• by February 23, 2004

A report about online dating from Hitwise fell into my in-box and it's got some juicy morsels. For starters, the average online session for a site in the dating category in January 2004 is 11 minutes 55 seconds, an eight percent increase over January 2003, and 33.3 percent of visitors to online dating sites come via search engines and directories, and 23.3 percent via e- mail services.

The report, which analyzes online dating trends from January 2003 - January 2004, finds that online dating is one of the fastest growing segments on the Web, up 52 percent year-over-year. No surprise there. In case you haven't noticed, there are a whole SLEW of dating sites. Even those of you who aren't looking for love, have heard of them: Lava Life, Meetme, Jdate, Nerve, Match, eHarmony, Yahoo! Personals, and that's just to name a few. There's even one for pet lovers and it's new, at least to me: It's called KissyKat. Yes, KissyKat, "Where people who love their pets find love," the website proclaims. It invites "All breeds."

I was walking down the street in New York City, not far from the MediaPost offices, and saw a whole construction site emblazoned with wild postings for KissyKat. I remember the eye-catching wild posting and thinking, "I have to remember this." It's a cute site and the photos are charming. It's a great example of offline marketing driving people online.