If the course of true love never did run smooth, it's a very different story for the industry that steers internet-savvy singles together for romance.
For online dating brands, business has never looked better. By 2010 there will be 16 million single men and women in the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics, and with half the nation online, dating is the biggest category of paid-for consumer content on the internet.
The UK industry is currently worth 拢11.7 million, expected to rise to 拢47m by 2008 says Jupiter research. According to Yahoo! Omnibus Personals, 35 per cent of singles will use an online dating service in 2004.
The industry is dominated by a handful of big names that command a market of some three million online daters. They include DatingDirect.com, Match.com, udate.com (acquired by Match.com in April 2003), Meetup.com and Meetic.com. Sites tend to use a monthly subscription system and target ABC1 professionals aged 25-45: getting under-25s to pay is difficult (they are unlikely to use a dating site) and over-45s are not targeted directly. ISPs such as MSN, Lycos and Yahoo! UK & Ireland are seeing huge success in providing a dating arm to subscribers, and the remaining market is distributed among 200 or so smaller sites.
The question is, how do the sites dominating the market attract young professionals surfing for love - and what are the opportunities for start-ups entering the industry? It's perhaps no surprise that the dating sector is evolving via strategic matchmaking between brands.
Following the recent boom in speed-dating and singles events, online brands are seeing the benefits of partnering with offline. Revolution can reveal that Love@Lycos has signed a seven-figure European deal with premium dating partner Meetic.com, which specialises in pairing couples up for face-to-face meetings. "Love@Lycos has always been about flirting online, not about encouraging people to meet up, so we formed this partnership with Meetic to pair people off," says Nicole Morse, marketing and product director at Lycos. Love@Lycos will integrate Meetic search results as an additional service for the platform. It is expected to be live in the UK by the autumn.
Morse explains that the deal with Meetic is all about brand building, building audiences and creating revenue. Events play a role in this: following the success of events held at London clubs, Lycos is in conversations to investigate the possibility of further partnerships.
"We probably won't run too many events because they are costly," comments Morse, "but they definitely add to the user experience and take the brand offline."
Match.com had success offline when it recently partnered with high street chain Ann Summers to hold an in-store singles night in Brighton, and has further unsigned deals with other brands in the pipeline. The company sends out a newsletter every Wednesday to 100,000 registered users detailing special offers and events.
So does this mean online dating sites are about to evolve their strategy to incorporate offline as part of a core offering? Not according to Nigel Sharman, director, international public relations at Match.com, who reckons that events are simply adding value for users: "We've made no changes to our online offering in accordance to speed matching or speed dating. It's not a revenue thing - we are concentrating on online personals. Events are a good way to get the brand out to people."
He continues: "In America, the events programme MatchLive is very successful; in the UK we are taking a different approach and are working with known co-brands, which can bring advantages for both partnerships. This is the first one of other collaborations we hope to do."
DatingDirect is another name holding events to boost its brand: "As a company we are gearing up our offline events, which are advertised on our website for our members to add value," says Darren Richards, CEO and co-founder.
"We do our own singles parties - for brand awareness rather than revenue. Compared to our online revenue, offline is insignificant. It gives people confidence to be able to click on a page and know you can meet the company face-to-face."
Offline is a key way to drive people online. But one new site to be launched this summer sees benefits in starting the relationship face-to-face. Flirtwithastranger.com allows singles registering online to receive a set of cards with a printed membership number. The cards are handed to potential partners at live events, allowing singles subscribing to the web site to flirt online after the event.
"It's the opposite to sites like Match.com," says Oli Barrett, co-founder. "People are looking for a good time and don't necessarily want to play the numbers game by sifting through thousands of profiles. This way you are guaranteed to fancy the person."
Barrett believes face-to-face meetings will evolve as an essential arm of online dating: "The future is about blending offline and online, and allowing people to organise their own events," he says. "Sites like Meetup.com and group-finding networks such as the gay site OUTintheUK.com allow groups to organise their own events online and invite other singles to build a dating community."
But not all dating brands see offline partnerships as an important brand-builder. ISPs and media names are exploiting ready-made audiences to leverage awareness of dating services. Yahoo! Personals UK & Ireland launched in June 2003 and has 600,000 unique users a month according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The service concentrates on delivering online communications though email, instant messenger and search. A ready-made audience from the portal means that the brand hasn't looked for marketing partnerships.
"Yahoo! is a fantastic platform to deliver a dating service with search and communication, as well as email and instant messaging, at the heart of our business," says Jose Adams, managing director Yahoo! Europe, Personals. "We have 15m users a month, which is a fantastic source of members for the dating service."
Friends Reunited Dating is another site building on the reach of an established brand. When it launched its dating arm, Friendsreuniteddating.co.uk, in September 2003 it took advantage of Friends Reunited's existing audience of 11m members and sister search services with friends and family. Within eight months, 200,000 people had registered.
