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1) According to our research, you have progressed rather impressively from winning a scholarship to America, then to study Philosophy at Bolton Institute (1995) to MD, International of Match.com. Our current students would like to read, 'how did you get to where you are now?' Like many 18 year olds when I left school, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to go into tertiary education straight away, so instead I applied for and won a scholarship to study in the US. Whilst away I discovered my appetite for travel, so I went on a Kibbutz in Israel for a few months and travelled around the country. When I returned to the UK, I worked on the docks in Grimsby for six months while interviewing for a number of opportunities. I was fortunate to be accepted as a Cultural Representative at Disney World in Florida which was essentially dressing up in plus fours and a frilly shirt to talk to Americans about what it is like to be from the UK. Here I continued to read incessantly, particularly literature and poetry and would always cross reference the writer's sources, which invariably led to works of philosophy. It quickly occurred to me that I could come back to the UK and basically read for three years all of the stuff I loved to read anyway, so I applied to a number of places to study for a degree in Philosophy. I originally went to Manchester Metropolitan University and after my first year transferred to Bolton to complete my study. When I graduated I had been accepted to The University of York to continue my studies with an MA/DPhil in Political Philosophy. I had every intention of trying to pursue an academic career, but first took a job with the travel company, Trailfinders in London. I found I enjoyed the work, the company and the opportunity to continue to travel almost monthly, so stayed for three years until I accepted a job in Business Development for Lufthansa German Airlines. During my time at the airline the internet was starting to become commercially interesting, Lufthansa was among nine airlines that had joined together to look at creating their own travel portal. I was personally interested in the new technology and put my hand up to write a paper on the state of the internet in the UK, who the main players were and what the potential market opportunity was. During the course of the research I became aware of a business called lastminute.com and when I discovered they needed someone to run their airline business in the UK, I was in a good spot for the role as I had immersed myself in the new technology and was passionate about its potential. At lastminute.com I was fortunate enough to be involved with a great business and worked with inspirational leaders and hard working, smart people who where passionate about the brand. As the business grew, I grew personally and was given more responsibility until I eventually became MD of Travelocity Business. After nearly seven years at lastminute.com and a number of roles I was looking for a new challenge, something that tested my skills beyond the travel industry and utilised some of the technologies and concepts that were being categorised as Web 2.0 (social media, peer to peer, user generated content etc). I also wanted to get involved with something that had a more social utility, so when was approached by Match.com to run their European businesses I was delighted to accept a great opportunity with both a nascent category and brand. 2) Match.com has recently launched its personality testing, how is it progressing? Has it helped your millions of UK members to find love and happiness We launched our new Personality Test on the UK site at the end of last year. The Test has been put together by world renowned biological anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher to help our members find real love by understanding their personality type. Dr Fisher has studied the science behind love and attraction for 35 years. She has found that who we fall in love with all comes down to our chemical make-up and the most dominant chemical in the part of our brain that deals with romantic love and attachment e.g dopamine, serotonin, testosterone or oestrogen. Dr Fisher has determined four personality types based on which particular chemical is dominant. These are; Explorer, Builder, Negotiator and Director. Our Test helps identify the personality type of our members to help us make even better matches. To date the test has been taken by over 200,000 members in the UK and we are seeing a huge increase in engagement across the site. In January alone, an additional 500,000 emails and winks were sent between members compared to the same month last year. 3) The UK singles market is expected to hit 16 million by 2010, that is a lot of unhappy or happy bachelors, why do think this is and do you have any plans which you can share with your single customers to help them find Love? There are many sociological and economic reasons that can explain why the number of singles in Britain is on the rise. There is no longer the stigma around being single there once was. It's both more common and more acceptable to get married and start a family later. Largely because we lead increasingly busy lives in which making our way up the career ladder is prioritised. Higher incomes have brought greater financial independence and more single person households. We are no longer prepared to settle for someone who just isn't 'the one' because we don't need to. We've seen our parents and possibly grandparents who married young divorce so know how important it is to get it right. But none of this means we've fallen out of love with falling in love. Love remains a fundamental human need and the fact that we all want to find someone to share our lives with will never change. It's why online dating sites like match.com have become so popular. Searching for your soul mate online fits neatly into our busy lives and the technology helps find our best possible match. At match.com we've seen a 35% increase in new-sign ups this year, so we're busier than ever, but our focus remains the same. Everything we do is about Making Love Happen, which is making sure we give our members the best chance of finding love. The key is talking to and listening to your customers. Your customers are at the heart of your business and to be successful you must act upon what you hear. Over the coming months we will be fine tuning our Personality Test and putting together an advice centre to help our members on their way to success. 