BUSINESSWIRE - July 17 - The Meet Group, a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions, is launching one-on-one video chat on its MeetMe app. This new feature lets users get to know each other safely without exchanging phone numbers. By tapping the video chat icon on the MeetMe app, members can initiate video chat requests to those with whom they have previously exchanged messages. Members can only receive video chat requests from people they have already communicated with.
MeetMe Launches One-on-One Video Chat Feature
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Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger
NEW YORK TIMES - July 17 - Dozens of databases of people's faces are being compiled without their knowledge by companies and researchers, with many of the images then being shared around the world. The databases are pulled together with images from social networks, photo websites, dating sites and cameras placed in restaurants and on college quads. While there is no precise count of the data sets, privacy activists have pinpointed repositories that were built by Microsoft, Stanford University and others, with one holding ~10M images. Facebook and Google have most likely amassed the largest face data sets, which they do not distribute, according to research papers. But other companies and universities have widely shared their image troves with researchers, governments and private enterprises. Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, the A.I. start-up, said his company had built a face database with images from OkCupid. He said Clarifai had access to OkCupid's photos because some of the dating site's founders invested in his company. An OkCupid spokeswoman said Clarifai contacted the company in 2014 "about collaborating to determine if they could build unbiased A.I. and facial recognition technology" and that the dating site "did not enter into any commercial agreement then and have no relationship with them now." She did not address whether Clarifai had gained access to OkCupid's photos without its consent.
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Dating News Update - Bumble, Badoo, Jack'd and Tinder
OPW - July 16 - Ten years ago I tried an experiment doing video news updates from locations like Prague and Venice. They were a lot of work, and and way too long really. I think 2-3 minutes is about all the time you have, so here's a new experiment. Two Minute Tuesday News Updates. Please let me know your thoughts.
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6 Lessons From a Failed Dating Startup in Latin America
CONTXTO - July 15 - Weeks ago, César Hoshi and his partner and CEO Pedro Neira decided to close down Mi Media Manzana (MMM). At one time, it was the largest online dating Android app made in Latin America. He is now sharing some of his personal lessons....
- If you're going to pivot, pivot your product and features, not your purpose.
We built MMM as a serious dating site. Since we lacked results, we made many decisions for changing the product. Without even noticing it, our new versions didn't respond anymore to the purpose. We weren't focusing on long-term relationships anymore. I'm not saying you should not change your purpose, but if you firmly believe in it (which we did), your product should always be consistent with it (which we didn't). - In moments of crisis, don't forget the right questions
Moments of crisis are the best moments to ask the right questions (how to add value to your users). Conversely, they are some the worst moments to ask the wrong questions (only focus on the shareholders pressure and cold metrics). - In a marketplace, you should worry about liquidity and density, not overall growth
We spent $25K on the online marketing budget for user acquisition per country, which were four in total. By the time we noticed, we had already spent $100K, and not a single country was self-sustainable. Our approach was totally wrong. We were focusing on "countries" when we should have been focusing on "cities." In the online dating industry, this is crucial since people want to go out with someone close by. - Apply known frameworks but don't try to do it alone.
"Hooked - How To Build Habit-Forming Products" is one of my favorite product books out there. I read in 2016 and was amazed by the powerful insights regarding the "Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, Investment" framework. Inspired, I tried to include some of it to our development process, but not hard enough. - Discover early on what are the inputs for your "one metric that matters"
User retention was our most important metric. We obsessed over retention but it took way too long to realize that we couldn't control that metric. Due to the nature of our dating app business, retention was an output rather than an input that we could control. The mistake with that single focus, though, is that you try to control things you can't. - Have uncomfortable discussions early on, especially when defining the problem you are trying to solve
Nothing is more certain to cause a project to fail than a misunderstanding of the problem you are solving. You should never start building something unless all of your key players have the same understanding of the problem.
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French Senate Approves 3% Digital Tax on Big Tech
MEDIANAMA - July 12 - The French Senate has approved a digital tax, known as "Les GAFA" - Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, on digital companies that have a revenue of more than €25M in France, and more than €750M worldwide. This bill is likely to be signed into law by French President Emmanuel Macron within two weeks. The tax is expected to yield €400M in 2019, and €650M in 2020. It will affect ~30 companies, including GAFA, Meetic, Criteo, Instagram, and Airbnb. Other EU countries, including Austria, the UK, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Italy have also announced plans for their own digital taxes.
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Tinder and Other Companies Use GIFs to Push Ads on WhatsApp in India
TECH2 - July 11 - WhatsApp in India prohibits promotional content, restricts mass distribution of brand messages. Big brands like Zomato, McDonald's, Reebok, Tinder, among others are reportedly using branded GIFs and stickers to push ads on WhatsApp.
