PR NEWSWIRE - Dec 4 - Dating.com Group, the parent company of Dating.com, Dil Mil, Lovinga, Tubit, TripTogether, announced its plans to focus on expanding into the Asian market in 2020. Dating.com Group has recently acquired Dil Mil. Jev Golinejs, Dating.com Group CLO, said: "The deal with Dil Mil has increased the profit of Dating.com Group at up to $250M.
Dating.com Group Announces Business Development Plans for 2020
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Q&A With Joey Levin, Online Dating Guru From IAC
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK - Dec 5 - Levin was a junior investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston when Barry Diller brought him over to IAC/Interactive Corp. in 2003; 12 years later, he succeeded him as CEO. IAC is spinning off the Match Group so the market can more easily value smaller IAC businesses, such as video platform Vimeo. In July, Levin invested $250M in Turo, which lets people rent out their cars when they're not driving them.
Q: What's the secret to competing with Big Tech, as you do with Facebook in dating?
A: They'll always have distribution and cost advantages. We can have a better product. We've got a group of people who eat, breathe, sleep, and live dating. Their product is free. Some of our products are not free. That's a signal of a commitment.
Q: Why spin off businesses like Match Group? Why not become an Internet conglomerate?
A: We're not empire builders. If we're going to keep building new businesses, we've got to focus. Eliminating the thing that starts to make life easy and focusing on the hard things is how you build them up.
Q: What's the one thing you learned from Diller that continues to shape IAC?
A: Thinking bigger. "Why aim for $20M in revenue? Why not $200M? Why not $2B?"
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Beauty Brands Are Partnering With Bumble
GLOSSY - Dec 4 - Bumble is offering its users daily, weekly and monthly giveaways from beauty, lifestyle and fashion brands. Six companies participated including Becca, Erno Lazslo, True Botanicals, Love Wellness, Ouai and Ipsy. While brands did not have to pay to participate, they did commit to gifting four products for the giveaways, and promoting the partnership through their own Instagram and email.
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IDEA SUMMIT Europe, at Spark Networks
OPW - Dec 4 - IDEA SUMMIT Europe went very well today at Spark Networks HQ, with a veritable who's who of the dating and online matchmaking industry. (www.idea.gp)
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Dating App Ad Starring Ulrika Jonsson Banned for Objectifying Women
CITYAM - Dec 4 - Lumen Ad starring Swedish TV personality Ulrika Jonsson has been banned over concerns it was offensive and objectified women. The Christmas campaign showed 52-year-old Jonsson in a red nightie and stockings, and was accompanied by the tagline "Be my stocking filler". Lumen submitted the ad to Transport for London's (TfL) advertising agent Global, but it was rejected.
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More Millennials Prefer Offline Dating
BBC - Dec 4 - While almost half of adults under 35 living in the US and the UK have tried online dating, and the industry increased by 11% in North America between 2014 and 2019, there are growing signs that many would rather not be using these methods. A BBC survey in 2018 found that dating apps are the least preferred way for 16- to 34-year-old Britons to meet someone new. For them, deleting the apps has been more about winning time back in their lives for other activities rather than a reaction to painful experiences. The rise of app-based dating coincided with a decline in social spaces in which people used to find potential sexual partners and dates. Gay bars are closing at a rapid rate in around the world. Half of the UK's nightclubs shut their doors between 2005 and 2015. What's next for dating? Scott Harvey, editor of Global Dating Insights, says that AI and video are the "two main talking points in the industry" right now.
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Hinge's Founder Leans Into Data to Set the Dating App Apart From Other Apps
MASHABLE - Dec 3 - Hinge, which at one point called itself "the relationship app," is one of the many apps now owned by the Match Group but still strives to set itself apart. Its founder, Justin McLeod, set out to make an app less shallow than Tinder - but with a younger demographic than eHarmony and Match. Hinge ditched swiping in 2016 and charged seven dollars for the app to weed out non-serious users. By 2017, the mandated membership fee was gone, but they did not go back to the swipe model. After being acquired by Match Group, Hinge went through another rebrand that included a design makeover and a new tag line, "Designed to be deleted." Hinge has been fine-tuning their algorithm and figuring out what leads to better matches. Using data to help users get into relationships is partially the inspiration behind Hinge Lab, the app's new data department. Hinge Lab is like personal trainers at the gym.
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OPW Podcast - The Top Dating Industry News for Dec 3rd
OPW - Dec 3 - Momo up 22%, e-babies 40%, Happn gives 5% to AIDS, IDEA SUMMIT.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker, Google podcasts, Spotify, Anchor or Stitcher.
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Tinder Lets Sex Offenders Use the App
PROPUBLICA - Dec 2 - Match Group screens for sexual predators on Match, but not on Tinder, OkCupid or PlentyofFish. A spokesperson said: "There are definitely registered sex offenders on our free products." Match first agreed to screen for registered sex offenders in 2011 after a lawsuit. A Match Group spokesperson said the company cannot implement a uniform screening protocol because it doesn't collect enough information from its free users, and that background checks do little more than create "a false sense of security" among users. "Our checks of the sex offender registry can only be as good as the information we receive," she said, explaining that the government databases can lack data, have old pictures or include partial information. Herb Vest, founder of dating site True.com used to pay ~ $1M a year for third-party services like rapsheets.com and backgroundchecks.com. True.com even warned subscribers that the company would sue if they misrepresented their pasts. True ultimately folded in 2013 but Mr Vest insists the cost of doing background checks didn't play a role in his company's closing. "People can't rely 100% on the sites," Vest said. "But as an industry, we could have done much better."
by Hillary Flynn, Keith Cousins & Elizabeth Naismith Picciani
See full article at ProPublica
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See all posts on POF See all posts on True.com
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Dating Apps Are Turning to Message-free Meetups
INSIDER - Dec 2 - Dating app creators are experimenting with old-school dating methods. Video "speed dating" features, text-only profiles, and apps that ban in-app messaging have emerged recently. The League, which launched in 2014, recently announced League Live, a feature where users can go on two-minute video "speed dates" with potential matches. People who use League Live are four times more likely to match with someone than people who use the non-"speed dating" version of The League, according to an emailed statement from the League. The new app Bounce also emphasizes face-to-face meetups. It allows users to "check-in" at specific locations as a way to say they're interested in going on a date around that geographic area. Lex, a new dating app for the queer community, takes another old-school approach by allowing people to scroll through a feed of personal ad-style call-outs. People who use Lex can't post photos, so the connections have to go beyond physical appearances.
