The Online Dating Game

More and more relationships are started online these days. Industry frontrunners such as eHarmony and Match.com offer personality tests that will match you with a compatible mate, but many online dating sites take advantage of a long tail business model. For example, WealthyMen.com has found a niche market that only allows men with salaries over $85k a year to join. One very unique attribute of the service is that they verify your profession and income to prevent men from lying about just how wealthy they are. The home page for the website displays several pictures of "people currently searching" that include mostly beautiful women. However, once you create an account and start browsing you find that most of the women are not that attractive. This website leverages collective intelligence by having women compete for men based on their salaries and pictures. At $20-$35 a month, this service doesn't come cheap. However, since most users  are wealthy anyways, it is probably worth the expense for them. Another dating service utilizing a niche market is GreenSingles.com. This website attracts users who are passionate about the environment, vegetarian, animal lovers and people with other similar interests. One unique feature is that you can register, search and contact other members for free or choose to upgrade your account and pay. This website leverages collective intelligence because users upload information about themselves that other users can search by criteria for. GreenSingles provides great value because of the fact that you can search and contact for free. This allows users to explore the website a little bit before deciding if they would like to pay for upgraded services.