How does one compete successfully in the hyper-competitive online dating space?
A couple of books provide a valuable perspective: The future of online dating belongs to Visionaries, not Historian.
The first book, “Blue Ocean” by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne views the world from the business strategy perspective. It uses the metaphor of red and blue oceans to describe the market universe. (more…)
Who do you think is drawn to Virtual Dating? If you guessed “young males” - you’d be wrong.
Take a look at the demographics for OmniDate, which has developed a virtual dating application that it licenses to dating sites. The company also maintains a small virtual dating site for the purpose of testing and refining its product.
According to Quantcast, a leading provider of internet metrics, OmniDate appeals to Women and people in the 35-49 age range.
Recently I had an interesting conversation with someone about why it makes sense to bring certain “virtual world” elements into the online dating space. We talked about how in virtual worlds there is much to do, but little purpose for being there … while in the online dating space, the opposite is true: a clear purpose for being there (i.e., to find a mate), but little to do (other than flipping through profiles and sending emails). So, giving users with a purpose a better virtual experience should keep them engaged longer … and, thus, should result in longer “time on site.”
So, today, I wanted to see if real-world data would lend support to this thinking. I pulled up Alexa (an online analytics tool) and compared “time on site” for several “virtual world” sites and OmniDate, which is a proxy for a “virtual dating” site. (more…)
Here’s a great post by Matthew, a news writer for Geek.com: OmniDate to replace real first date with virtual one.
Matthew correctly describes the objective of virtual dating: “… to try and remove some of the barriers to going on a first date. Their idea is simple. Replace the first real date with a virtual one … [from] the safety of your own home.” (more…)
We won the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies Award, recognizing most promising technology companies in the world that will lead the next wave of disruption and innovation. Past winners of this prestigious award included Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Salesforce.com, and YouTube. This is a terrific validation of our technology and business concept.
This posting is for dating site owners. OmniDate has started to investigate how virtual dating impacts the profitability of dating sites.
Did you know that, on average, a paying member stays on a dating site about 3 months before canceling his membership? Ok, you probably knew that.
But did you know that (more…)
It appears virtual dating gets people to stay on the site MUCH longer than webcam dating. Here are some stats on how the two compare in terms of Avg Stay Per Visit (min): (more…)
OmniDate has been invited to speak at iDate, an online dating conference, in London!
As the popularity of 3D virtual experiences is heating up, the online dating industry is turning its attention to virtual dating. (more…)
Few weeks ago, I posted a blog where I compared virtual dating and webcam dating. A couple of days ago I came across some interesting stats on the use of webcam dating, which strongly coincide with my earlier assertions.
According to a survey by MakeFriendsOnline.com, while men are open to webcam dating, women are not. (more…)
We originally designed virtual dating to help singles get to know each other in the comfort and safety of a virtual environment before meeting in person.
We periodically collect aggregated stats on how people are using the application and I am thrilled to share with you that (more…)