Yours truly (me) will be speaking in iDate Miami 2011.

Normally I introduce speakers at the event and provide brief, but candid opinions.

For something to get me out of my chair to speak for 30+ minutes and wax poetic on a topic, it had better be important.

The industry is facing a future problem. A BIG PROBLEM. Its not a problem today. Sometime in 1-3 years I see a storm coming.

The problem is: FREE

More sites are coming in with the free dating business model than ever before.

In 2009, when we handed Markus Frind (CEO of Plenty of Fish) the darth vader helmet, it was tongue and cheek, more of a cute joke. I don't think he will single-handedly destroy the business nor will he harm it on his own with a growing popular free dating site.

The general consensus agreed upon at iDate 2009 Miami was that there was room for both the paid and free business models in the dating industry.

As long as the free model remains a minority, the free and paid models should co-exist.

But what happens when hundreds, or thousands of popular sites use the free model, and free becomes the majority and no longer the minority?

The adult industry is now looking at your business. Why? They are fiscally dying. How could they be losing money? Simple: most of the business converted to the FREE business model. As a result, most of the companies in the business are cannibalizing each other. This is true; this is the current state of affairs in that business.

Guess how they will operate...Their own history shows they will do to the dating business what they did to themselves.

If you are a dating CEO, this should bother you the way the White House was concerned with future terrorism after 9-11.

I, like you do not wish to witness this. I like to think the industry consists of a smart bunch and can properly defend or adapt to this. You have 1-2 years at least.

I am currently studying free business models in numerous industries. There are a wide variety of types ("freemium", ad-based revenue, zero-based revenue, etc.) Defenses and adaptations do exist.

Other speakers for this topic would, simply put....be one sided. And....I've looked.....There are NO (ZERO) University Economics Professors that are experts on FREE. (Not "free markets" but freeconomics...none).

Yours truly (ahem...that's me) will be discussing this in Miami. Given the market dynamics I saw in Paris, Miami 2011 is THE MOST IMPORTANT IDATE EVENT ANY DATING EXECUTIVE MUST ATTEND if you are concerned about your business future. From where I sit, your industry is looking at a Katrina sized hurricane. A real, materially adverse market disruptor.

Those that wish to debate my point of view....I healthily encourage it. Please post your opinions below. I want to be thorough at iDate, so if I missed something, I would like to see it here.

Hope to see you *all* in Miami. Be sure to sit in my session early. There are only 180 seats in that room.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Internet Dating Conference

Marc Lesnick

I see you point, the adult industry is a prime example as you mentioned. A good balance of both free and paid is a must only problem is with the membership costs users expect more product.

You're right Mark it's a very important subject. I'm not sure that the only voices you'd hear from the industry would be one sided. I ran a subscription site for 7 years which at peak was a Hitwise top 10 site, and I've been running Smooch.com, a free site, for the last 3 (it's also a Hitwise Top 10 sites), and I can't be the only one with years of experience of both sides of the fence.

I'd be happy to share my long experiences of the two sides of the business in Miami, either speaking individually or as part of a panel. Maybe a panel of free site owners? From the UK I'm sure the CEO of FreeDating.co.uk would be happy to take part, and maybe Markus Frind or the CEOs of US free sites, like OKCupid. If you're serious about exploring this issue, and I know you are, this would be a great way to go about it.

Best,
Martin

Regardless of that - I understand iDate needs a compelling reason for people to return to the event, something new. However, free dating hasn't worked for anyone except PoF (with a possible exception of OkCupid, but I don't know what their profits are now?) - why should it work now?

Free dating can work for only the very cleverest people - and Martin Bysh is one of those. But even then, they rely on paid dating sites for a decent proportion of their revenue (by advertising, co-registration, etc).

Online dating is bigger than porn now - so I don't think pornographers are a threat. They made their money on video - which is now easier to be free due to low bandwidth costs.

Pornography is media consumption. Online dating is not, it's a service - which needs to be delivered with customer care.

The bigger threat - which you in a position of influence have failed to deal with, is online scammers. The vast majority of the online dating companies are still not doing enough to deal with this problem.

