We are not talking about the applicants more so the proprietor. I remember a few years back a person I knew thought about setting up a online dating site. I remember he discussed the basic idea with me and it was about the time when myspace was really taking off as a so called online social network. His online dating idea was going to be a similar to myspace with a touch of ebay. What the basic idea evolves around members would create their own pages not dissimilar to a mypsace page, this would be a free service. Then a member whether male of female would then allocate 5 favorites (male or female) to their dating list. What would then occur is that a bidding contest would take place, the top bid would be capped at $100.00. Although the monetary aspect was still to be worked out, but for the idea of creating a biding aspect on a dating site the $100.00 was the figure used. The 5 members would then bid into that range, the winner would then obviously be the sole contender and win the date. The online dating company would then organize a date, expenses paid; this would be a dinner and picked up by a chauffeur/limo depending on costs - the profit concept was not to completly match (with the all expenses paid dinner date) the bid amount (say $100.00); the money to be made would be the difference between the amount bided and the costs paid out for a the date. Suffice to say the idea remand just that, an idea and didn't progress any further from that point. But the question remains. Is their money to be made from the current online dating market?
The whole concept of online dating is that the members or participates keep utilizing the services, obviously it is unprofitable if one was to begin a relationship straight away (or relevantly quickly) from an online service's. The odds of course are extremely unlikely that a relationship could actually occur from online dating. Which I will explain.
The reasons for such low odds of a relationships from online dating occurring quickly (or at all), is the sociological, biological and psychological abnormality (online dating) as discussed in
"Why haven't we met any aliens", we can't simply erode millions and thousands of years of social, cultural and biological traits with an electronic medium. Replacing natural human interaction with a pixel image and then creating expectations that the person you are online 'courting' is actually going to be suitable (even for a date). It's an impossible paradox, one that has occurred in the last 5 years of internet dating/social networks. Ideally in the male/female courting interaction process, you see your potential mate (or fling) in the flesh; meaning you can gauge from instincts and visually tune into the person attractiveness (if you are attracted to them). This as mentioned cannot be done with an electronic medium.
So from a business perspective and as trend people have become to reliant (for the time being) on the internet for social interaction, it has distorted and completly thrown the normal courting/dating process. Which means you would can't rely on the electronic medium in hope that it would then click into the expectation of meeting your partner. The odds are somewhat unlikely in fact almost impossible, until that is realized you may have spent an amount of money through a online relationship broker to find your ideal date. I imagine the turnover of clients/customers/members on online dating (depending on the current trends) would be quite large. Eventually, and I have discussed this with a guy I know who works heavily in setting up users networks, people will migrate away from the internet as a social interaction tool and it will be used more for commerce and reference/information.
Human nature is just to overwhelming in it's desire to work out friend or foe. The internet completly blurs out that inherit ability when it comes to online human interaction. So in conclusion. Network/social/dating sites are somewhat profitable for the time being on the internet, but can it last?