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Gen Z Is Swiping Left on Romance
WASHINGTON EXAMINER - July 15 - Generation Z is a group comprised of individuals born between 1995 and 2015. They grew up in an age when boredom could be solved instantaneously by unlocking their smartphones. Instead of going on dates, Gen Zers swipe through Tinder, exchange Snapchats, and send direct messages on Instagram. In fact, the average American adult swipes through dating apps for ~77 minutes each day. Instead of building longer-term connections with romantic partners, Gen Zers build hundreds of surface-level connections with their followers, creating relationships that are empirically less fulfilling than the more serious relationships undertaken by older generations. They have become increasingly stressed and isolated.
by Elizabeth Nealon
See full article at Washington Examiner
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Facebook Dating Is Testing New Onboarding Screens
TECH2 - July 13 - As per app researcher, Jane Manchun Wong, who often takes to Twitter to reveal her findings, Facebook Dating is now planning to introduce fresh onboarding screens to lure more people. Facebook advertises the fact that users activity remains "private". While that might be assuring, we all know by now that anything that happens on Facebook isn't really "private".
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OPW.news Loves You: Subscribe
OPW - July 14 - Dear reader. We hunger for more time with you. Subscribe here. We promise to be interesting.
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Lumen, Dating App for People 50+ Has a Game-Changing Feature
YAHOO LIFESTYLE - July 12 - On Lumen, only those who are 50 or older are allowed to join. It also requires users to upload a selfie in order to verify their identity - a unique feature that reduces the risk of catfishing. Users have to upload at least three photos. There's also a minimum character length for the messages and a limit to how many matches users can contact, so people can't just spam hundreds of users without reading their profiles. They only have 72 hours to respond to someone's message.
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Celebs Are Using Dating Apps for Promotions and It's Confusing Users
LA MAGAZINE - July 12 - Erin Gallagher was swiping on Bumble when a picture of her longtime crush, Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, popped up. It seemed too good to be true but she noticed the blue check verification next to his name, so it had to be him. Erin swiped right and, to her surprise, it was a match. Erin had fallen for an expertly executed promotion. So is it ethical of a celeb to dangle a dating carrot in front of women on Bumble Date without the intention of actually dating? Tinder has taken heat in the past for promotions using celebrities.
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Tinder CEO Says He's Not Worried About Facebook
CNBC - July 12 - Tinder's position as an influential brand among young adults can help it withstand competition from Facebook, said Elie Seidman, CEO of Tinder. "I like our position. We're going to stay very focused on what we're good at," he said.
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Internet Dating Jobs Listing Update - July 2019
OPW - July 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
Head of Brand & Creative
eHarmony
Director of Affiliates & Partnerships, Acquisition Marketing
Hinge
Creative Director
Meetic
Media Acquisition Director
Spark Networks
Brand Director
The League
Director or VP of Operations & Finance (COO fxn)
The Meet Group
Sr. Vice President of Finance & Accounting
Tinder
Vice President of Growth (Product)
To see more open positions go here.
Do you have an idating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to tips@onlinepersonalswatch.com and we will add it to the list.
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CEO of BeehiveID: "Facebook Scandal Killed My Start-up"
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK - July 11 - BeehiveID was a company that identified fake online dating accounts created for fraudulent use. "We were using all of the same data that Cambridge Analytica was using. Our timing was terrible!", says Mary Haskett, now CEO of identity tech company Blink Identity. "We had a million Facebook profiles with complete data. And that's wrong. In Facebook's defence, they figured that out and changed their access, which killed my company – but I wasn't bitter because it was the right thing to do", she added. Haskett and long-time collaborator Dr. Alex Kilpatrick then developed ID technology for the US military capable of identifying people at walking speed using a mixture of facial recognition, iris scanning and fingerprints. She and Dr. Kilpatrick co-founded privacy-first company Blink Identity, which is based in Austin, Texas, to use the tech to improve the experience at music gigs and sports events. The firm raised a seed round of $1.5M with participation from Live Nation, parent company of Ticketmaster. It has since begun to run pilot programmes at music venues.
