Case Study (2009)

To test our technology, we had set up a virtual dating site and collected data over a 12-month period. More than 15,000 people registered on the site. An average member was in her early 30s, and approximately 15% of registrants were over 45 years old.

Two main lessons emerged: 1) Virtual  dating appeals to women and 2) virtual dating intensifies member interaction.

Virtual Dating Appeals to Women

"A dating site can succeed only if it attracts a lot of women ... for any dating site, women, not men, are the customers," Gary Kremen, founder and former CEO of Match.com (Inc., 2008)

• Women Represented Over 55% of Registrations, which compares favorably to other smaller dating sites, which tend to have fewer than 30% female members, and even leading dating sites, such as Match, which has 45% female members.

• Women Actively Used Virtual Dating to Initiate Contact, whereby more than a third (37%) of all virtual dating invitations were initiated by women. In contrast, on traditional dating sites women tend to initiate contact only in about a quarter of cases (e.g., MIT Media Lab, 2005; PoF blog, 2008). Thus, women were 42% more likely to invite someone on a virtual date than to initiate another type of digital communication, indicating a high degree of comfort level.

• Women were 2.5 times more likely to accept an invitation to a virtual date than respond to other forms of digital messages. During the pilot, women accepted more than half of virtual dating invitations; in contrast, on a typical dating site, only 20% of electronic messages tend to be reciprocated by women (e.g., Fiore & Donath, 2005).

• Women Perceived Virtual Dating as a Safe and Comfortable way to establish a sense of familiarity and a common bond before meeting in person. They felt less pressure to meet a stranger just on the basis of his profile and even viewed virtual dating as a safe alternative to a face-to-face meeting at an early stage of a relationship. One user described her experience to a reporter as follows:

Virtual Dating Intensifies Member Interaction

"The virtual dating experience ... is surprisingly intimate, which helps explain the relative success of virtual dating compared with the major dating sites." (Discovery Channel News, 2009)  

• High Proportion of Invitations Were Accepted By the Invitees. During the pilot period, approximately 2/3 of all virtual date invitations were accepted, with men accepting more invitations than women. This high acceptance rate is in sharp contrast to reports that less that 22% of introductory messages sent on dating sites are reciprocated (e.g., Fiore & Donath, 2005).

• Average Virtual Date Lasted Approximately Half-Hour, and many dates lasted an hour and two, indicating high user engagement. The longest virtual date has been clocked at 8 hours and the second longest - 6.5 hours

• Virtual Dating Dramatically Increased Time On Site. According to Alexa.com (see left graph) and Compete.com (see right graph), leading providers of Internet metrics, an average visitor spent much more time on OmniDate's virtual dating site than on some of the top dating sites (50% to 100% longer), such as Lavalife and Date (virtual dating is indicated in blue).

This is particularly noteworthy given that "Time on Site" is largely a function of the size of the userbase, and OmniDate.com had a much smaller userbase compared to the other sites. This data clearly speaks to greater user engagement.

To compare virtual dating to other smaller dating sites, we used the "Benchmarking" feature of Google Analytics. The "Avg Time On Site" for OmniDate.com was 2.3 times longer than that of other "similar" sites in the "Personals" category.