"We launched the dating site in response to requests on Friends Reunited," says Rhoda Moore, the site's head of romance. "Some 60 per cent of the base comes from Friends Reunited. We rely on the brand being a site for genuine people and a trusted name. We are simply growing it by adding the dating."
Big media names also see the advantage of exploiting a ready-made audience in a lucrative industry. DatingDirect earns 35 per cent of its revenue by providing white-labelled dating services for brands including Channel Four, GMTV and most recently ITV.com, which went live at the end of June. Richards explains: "Big media audiences being involved brings a lot more credibility to the industry and creates trust with audiences."
But the instant success of big brands and the growth of established sites such as DatingDirect means that there is tough competition for smaller players. A dating site starting now needs a unique distinguishing factor or to spend vast amounts of revenue in marketing to grow a decent database.
"To be successful, they will really need an established brand behind them," adds Moore.
DatingDirect's Richards agrees: "Five-and-a-half years ago, when we started up, there wasn't the same competition. Now the landscape is different. It took DatingDirect two years to build its membership to be able to provide the service people want. Today it would cost 拢10- 15m to startup DatingDirect to compete with the major players."
So what does the future hold? Match.com's Sharman believes that the future of dating lies in targeting niche markets. "There is no end to the number of people coming into the market and they are looking at specific markets," he says.
There is potential for start-ups that are launching a specialist service including sports sites, like newfriends4u.com/fitness, Christian sites such as www.christianconnection.co.uk and sites for Jewish singles, like www.jdate.com. Online classified marketing community london.craigslist.org is translating the success of US sites such as Lavalife.com in providing a casual encounters section. The American site, like the Antipodean classified site Gumtree.com, launched its UK arm in April of 2003 and users can post and view ads online for free. It offers platonic, romance and casual encounters, and claims to have recorded 110,000 unique visitors in May 2004.
Technology will play a future role in allowing sites to offer bespoke and diverse services to users - such as Match.com's Total Attraction Matching system. However, DatingDirect's Richards says that applications for technology are in infancy: "The technology is there, but from a user point of view, new technology must be easy to use."
Translating online sites to mobile services is the future. Lycos is currently working with Vodafone Live! in Germany and hopes to roll the service out in other countries, including the UK. Match.com's Match Mobile has already launched in the US, allowing users anonymous contact and flirting, and mobile technology provider Flytxt predicts that people will be building mobile community sites - "M-blogs" on which daters can recommend potential partners to their network of friends and family via the phone as well as online.
Richards also predicts that, with the uptake of 3G, mobile dating will take off: "People will be able to surf a cut-down version of our site on mobile."
DATING ONLINE AT A GLANCE
MATCH.COM - Launched April 1995 in Silicon Valley.
Match.com has more than 1m registered users in the UK, with 932,000 unique visitors to Match.com sites (including Match.com and udate.com), according to comScore Media Metrix.
Match.com has 642,000 unique visitors per month (May 2004 figures).
Singles can search for their match by keywords and photos. Match.com has launched its Total Attraction Matching System, and users can carry out both a Personality Test and Physical Attraction Test. Advances in technology bring new possibilities to business.
In the US, Match Mobile lets singles lirt anonymously while Match Live organises singles events.
Match.com operates more than 30 subscription-based online dating sites in 18 local languages across six continents.
It also powers personals for Love@AOL, online dating for MSN globally and for companies such as Wanadoo and Tiscali in Europe.
Revenues for the first quarter 2004 grew by 19 per cent compared with 2003, to $48.8m (拢26.8m) globally.
DATINGDIRECT - Launched in January 1999 on a 拢5,000 budget.
According to Nielsen//NetRatings it has 670,000 unique visitors per month and more than 1.5m members.
They provide online dating and offline parties.
Biggest partners online and offline include Wanadoo UK, ITV.com, Channel Four, Handbag.com, iVillage.co.uk, Loot.com, Telegraph.co.uk and Heart FM.
Annual turnover predicted to be 拢10m this year.
LYCOS - Love@Lycos UK launched in March 2001.
Currently has 729,960 registered Love@Lycos users in the UK.
The service provides free and deluxe membership, and general services including profile pages, photo albums, advanced member search, anonymous email, chat, forums and the ability to receive emails by mobile.
Love@Lycos has partnerships with SpeedDater and Meetic.
Annual Turnover: not given.
YAHOO! - Launched in June 2003.
Yahoo! Personals UK & Northern Ireland has 600,000 unique users a month, according to Nielsen//Netratings.
Services include search-and-find dating services, photo-profiles, emails and instant messenger.
No significant dating partnerships.
Yahoo! is worth $758m (拢414.3m) globally - of this $88m (拢48.1m) comes from fees for premium services such as Yahoo! Personals.