邮购新娘借助网络卷土重来

安娜塔西雅对我其实没兴趣和她结婚这事儿似乎并不太在意。这位23岁的乌克兰姑娘在我们开的私人聊天室里大胆地向我抛来一串串问题，这个聊天室每分钟要花我一美元。实际上，她好像真的喜欢我。她向我发来各种表情符号，还想知道如果我写本自传，会起个什么书名（我说，我其实也没主意）。

我这是在AnastasiaDate.com上聊天，这算是为那些寻求海外情缘的单身人士提供“尊享国际相亲”服务的领先供应商（至于我的聊天对象的名字和该网站名字一样，这纯属巧合）。“尊享国际相亲”是传统上称之为邮购新娘（mail-order bride，是指通过婚姻中介在纸质目录、网络、电视或其他形式的广告宣传，由男性从中挑选，并借此出嫁的女性——译注）业务的全新雅号。多亏像我这样愿意付费和像安娜塔西雅这样的年轻美女——她跟我聊天也是有报酬的，这桩买卖才格外兴隆。

邮购新娘行业的具体收入数字很难获得。但AnastasiaDate向《财富》杂志独家分享了它的销售和增长数据。2012年，这家公司挣了1.1亿美元。2013年，它预计自己的营收会达到1.4亿美元。它的用户增长情况更是惊人：2012年其网站流量增长了220%。网站目前用户有400万人，每年在该网站累计消耗的时间达到3.6亿个小时。仅在3月，它的访问量就达到了260万次。

AnastasiaDate并非一枝独秀。全球化时代的到来，无处不在的在线相亲为新时代的邮购新娘企业提供了新舞台，让它们获得了前所未有的人气。据市场研究公司益佰利（Experian Marketing Services）称，前10大尊享国际相亲网站3月的访问量达到了1,220万次。相比去年同期，这个数字增长了29%——跟其他业务相对来说停滞不前的在线相亲网站相比，这个增幅十分巨大。3月，在1,400个网站中，AnastasiaDate是排名第29位的最受欢迎的在线相亲服务网站。而且，它相信还有增长空间。公司首席战略官马克•布鲁克斯表示：“我认为还有大量未释放的需求。人们正在认识到，还有比Match.com更大的空间。”

不过，为了获得布鲁克斯所希望的增长，这家公司必须设法消除邮购新娘业长期以来挥之不去的不良名声。这个行业通常的做法是虚构一些经济状况不佳的恨嫁女形象，或是一些一心想找个传统型老婆（也就是百依百顺型）来料理家务的美国男性。所以毫不奇怪，现在这个蒸蒸日上的行业正努力让自己有个好名声。在布鲁克斯看来，国际相亲服务现在的体面程度可谓如日中天——这和在线相亲业早期的情况几乎如出一辙，直到人们把它看成仅仅是另一种交往方式为止。他预计，美国女性最终也会用这个网站，男女经济差异也会逐渐消失，但这一天真正到来可能有点遥不可及。而现在，AnastasiaDate正使尽浑身解数要让自己的运作模式成为主流。不过再主流，也只能是从不发达国家输入新娘而已。

今年年初，这家总部位于莫斯科的公司请来了布鲁克斯这位在线相亲业的知名咨询师来掌管其增长战略。它还拓展了在美国的业务，聘请了更多美国人，在纽约设立了办公室，而且还引入了一家曼哈顿的公关公司，号称今年打算在营销上砸进4,500多万美元。最近，它还在消费者新闻与财经电视频道（CNBC）、探索频道（Discovery）、高尔夫频道（Golf）、历史频道（History Channel）和美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）上大做广告。对此，布鲁克斯的说法是：“我们现在对声誉非常非常重视。”

同时，这家公司还在努力整顿自己的运营方式。比如，和我在线聊天的安娜塔西雅和我聊上几分钟就能拿到一些回扣，而这是违反公司政策的。布鲁克斯称：“这是绝对禁止的。不过不守规矩的事仍时有发生，所以我们正在升级游戏规则，杜绝这种做法。”公司正计划对那些付钱给女性、让她们上线与客户互动的本地代理商严加管制。

