[eonw]

i think part of the problem is the bad taste anyone would have in their mouth after using any of the obviously fake dating sites that have existed to date. as the majority of dating sites are littered with vast amounts of fake or ancient profiles, after a person has been through a few, they usually write them all off as fake or poor quality. its just an industry, much like adult, that collectively has not done itself many favors in the eyes of the general public and past customers.

the other issue with growing a date network is the fact that it is a hyper local focused market, so unless you have a good regional marketing and roll out plan, traction will be hard to gain.

these two problems coupled make it a pretty tough nut to crack. reeducating, recreating trust and moving market by market is going to a cost a bit. the good news is, members tend to stay around a while, in fact often times for a few months after they have found a new person to date. If you want MRR, dating is even better then porn.

one thing that was good for the market was the disappearance of myspace and aol, both of which allowed for searching via zip, dating status and age... making them free places to find possible dates.

source: used to work in the web based dating industry.