Perhaps inspired by Andrew Chen’s article about why investors don’t fund dating, Georgia Wells from the Wall Street Journal has produced a nice overview of the dating industry’s problems in 2015.
Over the past few years, a huge number of dating services have popped up, as social stigma fades and new generations start using online dating.
And yet despite this, problems such as the inherent churn of dating products, and the trouble of acquiring customers, still persist.
As Wells notes, few truly successful dating sites have cropped up in the past few years, and those that have, such as Zoosk, still encounter problems – such as backing out of a planned IPO – citing factors around market conditions for subscription-based businesses.
And with IAC controlling the market – and acting as the industry’s main acquirer – even some of the biggest-name players like Grindr are reportedly looking for an out via an acquisition.
Read the piece here.