Gong Haiyan started Jiayuan as a graduate student, and she met her own husband on the site. By 2011 Chinese media called her the country's most famous online matchmaker. Millions of young people had left home for big cities, far from the parents and aunts who once arranged introductions. Jiayuan offered them a place to look for a spouse. It held 43.7 percent of China's online dating spending in 2010 when it listed in New York under a fitting ticker: DATE.

A Graduate Student's Side Project

Gong founded the business in 2003 while studying at Fudan University. The site aimed at marriage, which set it apart from casual chat rooms. Members filled out detailed profiles, and Jiayuan worked to make the site feel trustworthy to people looking for a spouse, and to their parents. In the first quarter of 2011 it had about 4.7 million active user accounts a month.

A Ticker Called DATE

Jiayuan priced its American depositary shares at $11 in May 2011 and listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as DATE. It arrived in a busy season for Chinese internet listings, and many of those stocks soon fell out of favor with American investors. In December 2015 Jiayuan agreed to be acquired by a group backed by Baihe Network, a rival Chinese dating company. The deal closed in May 2016, and Jiayuan left Nasdaq.

Cover: The Lovers, Jean François Millet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a pair of lovers (matchmaking).