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MIAMI
— It's a trusted formula: Send your sweetheart
flowers, chocolates or teddy bears on
Valentine's Day
to express your love.
But what
about sending a
$10
image of flowers, chocolates or teddy bears to someone's
online profile?
How about
spending
$50
on an icon of a pile of cash to impress a stranger you
want to date?
The
concept of paying real-world money for a virtual good
has been around for a few years in games and social
networks. Facebook gifts is one of the most well-known
forms of this: pay a few bucks to decorate your friend's
profile page with a digital icon of some object — like
a beer mug or balloon for a birthday.
But in
the last few months, several online dating sites have
introduced virtual gift stores — and users are jumping
on the chance to buy them to woo a mate.
As
mystifying as it may seem to traditional romantics,
virtual gifts have become a
$1 billion
industry in
the United States
, according to the research group Inside Network.
Spending money on virtual goods has been huge in other
parts of the world — analysts estimate it to be a
$5 billion
industry worldwide.
Snap Interactive
in
New York
runs the Facebook application "Are You
Interested?" where users can find potential
partners and send them virtual gifts as an ice breaker.
The publicly traded company introduced a new gift store
about two months ago, and CEO
Clifford Lerner
said the application is raking in "a couple
thousand dollars a day" just from gift purchases.
More than
2.4 million people use the application monthly, the
company said. Gifts start at about
$1.25
for a heart and
$1.75
for a rose, and get more expensive the more unique or
animated they are — like
$20
for a picture of an engagement ring or gold bricks, or
$10
for a teddy popping out of a gift box with the words
"Be My Valentine" appearing on the screen.
Lerner
said introducing a
$20
icon of gold was just a test to see if people would
spend the money. And they did. Four were sold within the
first hour.
"We
really believed virtual gifts would add a lot to the
site and we had a lot of interesting ideas," Lerner
said. "It blew our mind that someone was going to
spend
$20
for a bar of gold, let alone four in the first
hour."
So the
site offered more expensive icons based on the demand,
like "I'm Rich!" which shows a pile of gold,
cash and jewels, and "You're Priceless!" which
is a guy holding a suitcase full of cash. Both sell for
$20
.
In the
world of online flirting, virtual gifts sometimes defy
the normal laws of supply and demand.
"We've
actually seen a lot of times that the higher cost of
some of these gifts, the more we actually sell,"
Lerner said. "If a girl is not interested in a guy,
and she sees he spent
$20
, she's probably going to respond. And that's worth it
to the guy, just to get a response."
Dr.
Eva Ritvo
, vice chair of the
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
at the
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
, said sending a stack of cash icon that costs
$50
is just another way of a guy showing he can provide for
the woman.
"It's
another symbolic representation that I have money and I
will be able to take care of you," Ritvo said.
"It's a modern day equivalent of men going out for
the kill."
Mark Brooks
, a social media and Internet dating consultant, has
seen companies recently introduce new features like
virtual goods or mobile dating services. As the online
dating space becomes more saturated, finding extra
revenue is more important.
"It's
more difficult to get started, it's more difficult to
make money in this market," Brooks said.
"Virtual gifts are definitely in right now."
One Web
site Brooks works with is PlentyofFish.com, a free
dating service headquartered in
Vancouver
. It introduced virtual gifts in January.
Last year
the site ran a test to see if users would pay
$10
for one gift. At that price, the users weren't biting.
So the cost was lowered, but the staff discovered that
as a gift's adorability factor increased, so could the
price.
"The
cuter they are, the more receptive they are,"
Kate Bilenki
, Director of Love at PlentyofFish.com. "Teddy
bears, hearts, bunnies, cute things like that."
Avid Life
Media, based in
Toronto
, got the virtual gift ball rolling in the dating scene
back in 2002 by selling virtual flowers on HotorNot.com,
with flowers now costing between
$2 and $10
a piece.
At one of
its niche sites like AshleyMadison.com — for married
folks looking to have an affair — users can send a
virtual bottle of champagne or hotel room key.
"The
growth rate is phenomenal," said
Noel Biderman
, president of Avid Life Media. "If it has the
right impact, people will pay to replace words."
AshleyMadison.com,
which has 5.2 million members after launching eight
years ago, has seen spending on virtual gifts jump from
2.4 percent to 4.1 percent of total user revenue in the
past year, Biderman said.
This kind
of success is persuading other sites to give it a spin.
Headquartered in
Davie
, First Beat Media oversees more than 100 online dating
sites — many targeting specific niche interests, like
BikerPlanet.com, GothScene.com, LatinaRomance.com and
TattooLovers.com. It's testing virtual gifts with a
small group of its members.
But
seeing a ton of icons of roses and chocolates from other
suitors on your page might turn people away from
contacting you — doing more harm than good, said
Stephen Ventura
, director of operations.
"Our
particular take on it is that we're approaching it very
cautiously," Ventura said. "We feel it might
detour some folk from the relationship finding
process."
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