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The "Marriage Pact" - Dating Algorithm That Gives College Students One Match
VOX - July 11 - In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper wrote a paper on the paradox of choice - the concept that having too many options can lead to decision paralysis. Seventeen years later, two Stanford classmates, Sophia Sterling-Angus and Liam McGregor, landed on a similar concept while taking an economics class on market design. "Tinder's huge innovation was that they eliminated rejection, but they introduced massive search costs," McGregor explained. "People increase their bar because there's this artificial belief of endless options." Sterling-Angus and McGregor had an idea: What if, rather than presenting people with a limitless array of attractive photos, they radically shrank the dating pool? What if they gave people one match based on core values (based on complex compatibility questions), rather than attraction? Their study called "Marriage Pact" focused on matching people with their perfect "backup plan" - the person they could marry later on if they didn't meet anyone else. It quickly became a viral phenomenon on campus. They've run the experiment two years in a row, and last year, 7,600 students participated: 4,600 at Stanford and 3,000 at Oxford. Next year the study will be in its third year, and McGregor and Sterling-Angus tentatively plan to launch it at a few more schools including Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Southern California. But it's unclear if the project can scale beyond the bubble of elite college campuses.
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The Meet Group Updates Its Flagship App With Industry-First Safety Practices
BUSINESSWIRE - July 11 - "Today we unveiled a number of safety-related features on MeetMe," said CEO Geoff Cook, "including the Report Abuse button we have seen in any major livestreaming app. When a user taps this button, a screengrab will be sent to our 200+ person moderation team for rapid review of both the screengrab and the active livestream."
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Dating App Once Lets Users See Their Attractiveness Score
NEON - July 11 - Jean Meyer is the CEO and founder of a slow dating app Once that sends users only one match per day. The app has launched a new feature that lets users see their attractiveness score.
Q: Don't you think this score could destroy a person's self-esteem?
Jean Meyer: Every dating app has an attractiveness score. People with high scores are matched with other people with high scores. We wanted to be a little smarter and stay transparent. We believe it is important to be transparent about how we do things.
Q: You use this transparency to lure people back into the app. How does it work?
A: We do not email people with: "Hey, come back and use the app". We want to give them relevant information. It works because people are curious and want to know their score.
Q: What is your score?
A: Not very good - 2.58. The score just tells me that my pictures are not good enough. That's a good feedback.
Q: Don't you think it has something to do with being a man?
A: That as well.... the average score for women is 4, for men it is 2.
Q: Who decides who is matched with whom?
A: In the beginning we had human matchmakers. We asked them to just rely on their gut feeling. We did that for a year and a half, until we had enough data to write an algorithm.
Q: Are interests and hobbies also being considered?
A: The picture is 95%.
Q: So if I rate many blonde men well, will I be matched with blonde men?
A: It's not that easy. We are doing a cluster analysis based primarily on people whose opinions are very divided. Imagine two different women. They both have the average score of 2.5 out of five. But one of them got plenty of twos and threes and the other got a lot of ones and fives. Then one of them is the average and the other is polarized. The people we care about are the ones who split the opinion. Because they probably belong to a certain type. Either you love them or you hate them.
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Blued Launches LGTBQ Anti Cyber Bullying Campaign in India
MENAFN - July 11 - The campaign focuses on making people aware about being bullied or mocked online as well as the threats an individual faces when one encounters someone who isn't what they claim to be. Blued, has partnered with Queerythm and Ya.All, community based organizations that provides support groups for the LGBTQI community, and launched helpline numbers to report such incidents. These helplines will also work toward counselling people who have been a victim to cyber bullying or physical abuse. In a recent survey report, 42% of the LGBTQ members have been a victim of virtual harassment and the numbers of incident have swiftly been rising. Launched in 2012, Blued is the largest gay dating social media app with ~40M users globally.
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Tinder Lite to Launch in Vietnam
THE VERGE - July 10 - Tinder Lite app is 25 times smaller than the main app, and while it maintains the core functionality, like swiping, it nixes more data-heavy ones, like the Feed. The idea is that Tinder Lite is faster, requires less battery life, and reduces data usage. For now, Tinder Lite users can't upgrade to a Tinder Plus or Gold subscription within the app, but the company says it plans to do so over time. The app will be available through Google Play in Vietnam in the "coming weeks" and will subsequently come to other areas in Southeast Asia and South America.
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Facebook Dating to Allow Users to See if Their Friends Have a Crush on Them
VOGUE INDIA - July 9 - Following the launch of Facebook Dating in Colombia, Thailand, Argentina and Mexico, the app is slowly expanding to more countries including: Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam and the Philippines. It is also set to debut in the US in late 2019, and Australia shouldn't be too far behind either. The inbuilt app has eliminated the Tinder-style swipe right, swipe left mechanism and has a unique algorithm that matches users with potential love interests instead. One important feature of this algorithm is called "Secret Crush", where users can find out whether or not their real life friends might have a crush on them. Users can add up to nine friends on the list and Facebook notifies these friends that they have a secret admirer. The admirer won't be revealed unless there is a mutual secret crash.
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