布鲁克斯把这类问题归咎于全球化过程中“成长的烦恼”。他们的网站扩张速度太快，所以难以达到严格的质量控制标准。不过他表示，随着跨国相亲被越来越多的人接受，这类问题都会迎刃而解。他说：“如果你觉得我们正在走向一个全球化的社会，那毫无疑问这正是我们前进的方向。在社会交往上，我们正变得日益国际化。这是件好事。”

不过现在的尊享国际相亲行业看起来和10年前的邮购新娘行业似乎截然不同。首先，它的规模要大得多。从美国移民统计数据和塔希莉司法中心（Tahirih Justice Center，华盛顿地区的非营利性组织——译注）的分析来看，1999年从事跨国婚介的公司大概有200家，促成了4,000到6,000桩婚事。到了2010年，这类公司已经达到了400家，促成的婚姻数量则飙升到10,000 到 15,000桩。而这还只是一小部分。这个行业现在基本上都在网上运转了。实际上，AnastasiaDate的绝大多数用户永远也不会跑到国外去和他们的聊天对象约会。

这个网站的运作方式是：网站的绝大多数活跃用户是年薪超过10万美元的美国男性，年龄在35岁到60岁之间。要在网站上互动，就需要购买积分。积分是按比例定价的，20个积分的起价是15.99美元，1,000个积分的定价则是399.99美元。每分钟即时通讯聊天需要一个积分。特殊的尊享表情符号——如震动的多彩“LOL”——要价更高。视频聊天（没有声音）每分钟需要6个积分。有声音的视频聊天收费更高。

网站用起来很简单。AnastasiaDate还运营着AmoLatina.com和 AfricanBeauties.com这两个网站，通过AsianBeauties.com提供的免费试用视频聊天，我很快就和一个穿着细条纹背心的年轻姑娘聊上了。我们没法聊得深入，语言障碍太大了。不过她已经注意到了，我其实不是男人（挥手示意！本文作者是女性——译注），我们也确认自己的摄像头都是正常的（竖起大拇指！）。尽管知道了我的性别，在我的试用时间结束后，她还是给我发来一大堆粉红色的表情符号，并发来“嗨，亲爱的，请回复”和“我好喜欢你啊”这类信息。

就凭我在这网站的片刻逗留，我就能看出在这上面花钱有多容易。实际上，尽管我的账户没有提供个人信息或照片链接，在一个多月里我还是收到了176条信息，里面充斥下面这类句子，如18岁的艾丽莎发来“我就梦想找个温柔体贴的男人”，21岁的伊莲娜发来“我得承认，你的照片吸引了我的目光”。而要回复这些信息，每条要花10个积分。

在国际相亲网站上找新娘实在代价不菲，这引起了一些维护妇女权益者的重视。塔希莉司法中心（Tahirih Justice Center）公共政策总监珍妮•斯穆特表示，男性在这类服务上大把花钱会让他们产生更高的期望值。她说：“现在有人担心，有些人似乎觉得他们有权利享有这种讨价还价带来的好处。”这种方式使女性变得商品化也是个问题，在这类网站上，女性似乎就是一种商品，款式众多，类型各异。另外还有人担忧，通过这类服务嫁到异国的女性会尤其容易遭到虐待。

大多数网络聊天都不会走到线下，但一旦在线国际相亲离开了虚拟领域，就可能存在真正的安全隐患。去年就有一个德克萨斯的男子谋划要绑架并杀害他在网上碰到的一个女人。这个行业里家庭暴力的案例更是不绝于耳。2005年还出现了起气焰嚣张的杀人案，专门谋杀外国新娘，促使联邦通过立法保护那些经由国际婚姻中介嫁到美国的女性。

这项名为《国际婚姻中介管制法》（International Marriage Broker Regulation Act）的法案刚出台时遭到了国际相亲公司的激烈反对。布鲁克斯称，现在对它的接受度高多了。他说：“现在这个行业已学会理解这项法案了。这个法案设计的宗旨就是要让国际相亲网站的女性会员感到非常放心和安全，而这对我们来说当然是头等重要的事情。”这项法案要求这类公司必须对会员进行背景调查，同时向外来新娘充分告知她们所享有的权利。不过，支持这项法案的人称，它的执行有时并不到位。

