Cyber-dating industry booming in China

Speed dating, on-line dating and TV dating shows are on the rise in China. And with one of the country's largest dating websites now listed on the Nasdaq in 2011, it looks like there's money to be made from China's singles.

China's single population is reshaping the market for dating websites. China has more than 180 million people who are currently single.

By 2011, nearly half of the country's wanna-be-marrieds had registered on one of the country's three leading dating agencies -- bringing the companies multi-million Yuan profits.

Baihe.com is one of them. Mu Yan, co-founder of Baihe.com, said, "We have over 36 million registered users, and for the active users each month, we have several million. The profit is good; the revenue is roughly over 200 million RMB."

Circulating client data and membership fees are the main sources of profit. Clicking on a message takes the recipient to a payment page, which has membership packages from 200 to 500 yuan.

Charges are payable for sending and reading messages, as well as online chatting and virtual gifting.

But the big question is why these dating websites are so popular?

Zhou Xiaopeng, Baihe.com relationship counselor, said, "The main body of our clients are young adults in their 20s, people born in the late 1980s. They're the generation that grew up with the internet. The internet helps them make sense of the world, so when it comes to finding love, it's quite natural for them to use the internet."

It looks like matchmaking sites might be "the fast track to love" for some of the young adults in China.

Wang Shanshan, online dating website client, said, "I use the dating site since it's fast and convenient."

Meng Xiangyun, online dating website client, said, "It's good to have more options. I've had my doubts before, but a lot of the sites are adopting a real-name system now, so it's much better."

A real-name system, a broader platform to meet more potential dates, a screening practice that cuts out the trial-and-error time usually involved in conventional forms of dating..

All these make matchmaking sites especially appealing to today's young adults in China.

Young adults in China are busier than ever, they often have little free time outside of their studies or work for socializing or dating. There's simply too much pressure and too little time for them to go through the process of spending time and effort to find the right person, which sometimes could be frustrating.

The increasingly busy modern lifestyle is believed to be the other reason that behind the booming online dating industry.

Raymond Zhou, senior columnist of China Daily, said, "I think the fundamental reason for the popularity of online dating services and television dating shows is that today's young people are postponing their marriage and you can site a lot of reasons, a lot of factors, such as work related pressure because with affluence comes with work related problems, people feel that career is more important than their personal lives."

The numbers are snowballing. The vast volume of singles and flash marriages, as well as escalating divorce rates are all creating a larger market opportunity for cyber dating websites.

And as the internet continues to expand, more and more people are likely to embrace the concept of finding the right person online.