Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

This Pride Month, Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid Are Swiping Right on Inclusion

YOUR STORY - June 18 - In India, 76% of women are ready to participate in a public demonstration to demand and fight for LGBTQIA+ rights, while 66% of men said they would do the same, according to the latest survey by OkCupid. The app surveyed ~200K users. When it comes to the next step – legalising same-sex marriage in India – the survey yielded similar results. While 82% of women suggested it's time to make the move, only 55% of men agreed. Melissa Hobley, CMO of OkCupid, attributes this empathy factor to cultural shifts and the rise of a strong feminist voice. Tinder recently rolled out an update, introducing sexual orientations with options like straight, gay, queer, asexual, bisexual, and demisexual. In a bid to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, an uprising that served as the catalyst for the LGBTQIA+ movement across the world, Bumble has been fuelling conversations online with their #BumblePride.

by Sutrishna Ghosh
See full article at Your Story

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Man's $10K Quest to Find Mom a Mate Gets an Online Dating Boost

NY POST - June 18 - Marc Guss has recently offered a $10K reward to whoever can find his mother a match. He is now teaming up with David Yarus, the founder of Jewish dating app JSwipe to help her find the perfect mate. David Yarus plans to blast out the bid to over a million JSwipe and JDate users through pop-up notifications, banners and emails about Guss' proposal. "The goal is for users to help surface either family members, colleagues and friends for ideas for dates," says Yarus.

by Melkorka Licea & Dana Schuster
See full article at NY Post

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Happy 15th Birthday to Online Personals Watch!

OPW - June 19 - We are now 15 years into running Online Personals Watch. It was started this month in 2004, no less. For the last 15 years we've watched the news, selected what we think are the most strategically important news items for decision makers at dating companies, and summarized them. I started OPW when I was at FriendFinder. I realized there was some great intell in the news, but noone really had time to read it. Certainly not my CEO Andrew Conru. I figured, it would be awesome if someone could condense 3 hours of reading down into 3 minutes of essential news each day. Noone was doing this, so I created OPW, which you can now reference at OPW.news. We love the dating business, and are looking forward to an amazing future with you. You can subscribe via email and social media from the right hand side bar. ;-) - Mark Brooks, CEO Courtland Brooks, Host of IDEA.

The Meet Group Announces New $30M Share Repurchase Authorization

BUSINESS WIRE - June 14 - The Meet Group, a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions, today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program that enables the company to purchase up to $30M of its shares of common stock from time to time in the open market or through negotiated transactions through 2021. The Company expects to fund purchases with cash from operations.

See full article at The Meet Group website

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Q&A With Tinder's CMO Jenny Campbell About Gen Z

FORBES - June 17 - Jenny Campbell is current CMO of Tinder, and marketing veteran whose wide range of experience spans iconic brands like Nike and revolutionary ad agency 72 + Sunny.

Q: What made you most excited about joining Tinder as CMO?
A: It's hard to imagine the dating world without Tinder in it. It's just amazing to me how it flipped the entire dating category on its head. The scale of Tinder is massive, and as a marketer you get a courtside seat into what it is like to be young, social, single and dating in today's world.

Q: What is your vision for Tinder?
A: My goal is to make Tinder the most iconic, innovative brand for Gen Z. Our mission at Tinder is to make being single more fun by helping our members meet new people IRL.

Q: Can you give me an example of IRL experiences tied to the Tinder platform?
A: We are focusing on things like Spring Break Mode and Festival Mode. It allows users to badge their Tinder profile to show which music festivals they are going to, and then they can meet with other Tinder users who are also attending those festivals in advance.

Q: Brands are struggling with how to achieve greater levels of trust. What's your POV?
A: Trust is a tricky thing. Once you break it with the consumer, it's hard to get it back. You see this now with Facebook. I think Gen Z saw a lot of the traps that Millennials fell into around this and are doing things differently. What we're doing in terms of building trust is leaning into those smaller groups situations. For example, features like Tinder U. Tinder U is a college product and you have to have a verified college email address to be on it.

