Princes & hot b@bes

It’s been the subject of countless poems, novels, plays and movies. Yet for all the words devoted to finding the right partner, not all love relationships end "happily ever after."

The reason is simple. For two people to live in one house, stay in one room and sleep in one bed for the rest of their lives, one ingredient should be present – compatibility. Defined by Webster as the capacity of two or more entities to remain together without serious after effects, compatibility has become harder to come by as people and societies have gotten more complicated.

Ask Mary Ann Go. At 36, you may expect her to be happily married, probably have a child or two, and enjoying a fulfilling family life. Yet she is single. Well, she is single again because three years ago, she lost her husband of two years to cancer. She has not found another man since.

Knowing that she is not alone, Go thought of a business venture that would allow her to be a happy, single woman and help millions of other people like her.

She put up a website on matchmaking, called Match.ph (www.match.ph) last October, and the site is now ready to make matches among the thousands of people who have registered so far.

"We’ll be making our first matches on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day," she says with eyes full of excitement as if she’s going to her first date. "This will be the biggest test for the site. We’ll know how many matches will end up at the altar."

Big market

Match.ph was born out of Go’s yearning to help her single friends, mostly women in their 30s who are pretty, well-educated yet with no partners. She realized that nowadays, single people with careers to maintain rarely get the chance to meet members of the opposite sex.

"The singles are really a big market," Go says. "The top-rating (TV) programs are those about single people – Ally McBeal, Friends, Sex in the City. Ally McBeal, for one, is a classic example. She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s brainy, she’s a good dresser, she doesn’t shy away from dates and the nightlife. Yet she’s loveless."

Go found Single Search Global, a US-based company which claims credit for 1,100 successful matches in its six years of existence. She got a franchise from the company and put up Match.ph.

"We wanted to have a safe, secure and enjoyable site for single people to search for a partner," she says.

The idea is simple. People just log on to the site, fill out profile forms for themselves and their ideal partner, and wait for a notification via e-mail on every successful match.

Enrique Gonzales, a Web development expert who designed and maintains Match.ph, has made sure the site fits the Filipino culture perfectly. Being the man behind the successful portal Adobo.com, Gonzales knows the local culture like the back of his hand. Hence, he was able to create a site with a Filipino flavor, complete with horoscope, dating tips, games and raffles.

"We have tailored the site to suit the Filipino’s needs and wants," says Gonzales. "We designed it not only to be useful but enjoyable."

This early, Match.ph has attracted the attention of authorities in the business. The site was chosen as one of the finalists in last year’s Philippine Web Awards and its poster showing a frog prince holding a match with the slogan "Someday my prince will .com" bagged a Gold and a Bronze in the recent Advertising Congress in Cebu City.

Big business

Matchmaking is a universally needed service. Proof of this are the hundreds of websites that offer it – in different countries and in different languages. With a universal need, can a universal business be far away?

A New York Times News Service article this week noted that while websites engaged in retailing and other services have been shrinking, those in the matchmaking business are growing.

These sites, which include Match.com of Ticketmaster Corp., Matchmaker.com of Terra Lycos SA and ClubConnect of Yahoo Inc., are all helping shore up the finances of their parent companies by raising the romantic hopes of millions of Internet users.

Match.com, for one, has contributed $7 million to its parent-company’s earnings in the fourth quarter last year, an increase of 451 percent over March.com’s profit in the same period in 2000.

Analysts are not surprised at the figures.

"Online dating content is one of the few types of content that people will actually open their wallets for – so much that companies are actually upping their prices," said Stacey Herron of Jupiter Media Metrix, a research and consulting firm.

Matchmaking sites have varied sources of revenues. Some charges membership fees, but sites like Match.ph only charges P100 for every successful match it produces. Match.ph’s other income comes from advertisements.

But Match.ph is not limiting itself to the Internet. It is now working on a TV dating show – Match TV – that will revive the concept of The Dating Game of the 1970s. It has also partnered with the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) for a hotline service – 1908-matchph – that will provide matchmaking services to those with no access to the Internet.

And it is working with Smart Communications to start a matchmaking service through text messaging, and with Lakbay.net to offer local tours to singles.

With all these matchmaking activities she is lining up, Go is optimistic that many people – including herself – will be able to find an ideal partner, maybe a frog prince or a not-so-hot babe but one with whom they can live happily ever after.

"I truly believe there is a match for everyone," she says. "You just have to keep on looking."