iDate Online Dating Conference London 2008 report
28-Sep-2008
This week we attended the iDate conference in London. This conference takes
place two or three times a year and attracts online dating professionals from
around the world. Normally one is held in Miami and another European dating
conference rotates around with this year's being in London. Since
DatingAgency.com is based in London it seemed rude not to go and it was well
worth it, as ever.
We've returned brimming full of new thoughts and ideas to make your dating
experience online better than ever. In this article I'm going to share some of
the key themes that came out of the conference.
Online and offline dating - why aren't they more closely linked together and
what can be done about it?
Offline dating - that means traditional matchmaking services, personal
matchmaking services - and larger (cheaper) computer dating services. With the
rise of online dating you'd be forgiven for thinking that offline dating had
gone away. Think again. The entire dating market has actually grown enormously
in the last ten years - driven by the phenomenal growth in online dating but
lifting offline dating up with it. We haven't seen the demise of offline dating
at all - but all the hype is centred around online so many of the offline
companies have been somewhat starved of publicity even though they're doing
better than ever.
The great thing about online dating it that it's cheap. The problem is whilst
it's fantastic for spreading your net as wide as possible, it leaves all the
hard work up to you. You have to trawl through dating sites such as
datingagency.com, finding your own matches, sending messages (no guarantee of a
reply) and fielding approaches from people you may consider obviously
unsuitable. Women especially are often flooded with an unmanageable number of
messages when they first join a dating site. The other big problem is trust -
you have to build trust yourself and there's very little you can do to ensure
the people you're talking to are real, genuine and trustworthy.
Offline dating is a different beast. Most operate using a team of staff who do
all the background work for you. They will send a consultant to
your home or invite you in for an interview. They background check you and find
out what you like and don't like. The background checks take care of any
criminals, and the interview ensures that you are only matched with
likeminded, suitable people. There's nothing quite like the personal touch in matchmaking
- personal chemistry can't be emulated by a computer (yet). So at iDate this
year we heard from many traditional matchmaking companies who want to work with
the online dating industry more closely and offer dissatisfied online daters a
service which may be more suited to them. Many people leave online dating sites
feeling disappointed and unmatched. Perhaps if they spent a few more pounds for
a highly personalised service they would find what they're looking for.
DatingAgency.com is already providing an
offline personal matchmaking service.
Mobile dating - why aren't we all doing it?
In theory mobile dating has been the coming thing for years. As mobiles get more
sophisticated and more and more of our lives are spent in touch by mobile and
using mobile services, so why aren't we doing mobile dating all the time? Over the
last few years many, many companies have been set up to provide mobile dating
services but none so far have really seeped into the public consciousness. Why?
One reason is that our mobiles are still small-screen, and dating tends towards
needing a large screen for effective use. Also mobiles are great for sending
short sharp messages like texts but very poor at lenghty correspondence which
online dating tends to require. That's why so far most of mobile dating services
have tended towards the lower end of the market - casual dating and sex dating.
No sophisticated correspondence required - just pictures and texting. Now the
online dating industry is no longer seeing mobile dating as the coming thing.
This may change however as devices converge - we tend to use laptops now rather
than PCs and mobile become more like laptops with broadband Internet access,
bigger screens and more sophisticated input devices.
Credit crunch dating - what will happen as we enter a global recession?
A big theme at any industry conference, the credit crunch is expected to become
a full blown recession, with many people saying we're already in a recession.
Will online daters switch off their subscriptions, hunker down and wait for
better times? Well according to the pundits at iDate - no, this is unlikely to
happen. A recession on the high street tends to see companies and customers
moving onto the Internet away from retail - which is great for online dating.
Also let's not forget that if you're single then your search for love is of
major importance to you and you are most unlikely to stop looking for love just
because of a recession. You might stop going to the gym, you might buy less
fancy foods, go on fewer holidays, give up daily lattes, buy fewer consumer
goods. But you won't stop looking for love and that is good news for those who
use online dating.
Summary
We enjoyed our time at iDate and there are plans afoot to attend the Miami
conference. The conference attracts many thinkers and opinion formers who work
in and around the online dating industry. We've gained some great insights and
shared our experiences too. Do you have any thoughts about this article?
Contact us.
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