BUZZFEED - June 20 - Osmium Partners is almost certain to win the four board seats it is gunning for when Spark holds its annual shareholder meeting, allowing the activist hedge fund to take control and force a sale of the company. Spark has delayed the annual meeting until June 28. Osmium, which owns 15% of Spark, launched its proxy battle in Dec '13. According to Osmium, Spark has failed to innovate and stay competitive.
TECH CRUNCH - June 20 - Skout, an app backed by Andreessen Horowitz that helps strangers meet locally, is branching out with a new group messaging app called Fuse. Once someone starts a ‘Fuse,’ everyone else has 3-10 minutes to respond. Once the timer ends, all of the content disappears. There’s also a Ghost mode, so people can respond anonymously. Skout CEO Christian Wiklund said they broke out the app separately because they didn’t want to bog down the core Skout experience with too many extra features. That’s a similar decision to what Facebook has done with Paper and Messenger.
NY POST - June 19 - Although it launched last September in London, Dattch has only opened for business in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Florida. Now it will officially open to Big Apple residents. The app, whose name is a combination of “date” and “catch”, screens its members to ensure men don’t sneak past.
WALLST CHEATSHEET - June 19 - Founded by brothers Robert and Dean Rositano, iHookup Social app helps get people together. The publicly traded company has a market cap of $3M according to CEO Robert Rositano, and it recently passed the 200K user mark. An upcoming release of the app which will allow users to browse local venues and then suggest other users that might be interested in going. The app makes money mainly from subscriptions but to compete with Tinder, the company has plans to expand the functionality for free users moving forward.
THE NEXT WEB - June 19 - Momo, the popular Chinese flirting app valued at $2B, will discontinue the English version of its service on July 1. The app is hugely popular in China and boasts ~100M downloads. Back October 2012, it launched its English version but it seems that the move didn’t go according to plan, even though the company claims users in 150 countries.
NDTV - June 19 - Varsha Agnihotri started "Footloose No More" four years ago. The site screens all applications, and then hosts a curated meet-up for new members. Users can't use the site just to meet people online - if they miss three Footloose events in a row, then their membership is revoked. Another Indian dating site is Truly Madly which is like eHarmony. Most dating sites has to be tailored to meet the needs of the Indian market. Simply bringing international ideas to India has not been very successful. These sites brand themselves as working on a "relationship management model" which is about getting to know a client on a personal level.
BUSINESS INSIDER - June 1 - HotOrNot, the dating site that was sold to Badoo for $20M, uses location-based data to show users the most attractive people around them. Badoo has hired Justine Sacco, the former communications director for IAC. Sacco was fired last year after posting a controversial tweet before a trip to Africa. Sacco is reportedly helping with HotOrNot's promotion and relaunch.
MARKETWIRED - June 18 - iHookup Social, a "proximity based" mobile social app, is rolling out national TV campaign. The company has purchased 10K thirty-second spots to roll out over thirty days. The campaign will run across several leading cable networks nationwide including MTV, ESPN, E!, History, Fox News, A&E and more.
OPW - June 15 - The next European Internet dating conference (iDate) will take place on September 8-9, 2014 in Cologne. Mark Brooks will provide his annual review of the top European dating industry news of 2013-2014, along with a summary of the most important industry numbers, analysis and trends.
MOTHERBOARD - June 16 - AshleyMadison's profit was $40M last year with revenue of $125M, up from $100M the previous year. AshleyMadison's fasted growing market is Japan. Japan broke 1M members in 8 months. 84% of Japanese women and 61% of Japanese men considered their extramarital liaisons beneficial to their marriages. The divorce rate in Japan is ~27%, about half the rate in the US. The number one reason for seeking out an affair is “not enough sex” in their relationships, according to AM survey.
OPW INTERVIEW - June 16 - There's a couple of companies in the online dating industry that have done a good job with innovation, and HowAboutWe is a standout in thinking different. Here is our interview with Aaron Schildkrout, Founder and CEO of HowAboutWe.
HowAboutWe is all about getting offline. Tell us more about that. We wanted to make online dating all about meeting up in the real world. Even with HowAboutWe for Couples we want to make date night happen. Studies show that if you repeatedly surprise each other, then you're 300% more likely to be happy in your relationship.
Delightful closed down after three months. What's your thoughts on what happened? This is a huge space. There are a lot of companies that got it right in terms of direction, but not necessarily in terms of execution. The big winners are yet to be determined.
You're maintaining the relationship with the people that you've been successful with, rather than losing them to the wind. The couples space is going to be 20x bigger than the dating space ever will be.
How is the acquisition of Nerve working out? It's going really well. We have a significantly sized and very skilled editorial team that is now building content for Nerve.com, Swimmingly.com, which is focused on relationships; Famously.com, which is focused on celebrity relationships; and The Date Report, which was our original blog.
I hear that Zoosk revenues are approaching 50/50 for mobile. How's that compare with HowAboutWe? Views are higher, but revenue is trailing only slightly. We're seeing those two lines converge. Mobile is our most important channel by far. We're seeing the most engagement there. I think that this trend will only continue.
How do you deal with location in your apps? We want to provide extremely relevant information based on where you are. We connect singles with people who want to date in the same places. Our next "You&Me" release will include a major location feature that lets couples track their adventures together.
It seems like you're bringing together some pieces of the pie which would serve a higher service level – less time invested but more help getting to the date quicker – a' la matchmaker. Is this an area that you believe in? Very much. There is a large market opportunity around a matchmaking service that is facilitated by the Internet. People who buy luxury goods want a carefully crafted, curated, personalized concierge service-level experience for finding love.
Do you have a wearable game plan? Finding the user experience in the wearable space that will work in the dating space is tricky. It's much easier in the couples space. We already have a prototype for You&Me on Google Glass.
OPW - June 15 - Hitch is a new dating app that lets users set up their Facebook friends. Friends can only see each other’s gender and age. They don’t know who they are talking to, but they know it’s a friend of a friend. If the two like each other, they can choose to reveal their identities.
NEW YORK BUSINESS JOURNAL - June 14 - Alexandra Chong, founder of Lulu, wanted a place where women could share feedback about men. So she and Alison Schwartz started Lulu, a rating app that has now millions of users. Rating men is only the launching pad. It intends to move into beauty, health, fitness and personal finance. Lulu raised $3.5M. As Lulu continues to build its community, it becomes a place for brands to pay for access, promotion and advertising.”
SINGLESAROUNDME - June 13 - Government of Canada rewards social discovery app, SinglesAroundMe, with tax incentives for their invention - Position-Shift™ - that allows users to shift their GPS location on a smartphone for the sake of location security and privacy.