跟我聊过一会儿的这位安娜塔西雅表示，她与男性见面时总会把安全放在第一位。她还确认，AnastasiaDate的翻译人员当时在场。这家公司会提供各种服务，让男性了解国外情况，让女性感觉更加安心。安娜塔西雅已经通过这个渠道见过两个人了。我问她这种见面是否有意思。她一叠声地说：“恰恰相反。糟透了。”其中一个男人好像对她毫无兴趣（他像是半死不活的）。另一个则认为她是个妓女。她说她觉得这些男人可能已有了根深蒂固的想法：一大群年轻姑娘在讨少量男性的欢心。她写道：“这个网站会展示男性不那么正面的形象。”

不过安娜塔西雅并没有气馁。她还是在AnastasiaDate.com上锲而不舍地追寻着，因为她要找到自己的真爱——这跟我们多数人何其相似。当我问她，到底想从网上找到一个什么样的人时，她的回答和所有人——不管哪个国家，不管男女——几乎如出一辙：“我希望找到一个值得共度一生的人。”希望她梦想成真。（财富中文网）

Anastasia doesn't seem particularly concerned that I'm not interested in marrying her. The 23-year-old Ukrainian is gamely answering questions in our private Internet chat room, which is costing me about a buck a minute. In fact, she seems to like me. She's sending me emoticons and even wants to know what I would title a book that was based on my life. (Not really sure, I tell her.)

I'm on AnastasiaDate.com, the leading provider of "premium international dating" services for singles looking for love abroad. (Her name being the same as the site's is a coincidence.) Premium international dating is a new name for what's traditionally referred to as the mail-order bride business. And thanks to people like me willing to pay to talk with beautiful young women like Anastasia -- who was paid to respond -- the trade is doing pretty well.

Revenue numbers for the mail-order bride industry are hard to come by. But AnastasiaDate shared its sales and growth statistics exclusively with Fortune. The company made $110 million in 2012. In 2013, it projects it will make $140 million. Its user growth is even more impressive: The site's traffic grew 220% in 2012. It now has four million users, who cumulatively spend some 360 million hours on the site per year. It racked up 2.6 million visits in March alone.

AnastasiaDate is not alone. The advent of globalization and the ubiquity of online dating has set the stage for new-age mail-order bride companies to gain unprecedented popularity. According to market research firm Experian Marketing Services, the top 10 premium international dating sites drew 12.2 million visits in March. That's a 29% uptick from March of last year -- a huge increase compared to the rest of the relatively stagnant online dating industry. In March, AnastasiaDate was the 29th most popular online dating service period, in a category of 1,400 sites. And the company believes there's room for expansion. "I think there's a lot of pent-up demand," says Chief Strategy Officer Mark Brooks. "eople are realizing that there's a bigger world than Match.com."

To achieve the kind of growth Brooks is hoping for, though, the company will have to overcome the deep stigma surrounding the mail-order bride industry. The practice conjures images of women desperate to marry out of failing economies; and of unappealing American men looking for a traditional (read: submissive) mate to keep the house clean. Not surprisingly, the growing industry is attempting to shine up its reputation. Brooks sees international dating today as being on the cusp of respectability -- in much the same way online dating was in its early stages, before people accepted it as just another way to meet someone. Eventually, he foresees American women using the site and predicts that the economic disparities will fade away, but that may be a long way off. For now, AnastasiaDate is making a big push to go mainstream with its current model, as mainstream as courting younger foreign women from underperforming economies can really get, that is.

Early this year, the Moscow-based company hired Brooks, who is a prominent online dating industry consultant, to head up its growth strategy. It has also expanded its U.S. presence, hiring more Americans and opening a New York office. It brought on a Manhattan-based PR firm and says it will spend more than $45 million on marketing this year. Recently, it ran ads on CNBC, Discovery, Golf, the History Channel, and CNN. Says Brooks, "We are very, very sensitive to reputation now."

The company is also trying to clean up its act. For example, the online interaction I had with Anastasia, where she got a small kickback for minutes chatting with me, is against company policy. "It is outright forbidden," Brooks says. "Abuse still happens, and we're raising our game to stamp it out." The company is planning a crackdown on its local partner agencies who pay women to interact on the site.