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Chappy Breaks Into the World of Gay Male Dating
AUSTIN MONTHLY - Dec 2 - Created in the same spirit as its sister company Bumble, Chappy is cultivating a welcoming atmosphere that challenges deeply entrenched negative norms between gay men. Similar to Bumble, the app's branding and marketing revolve around empowerment, accountability, acceptance, and kindness. Chappy limits matches to people who are mutually interested in one another, and users need to verify their identities.
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OPW - Dec 1 - We're dedicated to providing executive summaries on the news you can use, to get smarter, and make better decisions.
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Vida Dating's Founder Defends His Business Model
FOX13 - Nov 28 - Scott Valdez, the founder and CEO of VIDA, a virtual dating assistant company. Dozens of remote consultants - from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriters, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
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Dil Mil, a Dating App for the Indian Diaspora, Is Redefining "Arranged" Marriage
QUARTZ INDIA - Nov 28 - Only ~10% of Indian marriages are for love, the rest are arranged or semi-arranged by families. Generally, parents facilitate talks and perhaps even take decisions. This traditional system seems to work given that divorce rates in India are among the lowest in the world, albeit some argue it is problematic. But the concept of arranged marriage is changing. Last week, Dating.com Group acquired the San Francisco-based dating app for expats from India and other south Asian countries. Dil Mil has ~1M users in the US, the UK, and Canada. Already, Dil Mil has led to ~20M matches and averages one marriage per day. "Over 80% of south Asians marry other south Asians, but south Asian expats are geographically dispersed across the world, making it hard for them to meet each other," said KJ Dhaliwal, founder and CEO of Dil Mil. "Historically, most of them have met offline through their local social circles." Dil Mil allows Indian women to join but only non-resident Indian (NRI) men can join.
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Study: 50% of Tinder Users Have Only Been on ONE Face-to-face Date
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - Nov 28 - Trond Viggo Grøntvedt at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and his colleagues surveyed 269 students in Norway who were all members of Tinder – 60% of participants were women. Men, on average, reported having matched with 111 Tinder users and women with 124, however only half of the participants reported having meet ups with matches, and on average, men met with 1.9 partners, women with 2.2 partners. Only ~25% of study participants said they had used the app to meet someone interested in a long-term relationship.
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Online Dating Innovator Takes on Data Privacy
SLICE OF MIT - Nov 28 - Maxwell Krohn helped revolutionize internet dating in the early 2000s with a site he cofounded with college buddies: OkCupid. They sold the site in 2011, and Krohn began to have second thoughts about all the sensitive personal information that people were launching into the cloud. His latest venture, Keybase, tackles that problem head-on, harnessing studies in cryptography he began at MIT to create a simple but powerful platform for securing user data. Keybase, which Krohn cofounded with OkCupid veteran Chris Coyne, employs what's known as end-to-end encryption to keep user data totally secret - even from the apps through which users might share their data - so no third party can hijack it along the way. Sending information on Keybase requires both sender and recipient to have their own pair of public and private keys. Senders use recipients' public keys to encrypt the data. To ensure recipients are who they say they are, Keybase links the ownership of public keys with multiple email, Twitter, Reddit, and other social-media accounts.
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Dating App Happn to Donate 5% of Money Generated on World Aids Day Next Month
CHARITY DIGITAL NEWS - Nov 28 - Happn is teaming up with a global Aids prevention organisation for a fundraising campaign next month. On the day Happn will donate 5% of its proceeds, including in-app sales, to Red. The partnership will continue during December when app users will be invited to take part in Red's 'Shopathon' campaign.
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OPW Podcast - The Top Dating Industry News for Nov 26th
OPW - Nov 27 - Bumble: No more nudes please, Instagram dating!, Dating.com Buys Dil Mil, Qingliao, The Meet Group: fast growth.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker, Google podcasts, Spotify, Anchor or Stitcher.
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Gay Dating Apps Still Leaking Location Data
DENTON DAILY - Nov 27 - Some of the most popular gay dating apps, including Grindr, Romeo and Recon, have been exposing the exact location of their users, according to cyber-security researchers who were able to generate a map of users across London, revealing their precise locations. This problem and the associated risks have been known about for years but some of the biggest apps have still not fixed the issue. After the researchers shared their findings with the apps involved, Recon made changes – but Grindr and Romeo did not.
See full article at Denton Daily
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See all posts on Romeo
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By 2037, Most Children Will Be Born to Parents Who Met Online
YAHOO NEWS UK - Nov 27 - By 2037, more babies will be born to parents who met online than offline, according to a research by eHarmony and the Imperial College Business School. Even within the next decade, 40% of babies born will be so-called "e-babies", born to parents who met on the Internet. The data highlights the shifting habits of those looking to meet a partner: around a third (32%) of relationships started between 2015 and 2019 started online, compared to only 19% between 2005 and 2014. By 2030, the UK will reach the "tipping point" that more than 50% of relationships will begin online.
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