LoveHappens Becomes the Darling of the Online Dating Industry; Yahoo! Personals Still Winning the Competition for Customers, Keynote Reports

Business Wire, Nov 3, 2005

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Keynote Systems:

--LoveHappens, a New Entrant to the Online Dating Market, Wins the Hearts of Customers

--Yahoo! Personals Is Still the Most Attractive Site to Prospective Customers

--Online Dating Industry Reputation Takes Hit: Customers Are Concerned That Other Members Misrepresent Themselves

New competitive intelligence from Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority(R), shows LoveHappens and AmericanSingles.com receiving the highest customer satisfaction rankings from online customers, but being edged out by Yahoo! Personals in terms of success in online customer acquisition. Keynote also reports that the online dating industry could be suffering fall-out from a general lack of customer confidence and trust in the statements and profiles of some online dating site members.

According to the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Online Dating Web Site Customers, LoveHappens, which was launched by Tickle earlier this year, and AmericanSingles.com are the top sites in the online dating industry in terms of delivering a positive online customer experience. Keynote's second annual study of customer experience at online dating sites is based on research with 1,150 customers as they interacted with leading online dating web sites. A companion study, based on research with 2,000 prospective customers, found Yahoo! Personals to be leading in the competition for new online dating customers.

For the studies, Keynote evaluated the Web sites of the following companies: AmericanSingles.com, eHarmony, Happy Marriage (a service of Tickle), Lavalife, LoveHappens (a service of Tickle), Match.com, True and Yahoo! Personals. In addition, the FriendFinder and Friendster sites were included for the prospective customer study.

"The big news out of these studies is the bold entrance of LoveHappens into the market," said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research at Keynote. "It is quite impressive and unique for a site to enter a market with such a strong showing in terms of the online customer experience. Tickle clearly made the right strategic decision."

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       Keynote Customer Experience Rankings - Customers
                   Online Dating Web Sites
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  1  LoveHappens
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  2  AmericanSingles.com
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  3  Yahoo! Personals
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LoveHappens, AmericanSingles.com and Yahoo! Personals were ranked as the leading sites in the online dating industry based on the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings, an overall measure of online customer experience based on evaluation of more than 250 metrics for each site. In fact, LoveHappens ranked atop all Keynote indices including those measuring customer satisfaction, brand perceptions and customer loyalty.

However, in the competition for new customers, Yahoo! Personals continues to set the pace for the industry, leading the Keynote rankings in a study among prospective customers for the second consecutive year.

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    Keynote Customer Experience Rankings - Prospective Customers
                      Online Dating Web Sites
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  1  Yahoo! Personals
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  2  True
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  3  LoveHappens
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The leading drivers of success in a site's ability to attract new customers are the appeal of its home page, the availability of people of interest, and subscription value clarity. Yahoo! Personals excelled in these areas, and was also considered the most "friendly" site by prospective customers, with close to 60% of visitors choosing that descriptor for the site. LoveHappens also had a strong showing among prospective customers driven in large part by its clear subscription value proposition and ease of registration. True's success was driven in part by the view that the site is "safe," "ethical" and "trustworthy," characteristics that counter prospective customer concerns about online dating sites. Nearly twice as many prospective True customers described the site as "safe" and "trustworthy" as those prospective customers visiting other sites.

"Trust is shaping up to be a central issue in the online dating industry," said Dr. Brown. "Customers of online dating sites have increasingly expressed concern about the truthfulness and character of some of the members of online dating sites. Although this may be a natural and somewhat unavoidable issue in a dating industry, the industry is not responding to or addressing the issue properly in the customer's view, with the exception of a few sites such as True."