Q: What do you think the most compelling insights are about Gen Z?
A: I would say Gen Z is incredibly social. We know they are dating in groups. They are looking for experiences. Their media behaviors are different. Gen Z has five screens up at a time. We see different behaviors on Tinder as well. They fill out their profiles more completely than previous generations.

by Billee Howard
See full article at Forbes

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Pregnancy Is Making Bumble CEO Rethink Parental Work Policies

FAST COMPANY - June 14 - Whitney Wolfe Herd has recently announced her pregnancy. She now wants to think about work-life balance for parents beyond just maternity or paternity leave. "I've always wanted parents to prioritize their children's well-being alongside their job. So I never wanted them to feel like they have to choose one or the other. I don't think that's a fair position to be in," she said. Her employees are encouraged to work as flexibly as they need to. Employees expecting children are given a four-month, paid leave, and new parents receive a $1K bonus to offset childcare costs. Bumble also provides reimbursements for breast milk home delivery service for breastfeeding mothers who are traveling, and covers any costs incurred by Maven, an app that provides video calls, counseling, nutrition services, and other services for parents and parents-to-be. Bumble's headquarters also has a mothers' room stocked with snacks and tea. She is planning on building a childcare space where employees can reserve to have a caretaker watch their child while they work.

by Nicole Laporte
See full article at Fast Company

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The Meet Group Reaffirms Its Commitment to Industry Leading User Safety

BUSINESS WIRE - June 14 - The Meet Group makes user safety a top priority, devoting ~45% of its entire workforce to regulating the content of its apps. The Company employs a variety of human and technological filters to monitor all visual content. It has also developed a proprietary textual-monitoring threat detection system that programmatically detects possible safety issues and alerts its safety team of potential abuses. The company screens new daily registrants against databases of known sex offenders in the US and regularly screens all active users against these same lists, blocking registrations and activity from known sex offenders.

See full article at The Meet Group website

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Tinder Co-founder's Lawsuit Against Tinder Parent Company Moves Closer to a Trial

THE VERGE - June 14 - The judge rejects IAC / Match Group's motion to dismiss Sean Rad's case, allowing Rad and his co-plaintiffs to pursue their allegations that Match Group and IAC purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock options to the original dating app team. It's still unclear whether former plaintiffs like Rosette Pambakian, who alleged sexual misconduct on the part of IAC executives, will be able to participate in the lawsuit. She and three other plaintiffs withdrew from the lawsuit over an arbitration clause, but "without prejudice," which means that they could theoretically rejoin.

by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge

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Bumble Owner, Facing off With Tinder, Boosts Spending

WALL STREET JOURNAL - June 14 - "We're looking for the big, big monsters who can partner with me", said Andrey Andreev, the Russian billionaire behind Bumble. He plans to spend $100M creating an array of new dating apps, part of an expansion and revamp of the privately held holding company that also owns Lumen, a dating app for over 50s, and gay-dating app Chappy. Last year, Match offered to acquire Mr. Andreev's group of companies, but Mr. Andreev declined, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal talks valued the umbrella group at ~$1B.

by Parmy Olson
See full article at Wall Street Journal

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With a New Campaign, Bumble India Pushes Bizz

THE HINDU - June 14 - Bumble is kicking off "Find Them On Bumble" campaign in India to promote its Bumble Bizz service. The campaign in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, will spotlight women entrepreneurs and women-driven businesses in India. Bumble entered India only in December 2018. In half a year, the app has surpassed 1M users in the country. Bumble claims 60M users in 150 countries around the world. Women in India have made the first move ~2.5M times. They are sending twice as many messages as women in the rest of the world.

by Vangmayi Parakala
See full article at The Hindu

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Alaska Tops the States With the Most Romance Scams

USA TODAY - June 14 - HighSpeedInternet.com has issued a new report "When Love Bites," in which the Internet service provider comparison website identified the states where singles are most likely to fall prey to romance scammers. Alaska turns out to be the state where they are most likely to be catfished, based on data from the 2018 FBI Internet Crime Report, and U.S. Census population estimates. Nevada, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Colorado round out the next most likely states. The BBB has reported that online romance schemes cost victims as much as $1B over a three-year period.

by Edward C. Baig
See full article at USA Today

Tinder's Data Sharing Endangers Russian LGBTQ Community

USA TODAY - June 14 - This month, Russia's telecoms regulator, the Roskomnadzor, added Tinder to a list of websites and apps that it forces to store user data, messages and pictures on government-accessible Russian servers. The agency can then offer that data up to law enforcement and intelligence services on demand. If Tinder agrees to provide this information, its users in Russia will have no meaningful sense of privacy on the app. This data collection policy puts Tinder's commitments in conflict. On one hand, users agree to a privacy policy that states that Tinder can share their information to "comply with a legal process." On the other, the company has a commitment to its users and stakeholders. Its privacy web page directly says Tinder does not "compromise with your privacy." Sharing data with the Russian government would seriously endanger Tinder's LGBTQ user base. In 2013, the federal government in Moscow passed legislation broadly banning gay "propaganda" directed at minors. In practice, this law has shut down LGBTQ health education and support services, contributed to a rise in homophobic violence and silenced LGBTQ rights organizations.

by Rachel Altman
See full article at USA Toda

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Startup of the Week: Meet Spottle

WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - June 14 - Spottle's creators are bringing the classic Spin the Bottle game to singles phones as an alternative to online dating. The live video dating app is aimed at college students. Users download the app and sign in on Thursdays and Saturdays at 9 p.m. They spin a digital bottle to land on a nearby user who meets their age, gender and location preferences, and initiate a 30-second video chat. The parties can send a "kiss" to each other if they want to talk - or they move on. The app has a facial recognition feature to prevent indecent exposures.

by Sara Gilgore
See full article at Washington Business Journal

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Investors Are Not in Love With Lesbian Dating Apps

MIC - June 13 - In the early days of dating apps, there was a rush of interest in creating a "lesbian Grindr" - apps like Sizzr and FindHer quickly hit the scene, but neither of them ever got off the ground. Only one app found some success: Dattch (now known as HER), which launched in 2013. But despite HER's popularity, most queer women hadn't heard of it. Robyn Exton, the founder of HER, said that lack of money is the primary roadblock in increasing the app's growth and recognition. She said that a queer-founded business is never going to have the same funding as other apps because many investors don't see queer women as a profitable demographic, despite women's proven spending power. Although HER raised several million dollars in funding in its first few years, the app has always been an indie shop - a bootstrapped entity run on a minimal budget - and that has dramatically impacted both the app's functionality.

by Lux Alptraum
See full article at Mic

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Coffee Meets Bagel Announces New Feautures Like 'Unlimited Takes' and 'Priority Likes'

YAHOO FINANCE - June 13 - Coffee Meets Bagel Co-CEO and Co-founder Dawoon Kang shared an exclusive announcement about her dating app; this includes new offerings like 'unlimited takes' and 'priority likes.' She mentioned that Coffee Meets Bagel made a big investment into the dating app, and doubled its subscription base. She would not disclose the number of paying users.

See full article at Yahoo Finance

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Match.com Is Engaging Single Parents With Integrated Childcare

PSFK - June 12 - Childcare, which is notoriously expensive and hard to manage, can be a hurdle for parents who want to pursue their social lives on top of raising children. So Match.com partnered with European childcare booking service Yoopies to provide three free hours of babysitting to U.K. users who are single parents.

See full article at PSFK

Mark Brooks: This is a great example of how dating apps can extend services (and demonstrate care). There are so many more aspects to dating, and relationships, and life after dating that we can delve into and deliver curated services.

See all posts on Match.com

Dating App Lumen Fights Ageism in International Campaign

CAMPAIGNLIVE - June 12 - Lumen, the dating app for those 50 years and older, has unveiled an international campaign to tell consumers: "50 is Just the Start." For the effort, Lumen partnered with The Silver Classix Crew, Atlanta's official 50+ dance team, which has performed at professional sports events, on TV and in commercials and music videos.

by Lindsay Stein
See full article at CampaignLive

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Bumble's Female Film Force Competition Selects Winning Projects

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - June 12 - Five short film projects from teams of all-female writers, directors and producers will now receive funding from dating app Bumble. The Female Film Force, now in its second year and having expanded from the U.K. and Ireland to also include France and Germany, selects five short film projects from teams of all-female writers, directors and producers which get fully funded and supported by teams of mentors. This year, ~1,300 pitches were received. The five winning projects include a comedic drama about Queen Victoria's post-natal depression, a story about a British-Nigerian girl at a traditional English boarding school, a comedy about a grounded plane full of religious party animals, a French animation film about mental health and a German documentary shining a light on feminist views in Berlin. The funding will help launch these women into the industry.

by Alex Ritman
See full article at Hollywood Reporter

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Internet Dating Jobs Listing Update - June 2019

OPW - June 12 - The new Internet dating jobs listing is live on the Internet Dating Jobs blog.

Below see a couple of this month's most interesting offers:

Badoo
  Co-founder of Live Streaming

eHarmony
  Director of Search, Acquisition Marketing

Match Group
  VP, Product

Meetic
  Brand Acquisition Director

The League
  Director or VP of Operations & Finance (COO fxn)

The Meet Group
  Sr. Vice President of Finance & Accounting

Tinder
  SVP of Tinder, Japan

To see more open positions go here.

Do you have an idating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to petra@courtlandbrooks.com and we will add it to the list.

Yelp, Bloomberg and Tinder Agree: Abortion Bans Are 'Bad for Business'

MARKETWATCH - June 10 - That's an excerpt from an open letter signed by CEOs at ~180 companies aimed at lawmakers in states that have recently passed abortion bans. The letter appeared in The New York Times as a full-page ad Wednesday, less than a month after Alabama banned doctors from perform an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Several other states followed with similar laws. The letter was signed by the likes of Bloomberg's Peter Grauer, Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman, and Tinder's Elie Seidman.

by Shawn Langlois
See full article at Marketwatch

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