Facebook friends in search of romance drive app growth

With the rise of the internet, people began looking for love on websites such as Match.com and EHarmony.com. With the growing popularity of social networks, they’re turning to services like AreYouInterested.com.

The dating application, available on Facebook and Apple’s iPhone, lets users see beyond the personal details of potential mates to their social circles, including friends and family. AreYouInterested.com is adding more than 50,000 users a day, according to New York-based parent SNAP Interactive, compared with the 20,000 new daily users Match.com reports.

AreYouInterested.com is now the largest Facebook dating application, with more than 13 million average monthly users, according to research firm AppData.com. Its popularity may cut into the growth of Match.com, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and EHarmony.com, whose Facebook programs have 72,712 and 8,607 average monthly users respectively.

“Those traditional online dating companies don’t have a large app presence like us,” Snap CEO Cliff Lerner said. “Our growth, as well as the growth of a couple competitors, has come out of nowhere.”

Match.com has greater appeal for serious daters and a stronger long-term business, though it may not be signing up as many new users, said Gregory R Blatt, CEO of IAC.

“AreYouInterested is a flirty, fun little app,” Blatt said in an interview. “They have a few people working in a garage. We’ve got hundreds of engineers maximising our business. You need huge degrees of sophistication, huge amounts of data behind it, and a huge community.”