Dating sites are still a long journey

Absrtact: Nowadays, there is a sharp rise in the number of the remaining male, which gave birth to a flourishing situation of the marriage website. For the remaining fighters who are anxious to have a blind date, the online marriage looks commonplace. Since October this year, the domestic marriage website Lily Net CEO Fanjiang (Weibo) frequently

Nowadays, the remaining male remains a sharp upward trend, which gave birth to a flourishing situation of marriage and love websites. For the "remaining fighters" who are anxious to have a blind date, the online marriage looks commonplace. Since October this year, the domestic marriage website Lily Net CEO Fanjiang (micro Bo) frequently to the media throws "The marriage website Spring arrives" the speech.

Coincidentally, recently according to rumors of Century Jiayuan is going to go public, but also out of the Treasure network is quietly launched the news of the listing. According to people familiar with the situation, the home marriage website Century Jiayuan has hired PwC to do an audit to prepare for its listing on the Nasdaq. And cherish Network has hired one of the four major accounting firms Deloitte to do the audit, do the preparatory work of listing.

Recently, the whole marriage industry are very concerned about the treasure net and Century good edge of the listing rumors. There is a voice in the industry that, because they represent the two different business models of competition, the first listing of the business model may become the future domestic marriage industry mainstream business model. However, the seemingly both popular and emboldened marriage sites, but also have no say "bitter." After a long period of market development, love and marriage site is still a long journey.

The Battle of business models after the burning of money

Fanjiang, founder of Lily Nets, said that the 2008 Chinese search engine market was only billions of yuan, while the entire marriage and love industry income is estimated to be 10 billion yuan. But for now, dating sites are only a small part of the overall market, and he is optimistic that all users, except the rich, are willing to spend money on matchmaking sites, and the future will be more worthy of anticipation.

The development of marriage websites in China is not smooth sailing. Over the past few years, love and marriage websites have gone through a period of crazy earning traffic, the website "Burn Money" hit advertising, reduce registration threshold to increase the number of users, a round of happy enclosure, but found that the content of the site gradually lost interest in domestic users, but did not circle the user's loyalty. From 2008 to 2009, domestic marriage and love web market is to lily Nets, married My network, century Jia Yuan, China Matchmaker Network, cherish the network five separation, in the major marriage websites crazy hit ads, "loss to make a yell", but also can not immune to the same quality of the mire of competition.

It is reported that the century Jia Yuan originally rely on self-service network dating platform fees, in order to increase income, years to spend huge sums of money to put online advertising, creating a lot of traffic. But the amount of revenue that relies on its self-service online dating platform has been modest. This year, the century good edge began to vigorously promote the line under the high-end "hunting marriage" services to make up for the lack of online income, the so-called high-end hunting marriage service is in the north of the big city for the small public to provide personalized online dating services, service unit price up to tens of thousands of to hundreds of thousands of yuan.

By contrast, the treasure net has always insisted on the Web site plus telephone Matchmaking service mode. The site has always claimed that it is not a "dating site", but a "dating site," and boasts more than 1000 telephone matchmaking service teams. The network insists that the business model of the site plus telephone matchmaking services is larger than the online high-end hunting service.

Domestic marriage website surface for the camp, actually staged a war without smoke. But love and marriage website similar web style, service content, popular products, the same customer positioning, research and development capabilities and low technology, so that similar products between the high replacement. Therefore, differentiated product services is the development direction of dating sites. Like the century Jia Yuan into the field of marriage, the absolute 100 launched emotional counseling, special services and a specific audience division, is also a good way, the key is to clear brand strategy and tailor-made service is to win the trust of customers. People in the industry point out that in the desperate burning of money, love and marriage website profit also become imminent, to love the downstream industry extension is the best way to improve the profitability of love and marriage sites. The purpose of Internet marriage is to provide richer marriage and love products, and to put the development of love and marriage websites in the whole industry chain. The industry will also be divided into vertical areas and extension, if you can provide some meticulous spiritual level of dating, there will be a very large development space.

Domestic love and marriage Web site three years of funding gaps

As early as 2005, match and other foreign marriage and love web site of the hot birth of the domestic marriage website market, in addition to cherish the net and century good edge, there are lilies nets, marry me nets have become the darling of venture capital, these start-up companies have been merged into more than 10 million dollars of funds, More than 60 million dollars have been invested in the field of matchmaking websites.