4) You've talked in the press about the power of social networking,e-mentoring and power of the web, please explain how our current students and alumni can benefit from these developments? I think it is all about accessibility and connectivity. The first iteration of the web was essentially about ecommerce and a one way, generally transactional relationship with web-sites. The trends that have emerged over the last five years have put precedence on the social applications of the web and have created an ongoing dialogue between everybody that has access to a PC. This taps in to our fundamental human need to communicate, listen and learn. I The information that is possible to discover and talk about because of the web constantly amazes me. In practical terms it means that there is now (a) no excuse for not knowing something and (b) no excuse for not putting your ideas out there to be shared and debated. I work on the firm belief that the free expression of ideas and the debate and discussion of those ideas are what moves both us as individuals and the world forward. Technology has never been better placed to help make that happen. As an example there is a great mentoring website called www.horsesmouth.co.uk that connects mentors skills with people who have questions/issues they want help with. It is now so easy to open a browser and ask someone with experience about starting a business, to help address trouble with you girlfriend or ask which college course to attend. Ten years ago that type of resource was unimaginable. The real beauty of the web is that it's always providing new ways we can engage with each other and it's all these new types of social applications and our free access to information that will make us all, in the words of The Cluetrain Manifesto; 'feel bigger rather than smaller'. 5) Is the social online success of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace etc perceived as competition, complimentary or a communication tool for Match.com? Social networking has clearly fuelled the net generation and people are spending more time on the web than ever before, but we think of the relationship between dating sites and social networks as complimentary. Dating sites and social networks share many of the same characteristics. We're both about bringing people together and this is something we've been successfully doing since 1995. Sites like Facebook are great at helping people manage their existing relationship networks, but what match.com does is help people expand these, by meeting new people with an interest in forming romantic relationships. 6) What is match.com's advantages over traditional dating agency methods? Firstly a dating site puts you in control of your search for love. As a member of a site like match.com, you can use the sophisticated searching and matching technology to find him/her for yourself at a time and in a place that's right for you. Secondly it all comes down to scale. match.com alone has seen over 6 million new members join the UK site. That's a lot of single people in one place. Finally with the average cost of a date coming in at £38, a dating service costing just over £10 a month offers great value for money. 7) During these difficult times, our younger current students face limited first job opportunities and our part-time older students are feeling financial and social pressures not to complete. What advice, wisdom and encouragement can you offer? I can only suggest what I personally have had some success with which is finding something you love to do and work hard at it. Use every experience as an opportunity to learn and take the longer view on what success will look like for you as an individual. It may sound trite, but your own happiness and personal fulfillment is what is at stake, so make sure your aspirations look to fulfil that goal rather than some externally imposed view of what success looks like. When looking for a job, it may not start with your ideal role but if you can get a job in that general sector if you work hard and impress people, you can move towards your ideal. If you can't get a role in that sector, keep updating your skills that you can transfer when the opportunity arises. As we only get one shot in life, it seems obvious to me that your best shot at being successful is through education in its broadest sense, whether that is through a formal environment like University or through learning in your own environment. As individuals you are the only one responsible for your progression through life. So be passionate, have confidence in your ability, be prepared to take risks and fail and just keep getting back up again and learning. Be ready to grab every opportunity that comes your way. As Samuel Beckett says; "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Most importantly don't take yourself too seriously and try to let go of your ego as soon as you can in your career; the secret to success is being part of a hard working team and surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you. 8) Finally, tell us about your time at Bolton Institute, any fond memories? and how did a Philosophy degree contributes to your success? As someone who came to tertiary education later (I still feel I haven't peaked yet) Bolton Institute gave me the intellectual tools and framework to be able to continue to learn and grow. For me, it was the starting point for the rest of my education and fuelled the passion I still have for learning and education. 9) Would you be willing to return to University of Bolton and share your entrepreneurial achievements and give a guest lecture to our students? Absolutely 10) Have you tested Match.com for yourself? Of course, using and understanding your own product is absolutely fundamental when managing a business. However I have a beautiful partner and a young baby so don't need to test the services fully. 11) What's your favourite match.com success story? There are so many. More than 500,000 people a year write and tell us they have found the person they are looking for on match.com. Not a day goes past when we don't receive emails and letters from people who have successfully found love. The great thing about the internet is without doubt its ability to bring people together who would never normally meet. Take Nicky and Paul for example. They lived in the same street, visited the same local pub and their parents even worked together, but they never actually met until joining match.com. Another couple worked in the same hospital and were emailing on match.com from the floor above each other, which just goes to show, sometimes you really can't leave love to Cupid and Fate.