Scammers and fake profiles still plague the industry - and I know of a number of online dating businesses who actively use fake profiles to mislead their members, yet are allowed to get away with this by the industry.

I agree you need a good reason for people to come to iDate - free dating is interesting, but even PoF makes a fraction of the profits that paid dating sites make - and they're the biggest free site by far.

The bigger issue is the industry allowing dating companies to mislead and defraud their customers.

My views on this are well known and I covered this in the Mixergy interview - the industry can come together and combat this, but if it won't then it will only have itself to blame.

Ross

_________________
Ross Williams
Founder and CEO, Global Personals Limited
http://www.globalpersonals.co.uk

I would love to see the industry come together on scammers - and it is relevant to free dating, as with no credit card check it is even harder to control scammers on a free dating site.

Some very simple things we could do together are:

(1) share email addresses used by scammers on our sites.

(2) Use something like the TinEye API to build a database of images used by scammers.

(3) Submit the message history of scammers to a central database and check new messages against the db for similarlities.

(4) Share info on compromised IPs.

Cheers
Dan
Founder - Free Dating

FOr the sake of decorum, lets focus this thread on the issue of FREE versus PAID dating not other industry related issues.

Otherwise, all the issues become clouded and mixed signals get sent.

So this thread must focus on Free versus paid or I will have to separate the posts to different threads.

Marc Lesnick

Marc, this debate is old and tired. It's been covered elsewhere numerous times. Someone should tell Match and eHarmony to stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on all those TV ads, as their model is dead.

Someone should also tell Markus at POF that:
a) eVow hasn't a chance, as paid is dead &
b) POF itself is doomed, for once paid is dead, there'll be no one paying for ads on POF to send that traffic to their (previously alive) paid sites.

The way I see it, free and paid is dead, as singles will finally get their act together, connect locally while on the 100-mile diet, and have wonderful and happy marriages

Orrrrrr, POF will continue as the only real destination for those too cheap to pay 30 cents a day for a dating site (along with a subset going to OKCupid), - but have $5.00 daily for a latte at Starbucks - AND generic paid sites like Match & eHarmony, and numerous niche sites like ChristianCafe.com, JDate, WhiteLabelDating, IranianPersonals, & ArabLounge will always have a market for those who are actually serious about meeting someone, and have their spending priorities in order.

_________________
Sam Moorcroft
President
ChristianCafe.com

Sam,

From 2008 to 2010 (today), some believed free sites may take over and others did not. During this period, both do coexist, and revenues apparently have not been hurt in the paid dating space.

But, this debate is looking forward now. 12-36 months forward.

Plenty of Fish will not and can not alone decimate the paid market. If all there were was Smooch, POF, FreeOnlineDating.co.uk and a handful of others, this conversation would not exist.

More free sites (in the hundreds) are being created. Some are aggressively seeking market share. Some (ex Badoo) is actually acquiring it in significant numbers.

Add to this the adult market. They are seriously looking at dating businesses and being much more aggressive at marketing in the space.

This in the next 12-36 months may cause a dynamic market shift, where today the majority of subscribers are paid will become the minority. If that becomes the case, then the free market may do to dating what it did to the adult industry. It won't be Plenty of Fish that did it, no. It would be Thousands of free sites, all vying for aggressive market share.

And don't be fooled, niche dating will probably be a target as well.

From this perspective, my concern is the future of the industry from a revenue perspective. Not today, but 1-3 years from now given the new competition and their desire for market share.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Internet Dating Conference

I've made a VIDEO and SUMMARY of the presentation.

Enjoy :-0

Marc Lesnick

Mark,

Match.com's latest numbers don't bode well for your "free" thesis:

See http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com/new ... chcom.html
IAC Q3 Results: Strong Revenues From Match.com

It says, in part:
" Match.com posted a 31% increase in its sales to $106.2M, fueled primarily by organic growth at Match US and People Media, as well as by the acquisition of Singlesnet and the company's venture with Meetic in Latin America."

_________________
Sam Moorcroft
President
ChristianCafe.com