But since then, most dating sites have accumulated a large number of registered members, but there has been a lack of income model. Quiet for several years, the media and VCs no longer pay attention to the network of love and marriage industry, until this year, Jiangsu satellite TV dating show "hit" after the marriage site suddenly again to the stage. Cherish the net and century good edge as Jiangsu satellite TV "not sincere not Disturb", Zhejiang TV's "Love Repeatedly", Shanghai Oriental TV, "crème" and other matchmaking program partners, with the way to provide programs for male and female guests in these popular television programs frequently exposed, to improve their brand awareness played a role.

However, according to the reporter understand, looks like a booming domestic love and marriage website, has been in the past three years by investors. From the end of 2007 to now, a few cases of domestic marriage and love sites, many companies are mired in the crisis of lack of funds. Fanjiang admits that during the 2008 economic crisis, China's love and marriage websites were experiencing a difficult time to live beyond their means. To this end, including the Lily network in many marriage sites to reduce the cost of promotion and austerity, on the one hand, the introduction of ordinary membership fee model.

Century Jia Margin CEO Gong (Weibo) also admits that the current VC on the domestic marriage website is really cautious, investment cases are not many. One investor said: "Investors are no longer keen on domestic dating sites, mainly because the industry is a subdivision, it is hard to have billions of companies, and it is hard for new people to rise quickly through capital." "In addition, over the years, dating sites in Europe and the United States" fee "model, although a breakthrough in the country, but the promotion of huge costs, large-scale profit is still in the future. To the forefront of the century Jia Yuan and lily nets, for example, although the number of users, but high advertising spending is increasing. Worse, the rate of user-paid conversion has not increased significantly.

According to Fanjiang, the domestic marriage website users pay conversion rate of only 5%-6%. This makes the profitability of matchmaking sites still at a lower level. And the first century Jiayuan is only to achieve a break-even, a slight surplus.

SNS and Weibo or new rivals

Now, entrepreneurs such as Fanjiang and Gong will face new threats from SNS and microblogs. At least from the user group, SNS and Weibo may have a certain diversion of traditional marriage sites, and some SNS sites are even quietly expansion to the marriage market.

Love Apartment website is one of the predators. The SNS website, which started with the female dating service, has been introducing the city's marriage dating, virtual pets, free albums, friends, internet cohabitation and other services. According to the official disclosure of love apartments, the current site of the mainland's more than 20 million people, the monthly web browsing times up to 300 million.

The bigger threat may come from happy net and thousands of Oak's renren. According to news, Renren has been brewing for "single" users to launch the search function, all single user information can be displayed through search, which is likely to evolve into marriage services. Moreover, these services are free of charge.

The operation Director of a marriage website thinks that, once the SNS website cuts into the traditional marriage website, the impact cannot be underestimated. Because SNS website's user stickiness and trustworthiness is higher, and the user true identity also can effectively eliminate the cheating phenomenon on the marriage website.

In addition, the major portals of the microblog may also have a certain impact on the marriage site. As the number of users surges, future micro-blogging services will become increasingly rich. For example, microblogging encourages users to improve their marital personal information, it is easy to launch related marriage services if the marriage market can get enough profits, the business model to explore the SNS and Weibo why not grab food? This is caused by the income of self-service network dating platform to meet the growth bottleneck.

In fact, foreign Facebook has embedded a variety of third-party-developed dating and matchmaking plug-ins that earn tens of thousands of dollars in this way. By contrast, the domestic SNS website apparently prefers to do it all by itself.

Another Love website Treasure Network CEO Lisong that, now the United States matchmaking website match growth slow, a large part of the reason is by the impact of Facebook.

Of course, in response to potential threats, dating sites are also looking for solutions. As early as in 2009, cherish Net Lisong has already founded the microblogging website muttering network, the future does not rule out the possibility of getting through each other. According to Tencent Science and technology, the lily Network has been considered in their own marriage sites to join SNS Interactive communication, Century Jiayuan and other sites are also trying to enhance the user stickiness in a variety of ways.

Author: Guo Yi 珺