Word: westernness
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...country with little tradition of matchmaking can embrace a version of it online, then it follows that cultures long used to a third party's hand in love affairs would do the same. That's what many Western companies seem to believe anyway, judging by their expansion strategies. Match.com the leading online dating site in the U.S., began exploiting first-mover advantage through international acquisitions in 2002. Now in 35 countries, the Dallas-based company says 30% of its 1.3 million members live outside the U.S., accounting for 30% of its $350 million 2007 revenues (the bulk...
Perhaps those cultural differences explain why no Western company has yet won the Chinese single's hand. And what a hand: 46% of those 35 and younger are unmarried, according to a university study, and that percentage is increasing. Sixty million Internet users are of marrying age, according to Shanghai-based market-research company iResearch, a population that will grow about 20% a year, to 128 million in 2010. In Beijing alone, there are more than 2 million marriage-age singles. Local competition is rife. Chinese matchmaking sites had 14 million registered users in 2006, a number iResearch says will...
...Western online matchmakers, however, do face challenges in gaining a foothold in the Chinese matchmaking market. Of the 14 million Chinese Internet daters, only 500,000 pay subscription fees; thus industry revenues are estimated at just $24 million, according to iResearch. Paying users are expected to rocket to 3 million by 2010, generating sales of at least $160 million. But fees are minimal compared with the $59 per month charged by the likes of eHarmony. "In China, if you charge money, you'll die fast," says Gong Haiyan, CEO and founder of the leading Web dating site, Jiayuan (formerly Love21cn...
Partly because India's matrimonial sites have already succeeded in wooing the nation, Western companies have hesitated at the door. "India is a very different business, and we just haven't got there yet," says Match's Enraght-Moony. For instance, sites there make matches on the basis of factors unfamiliar to outsiders, including caste, language and "character"--a euphemism for chastity. About 15% of profiles are filled in not by the prospective bride or groom but by their parents. And now Indian sites are challenging Western matchmaking companies on their own turf. Shaadi CEO Vibhas Mehta says...
Granted, it's rarely been out of fashion. The apocalypse probably seeped into Western thought via the Book of Daniel, with its 10-horned beast devouring the world, and the Book of Revelation's four grim horsemen. Shelley was among the first major writers to convert the tale into a secular narrative, with no beast, but far from the last. It was taken up by, among others, T.S. Eliot, whose "The Hollow Men" ends with the famous lines "This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper...