of them are not familiar with this business and just few of them have tried using this service. So their comments on it are quite neutral. But it can be observed from the questionnaire result that Yahoo! Personals is the most popular among the local youngsters. It shows that Yahoo! has successfully launched its advertisement on its Yahoo! Personals. The reasons are discussed previously.

P.12

1

Spy-Online Dating

7. Conclusion To conclude, the online dating websites have been successful in the past years, especially Match.com and Yahoo! Personals. They have put much effort in advertisement and attracted certain amount of users. With the large market size and improvement in technology, it is believed that more people in China and India will be using them in the future. Especially in China, the single-child rule has led to a desperate demand for matchmakers among rural men. However, there will be some challenges when those websites entering China or India. The first one is cultural difference. While people in the U.S. will put their profile pictures but some women in Asia will not be willing to do so as the threat of privacy. Also, there are some psychologists tests on the websites but they may not be suitable for Chinese as Western and Chinese have different personalities and the result shown may not be accurate. Another challenge is the revenue gaining problem. Of the 14 million Chinese Internet daters, only 500,000 pay subscription fees. Thus, the revenue gained by the company is just a small amount. The reason behind is that users find that paying fees is complicated and they just want to enjoy free digital products. Only if those websites adapt to the culture of the targeted market and adjust their subscription-based models, the company can then make huge revenue and be successful. In the future, it can be foreseen that more and more people will use online dating as a means to date partners and find their beloved, no matter in the U.S., Hong Kong or other countries.

P.13

1

Spy-Online Dating

8. References 1.Online

dating

service.

Wikipedia.

Retrieved

12,

March,

2008

from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_dating 2.Yahoo!

Personals. Retrieved 22, March, 2008 from http://hk.personals.yahoo.com/

3.Online

dating tips. Lovetoknow. Retrieved 25, March, 2008 from http://online.lovetoknow.-

com/wiki/Online_Dating_Tips 4.Online

Dating-evolution/history. Retrieved 25, March, 2008 from http://wiki.media-

culture.org.au/index.php/Online_Dating_-_Evolution/history 5.Case

Studies.

Choice-Online

dating.

Retrieved

26,

March,

2008

from

http://www.choice.com.au 6.

Online dating moves to your cell phone. Laptop. Retrieved 28, March, 2008 from

http://www.laptopmag.com/mobile-life/Online-Dating-Moves-To-Your-Cell-Phone.aspx 7.Josie

P.14

Newman. Looking for Love Online. Charisma Magazine. Retrieved 2, April, 2008

1

Spy-Online Dating

9. Apendix: Survey result Total number of participant: 98 Background information of the participant

Responds to the questions: For questions with a “*”, participants can choose more than one option.

P.15

1

Spy-Online Dating

For question 7, the expected value for it is 4.51. From http://www.my3q.com/home2/216/napoleontsang/69433.phtml

P.16

1