There’s an interesting interview with Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) that was brought to my attention through TechCrunch the other day. I was specifically drawn to the comments he made about every individual being an entrepreneur now which really resonated and eloquently articulated the way in which the employment market has changed over the last 20 years. The transcript goes like this I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not. . . . Average job length is two to four years. That makes you a small business. . . . You are the entrepreneur of your own small business. How do you get to your next gig? How do you do your career progression? All these things now fall on the individual shoulders. And so, they’re essentially an entrepreneur. . . . They’re entrepreneurs in terms of the business of themselves and how they drive that. So it’s how they get, like, their next job opportunity, how they get a promotion. All of that stuff comes from how they manage the network around them. Which is, by the way, what gave me the idea for LinkedIn. But I think that one of the key things — the reason why I think risk tolerance is important is because what happens is people delude themselves they’re not taking risks. They say, oh, I’m going to get a job at, you know, Hewlett-Packard or I’m going to get a job — and that’s not risky. Well, look at current economic climates. Everything in life has some risk, and what you have to actually learn to do is how to navigate it. And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.
As the credit crunch bites we all tighten our belts and contemplate the priorities in our lives. It’s why in times of economic hardship marriage and birth rates rise and can perhaps explain why a subscription to an online dating site is prioritised in our monthly expenditure.
At match.com, we’ve seen a 26% increase in the number of memberships on the site compared to this time last year. And, the communication (emails and winks sent) between members has hit over three million in the UK alone. That’s half a million more than in January 2008.
It seems that love becomes even more important to people in difficult times. With the average cost of a date coming in at £38, a service costing just over £10 a month offers great value for money.
Of course our increased marketing activity and enhanced product play a major in role in bringing people to match.com but I’d be willing to bet that the entire category has received some boost in sign ups in 2009.
Many people talk about the recession acting as a catalyst to new ways of thinking and doing business, the same seems to be true of our personal lives. But make no mistake, the science behind who we fall in love with remains the same its the ways in which we conduct our search for love that changes as society evolves. Technology plays an increasingly central role but its just the new way to do the same old thing.
Chances are that these days you are not going to end up marrying the person that lives at the end of your street. Today, its likely we don’t even know the names of our neighbours. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, our need to feel part of a community is stronger than ever. The rise of social sites that connect people has given us some of the proximity we crave, whether it links us to friends, colleagues or potential partners.
Dating sites give us more choice and more convenience to find a better match. If you’re passionate about the poetry of Simon Armitage, can’t stand smoking and don’t want children, it’s easy to identify potential deal breakers from simply reading someone’s profile and avoid embarking in the wrong relationship altogether.
Technology is constantly updating the way we live our lives, but it only works if it enhances or improves how things were before. Love will remain a fundamental human need irrespective of economic climate, sociological and cultural changes. It’s why more and more people are coming to match.com and it’s why meeting a partner online is the New Natural.
