Online Dating Industry: Another BIG BOOM in Chinese Cyber World

Written by: S.M.Mehdi Hassan
Although I do not know much about dating on the net, I can say that internet has always been very popular among the youths in all the countries of the world for meeting with opposite sex and talking with them. No wonder, that it would become a very profitable business. I found out that China’s online dating industry is expected to grow to 81 million US dollars by 2008. According to the report of iresearch, a firm specialized in online marketing and opinion research, the annual growth rate of the Chinese online dating industry will become 60%. I am quoting from the article:
The report values the online dating market at 37 million yuan (some 4.5 million dollars) for 2004 and 91 million yuan (11.2 million dollars) for 2005 and predicts it will grow to 653 million yuan, 4.8 percent of the entire dating market in China.
In comparison, the US market was 520 million dollars for 2005, and the European market was 110 million dollars, both expanding at double-digit rates, the report said.
The report was released at an international friends-making forum held in Beijing last week. Participants held that online dating will become a more important channel for bachelors to seek spouses as there are more men than women in China's 1.3-billion population.
Baihe, the biggest on line dating website received 11 million dollars in 2005 after attracting 5 million users. The participants in the forum are expecting that internet dating will become a valuable source for the Chinese males to find their soulmates as there are more men than women in China. However, Baihe’s CEO, Tian Fanjiang said that finding a soulmate on the net is not a very easy job, it requires lots of patience and building up a healthy trustful environment.
I would also like to add a little more about the dating websites. As I was browsing the net I found a good article about online dating websites in wikipedia. According to the essay the main problem of these dating websites is that in order to increase the number of users many websites sometimes build up fake profiles of women or men. It reminded me of the movie ‘S1m0ne’ where Al Pacino, a movie producer, creates a computer image of a beautiful woman and made her so famous. There are many people who would become a victim of such fake women or men. So my suggestion to you dear readers, do whatever you do. Just be careful and make sure that the other person is not a fake one.

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