Brooks chalks up problems so far to the growing pains of globalization. The site simply scaled too fast to meet strict standards of quality control. But he says those wrinkles will be smoothed out as dating overseas becomes more widely acceptable. "If you consider where we're going as a global society there's no question that this is the direction we're heading," Brooks says. "Socially, we're becoming more international. This is a good thing."

Today's premium international dating industry looks radically different from the mail-order bride trade did 10 years ago. For starters, it's much bigger. According to U.S. immigration statistics and analysis from the Tahirih Justice Center, there were roughly 200 international marriage broker agencies in 1999, which coordinated between 4,000 and 6,000 marriages. In 2010, there were 400 such agencies, and between 10,000 and 15,000 resultant weddings. But that's only part of the story. The business now exists largely online. In fact, the vast majority of AnastasiaDate users will never actually go abroad to meet the women they're chatting with.

Here's how it works: The site's most active users on average are American men making more than $100,000, between ages 35 and 60. To interact on the site, they can buy credits. Credits are priced on a sliding scale, starting at $15.99 for 20 credits, and going up to $399.99 for 1,000. Each minute of simple, instant messaging-style chatting costs one credit. Special, premium smilies -- like a vibrating, multi-color "LOL" -- cost extra. Cam share (audio not enabled) costs six credits a minute. Video chat with voice costs even more.

The site itself is easy to use. With a free trial cam-share chat on AsianBeauties.com -- Anastasia date also runs AmoLatina.com and AfricanBeauties.com -- I was able to quickly set up a feed with a young woman in a spaghetti string white tank top. Our conversation didn't get deep, the language barrier was formidable. But she did note that I was not a man (wave!), and we established that both our cameras were, in fact, working (thumbs up!). My gender didn't stop her from sending me dozens of rose emoticons after my trial ran out and typing messages like "hey ..dear reply please .." and "i like you so much .............."

During my brief time on the site, I could see how it might be easy to spend. In fact, despite the absence of a profile or photo linked to my account, I still racked up 176 messages in a little over a month with letters full of phrases like "I dream to find a man who is tender and caring," from 18-year-old Alisa or "I'd like to confess that your photo caught my eye," from 21-year-old Irina. Responding costs 10 credits each.

The sheer costliness of courting a bride on international dating sites makes some women's rights advocates wary. Jeanne Smoot, the director of public policy for the Tahirih Justice Center, says that having spent large amounts on the courtship can leave men with a sense of expectation. "There is a concern there, about someone who feels that they're entitled to the benefit of their bargain," Smoot says. The commodification of women is a concern, with sites that offer so many options and such variety. And there are also worries that women who travel to a new country through such services will be particularly vulnerable to abuse.

Though most conversations will end online, when international online dating leaves the realm of the virtual, there can be real safety risks. Last year a Texas man plotted to kidnap and kill a women he had met on a website. Examples of domestic violence cases in the industry abound. A pair of high-profile murders of foreign brides prompted the enactment of federal legislation in 2005 to protect women brought to the U.S. via international marriage brokers.

That statute, called the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, met with vehement opposition from the international dating companies when it was introduced. Now, Brooks says, it gets a warmer reception. "The industry has grown to appreciate it," he says. "It was designed to provide a very high level of comfort and safety to female members of international dating sites, which is, of course, of utmost importance to us." The law mandates that agencies perform background checks and provide immigrant women with information about their rights. However, proponents say the laws' enforcement is sometimes lacking.

Anastasia, who I chatted with for a while, says she keeps safety in mind when she meets men in person. She makes sure that AnastasiaDate translators are present. The company provides a variety of services to both acquaint the man with a foreign country and to make the women feel more comfortable. Anastasia has met two men this way. I asked if it was fun. "Quite the opposite," she wrote. "It was awful." One man didn't act interested. ("He seemed semi-alive.") The other assumed she was a prostitute. She said she thought the odds -- so many young women vying for so little male attention -- had gone to their heads. The site "tends to show men from not such a bright side," she wrote.

Still, Anastasia is undeterred. She's sticking with AnastasiaDate.com, she says, because she's searching for her one true love -- like a lot of the rest of us. When I asked her what she wanted from the site, her answer could have come from anyone, male or female, in any country: "I hope to find someone worthy to be with." Here's hoping that's what she finds.