M As a new or emerging category of business, you have to build momentum and gain acceptance from the outset. In 1995, online dating wasn’t the norm. We had to send out clear and tailored messages. Even 10 years later, in 2005, when we launched our first TV campaign, we were still trying to dispel some of the taboos around the category. We also have to consider that in such a huge market, there is no one size- fits-all solution. Cultures all date differently and think about love differently, and we have to hire the best local talent on the ground in all our major territories to ensure each of our marketing campaigns are put together with this in mind. Even if people like the idea of online dating existing and find it socially acceptable, as consumers have claimed in feedback, we find that they still count on meeting their future partner as a result of fate and destiny. So our advertising has had to try to explain that relying on these two things is inadequate and not reliable for finding love. After all, the social atmosphere has evolved. People’s lives have become busier, we work longer hours and socialise in different ways – such as through social networks and instant messaging. The internet has a huge part to play in people’s lives and in that respect, online dating is a natural evolution. Message overload The digital space is huge, however. Not only are societies evolving but so is the online world. Messages can get lost or diluted with so many brands and different services out there. For example, in our business area, there are 1,400 dating sites out there globally. How do you compete in that environment? You have to find one core idea expressed in values that you can stick to. For us, it’s about romance and love. We have to communicate this happy idea while also making sure that we follow strict guidelines to make our site and community a secure place. We need to check every profile and keep things safe for our serious users. There are ethical considerations attached to everything we do and we take our daily responsibilities to consumers, society and the environment very seriously. Social networks have helped our business model because they have proved to be good at helping people to communicate without actually having a face-to-face conversation. Sites such as Facebook allow users to see what their family and friends are doing by updates of status and photos. Social networks are good at forging strong ties. They break down taboos about contacting people and chatting to them freely. But what social networks aren’t so good at is creating new romantic opportunities. By its very nature, a social network involves people you know. There isn’t the chance to meet new people. This is where people can use our service as they have already got used to marketing themselves to their friends. Now they use the same skills on our site for different reasons. Here to stay For any brand, staying fresh in the market is vital. We need to show people that online dating isn’t just a fad or phase. That means developing new marketing campaigns, whether these are partnerships or experiential activity. By making ourselves globally visible – we are in 38 markets – we can combat the taboos associated with our category in general. One day, the time will come when people will stop talking about the online dating area as becoming popular and understand that it is just another way to find love. There will no longer be marketing needed to address taboos.
Our new Cupid and Fate Ads go live on the 26th Dec to again encourage people to take their romantic destiny into their own hands. The Ads will promote our new (and free) Personality Test which we have developed with our Chief Scientific Adviser Dr.Helen Fisher allowing people to not only gain insights into their own personality but it will also allow us to help create better matches with people they should be compatible with.
I love this column in The Guardian so was delighted to see our ads mentioned.
"Cheapest and cheekiest: Match.com First ad: "Oi! Blokes! We've got loadsa gorgeous hotties gagging for lads like you who spend their evenings watching The Sweeney on Dave in grey underpants." Second ad: "Oi! Ladies! You should meet the wave of adorable hunks who've just signed up to match.com!"
The worse the economic outlook, the more people are turning to online dating services in the quest for a soul mate to share the bad times.
By Sarah Butler
Sunday, 14 December 2008
There's nothing, so it seems, like a global financial disaster for bringing people together. Membership is booming at internet dating sites as the credit crunch and impending recession bring a rush to find a partner to share the pain.
Companies such as Match.com and EasyDate, which owns the SpeedDater, DatetheUK and BeNaughty brands, say they have seen some of their best days trading ever since the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to global financial turmoil in September.
Match says it has experienced its 10 biggest days in terms of visitors in the past year, and three of those have been in the past few months. "There is clearly an appetite in this financial climate," says Jason Stockwood, managing director of Match's British and European sites, which include own-label services for MSN and Yahoo!. "It is important in these difficult times for people to be sharing the burden with someone."
Match, which is owned by IAC, the US internet behemoth that is also behind search engine Ask.com, says part of its recent success in the UK has been down to doubling investment in TV and online advertising. Match hopes to capitalise on its larger scale as it attempts to win market share from rival DatingDirect. Other sites are also registering an uptick in daters.
Sean Wood, marketing manager of the smaller British competitor EasyDate, which is owned by Scottish entrepreneur Bill Dobbie and his Ukrainian business partner Max Polyakov, says its sites have seen growth 10 per cent above average since the beginning of September.
"There has been quite a big spike in traffic and the number of people registering," he explains. "Our view is that it seems to be a cheaper alternative to going out to meet people. Monthly membership of an online dating site is about £20 and you could spend that in an hour in a club."
Katie Mowe is managing director of DatingDirect, one of the UK's biggest sites and owned by the French-listed dating specialist Meetic, which operates services in Europe, Latin America and China. She says its sites hit five million registered users five weeks ago at the height of concerns for the UK economy. There was a 28 per cent increase in UK subscribers between January and the end of September, according to the company's latest stock market filing.
