ZEITGUIDE ‘CONTENT’IMAGE BY KRISTOFER PORTER

Barry Diller’s having much more success helping people tie the knot than cut the cord.

Diller’s been a high-visibility investor in Aereo, the network-TV-on-the-Internet service that came up short before the U.S. Supreme Court and, more recently, the U.S. Copyright Office. But it’s less well known that IAC, where he’s chairman, is the leading provider of digital dating sites. Its “personals” portfolio includes Match.com, Chemistry.com, OkCupid, Twoo, and the fast-growing Tinder – and controls 27% of the $2.2 billion U.S. dating services market.

This week, IAC made another match, buying parts of HowAboutWe, a Brooklyn-based startup. Tinder, its mobile geo-dating app that allows its users to “swipe” through potential dates, gets more than 750 million “swipes” per day. (For comparison, Twitter claims 500 million tweets per day.)

It’s no surprise mobile dating apps are booming: they blend the universal need for love with the universal love of mobile gadgets.

According to the just-released IPG media labs report, mobile dating apps are rising in popularity alongside mobile social media and messaging apps (think WhatsApp, which sold to Facebook for $19 billion). And online dating seems to work: 79% of online daters say it’s a good way to meet people and 29% of Americans know someone who found a spouse or long-term relationship online, according to Pew Research. The market is expanding demographically too: 44% percent of American residents over 18 are single today, compared to just 28% in 1970.

That’s all good news for the 3,900 companies running dating sites today, and may mean there’s room for the 100 more expected to continue to annually join the fray.

Online dating isn’t just big business, though: in some corners of the globe, it’s becoming part of public policy conversations. In China, where decades of the “one-child” policy has left the nation short of women, half of the 180 million bachelors look for love online. In Japan, the government is encouraging—and in some cases paying for—online dating to lift the number of marriages and babies and combat what Japan’s media calls its “celibacy syndrome.” (According to the Japan Family Planning Association, over 25% of young men and 45% of young women say they are no longer interested in sex.)

These initiatives might work. Match.com estimates that 1 million children have been born from couples who met on the site since its … conception 19 years ago.

Keep Learning,

Brad Grossman

Creator, ZEITGUIDE
Founder, Grossman & Partners

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These weekly Zeitguide newsletters illuminate many of the leading-edge issues we continue to explore for our clients. If you would like to learn more about any of the leading edge issues changing our culture, please contact us at info@grossmanandpartners.com. Get ZEITGUIDE 2014 here.