My Dating Sites

How specialized can a dating site get before it's TOO specialized? Clearly some specialization can help, but basic economic theory would indicate that the value in a dating site depends entirely on the size and quality of the network of people on it. So how narrow (or "segmented" to use the marketers' term) do you want to get?

JDate is a wll-known example, catering to Jews (and, I suppose, people looking for Jews, but it primarily works if you're Jewish). This works well, because there's a significant number of Jews, who tend to be geographically concentrated, and for many of them, finding another Jew is a high priority.

Many of the most popular and successful ones (judging by TV ads at least) seem to cater to those looking to get married on the soonish side. This makes sense because it's a large population in the highest need of such services, and they'll typically have the most cash. Furthermore, it's not a very deep specialization. In fact, it's arguably most of the market.

There's even Ashley Madison, which has gotten a lot of attention because it's for married people looking to have affairs with other married people (I'm not sure why it needs to be with another married person, but I guess it's safer because they understand the problems, share your need for secrecy, and probably don't want to ruin their lives and reputations either by disclosing something like an affair). I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it's providing value to society, but it's definitely profitable for the owners.

There are plenty of general ones, and the first-movers with good advertising budgets seem to be leading the pack.

But tonight I saw an ad for crewdating.com, a website catering to people in the aviation industry. I have to wonder: is this too specialized, and if not, how much further can it go? It makes sense that other airline employees would understand your hectic schedule during which you're almost never home, but do aviation professionals (flight attendants, pilots, etc.) really place dating other aviation professionals as a high priority? Does having a similar career really add a lot to the feasibility or enjoyability or probability of success of a relationship if you work for Delta? As near as I can tell, this service has only two things going for it: (1) people who work in aviation probably need a partner who's very understanding of the demands of the job and (2) because of their extraordinary relative mobility, geography isn't as big a boundary. By this I mean that someone in Philly could date someone in New York a lot more easily if they're both aviation professionals than if they're both lab technicians in the same cities.

As I think about social networking sites, and specifically ones looking to create high-value connections (dating sites primarily, but also in a way, job/employee search sites), I'm growing increasingly fascinated. I find myself wishing there were large amounts of data about these sites freely available. What aspects of the phenomenon will be a fad, and what components will mature to form a core part of the new social order of our increasingly connected, integrated, globalized, and technologically sophisticated society?