Ms Mowe says: "We are growing but there is also increasing acceptability of online dating, so it is hard to tell whether it is the credit crunch or just a rise in dating." However, she adds that Friday and Saturday night registrations have increased over the past few months, suggesting that people are staying in and looking for dates online rather than heading out to pubs and clubs.
The latest figures from market research service Nielsen Online indicate an 18 per cent rise in unique users visiting internet dating sites between September and October, although that follows a 14 per cent decline in the previous month. Over the past year, the number of visitors to these sites has risen 20 per cent, on top of a 9 per cent increase the year before.
Mr Stockwood at Match says there is now greater general acceptance of online dating. It has lost some of its stigma and is becoming a viable alternative to going out to meet people.
He adds: "Everyone knows somebody who is online dating now. That's changed over the last two years. The biggest test of the business is whether people meet someone – and people have been successful. It works and that is a huge draw for others."
That theory will be tested to the full as the dating sites head for their busiest time of the year, the period between Christmas Day and New Year, when many singletons are set on finding their dream partner.
The month-on-month rise in visitors to dating sites soars to an average 14 per cent between December and January, compared to 2 per cent over the year, according to data from Nielsen Online.
Partly this is because the number of visitors drops off in November and December as singles concentrate on going out to pre-Christmas events and parties, and also because Christmas and New Year is sadly the biggest time for couples to break up.
Mr Wood at EasyDate adds that dating activity is also boosted by interaction with friends and family over the holiday period. "There is a phenomenon at Christmas and New Year when there is a lot of social and family events and people on their own are exposed much more to other people in loving relationships – and that spurs them on to do something about getting into a relationship."
Revenues at EasyDate, which was set up three years ago, have at least doubled every year since it launched, while profits have tripled. Mr Wood says the momentum behind that growth will not fade away despite the squeeze on people's disposable income wrought by the credit crunch. "I think we will see the same kind of spike [in new members] we have seen before. There certainly won't be a drop and there is no sign of any downturn in growth," he says.
According to Jupiter Research, the online research group, the industry will grow from 2.8 million paid users in Europe in 2006 to about six million by 2011. Over that period, revenues from British dating sites, which come overwhelmingly from subscriptions, will increase from€85 million last year to €147.3 million. The industry stands out from many rival internet services in that members are prepared to pay a subscription rather than expecting to date for free.
However, dating sites face increasing competition from social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, which put like-minded people in touch with one another at no charge. Those sites saw their share of internet visitors rise to 8.78 per cent last month from only 8 per cent at the beginning of the year, while dating websites attract less than 1 per cent of internet visitors in the UK.
The increase in the online dating market has also been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the number of sites catering to various groups and proclivities, ranging from bibliophiles to tall people, cat lovers, rubber fetishists and even those who are already married. Gaydar, the service for unattached gays, is one of the UK's most popular dating sites.
There are now an estimated 1,300 sites sought out by singletons who want a service that will help them save time by finding exactly what they are looking for.
Many of these smaller services are growing more quickly and are able to charge more than their bigger, generalist rivals. Guardian Media Group's Soulmates site, for example, has enjoyed growth of more than 60 per cent a year over the past four years – an increase undented by the UK's economic problems.
Some industry insiders say smaller sites struggle to make money because the cost of acquiring new customers is relatively high compared to the number of members they can attract. Industry expert Mark Brooks says only four or five internet dating sites worldwide make serious money.
In such a competitive environment, the bigger firms are not really able to put up subscription fees and so are constantly launching new services to try and help members refine their list of potential suitors, hopefully raising the income per subscriber in the process.
The latest trend is in personality tests, with DatingDirect launching its Affinity service last month. Match is set to unveil its own personality test, Match Insights, early next year.
Mr Brooks believes that the growth in online dating is likely to slow in the UK next year as the market begins to reach maturity.
With that in mind, it is more than possible that EasyDate's acquisition of SpeedDater, which happened in March, will be followed by further consolidation as the major players attempt to build scale.
Match has shown itself to be very acquisitive and Mr Stockwood admits he has cash to spend if the right deal comes his way. How apt that the future for online dating could lie in some happy match making.
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