« October 2014 | Main | December 2014 »
LATIN POST - Nov 18 - 11 social networking and dating apps, including Grindr, Scruff, Jack'd, Hornet and Manhunt, have joined forces to decrease "violent attacks" on LGBT people who meet via social media interaction. They are providing discounts on the ads of Anti-Violence Project (AVP). AVP has created a platform that offers counseling to men and women about how to prevent hazardous situations and how they can report assaults.
by Marcus Scott
See full article at Latin Post
| |
BETABEAT - Nov 18 - CoupleHang is a new service that works like a dating site, except it’s for couples in need of other couple-friends. The site’s currently in beta testing, but will publicly launch on Dec. 31. The site is free to use, but couples can elect to upgrade to a premium account for $9.95/month.
| |
CNW - Nov 18 - Lavalife.com, Canada's longest standing dating site, is ready to unveil their new website. Lavalife is moving away from algorithms. Its new campaign ads will start to populate in January 2015. The focus of the creative will focus on "fun and exciting moments" of dating rather than the end result, with two people sharing experiences and interests rather than highly romantic and intimate moments.
The full article was originally published at Broadcaster Magazine, but is no longer available.
| |
WEBWIRE - Nov 18 - Mark Brooks will provide a special 3 hour session - “Introduction to the Online Dating Business” on January 20th, 2015 during Internet Dating Conference (iDate), Las Vegas. The session will cover business models, revenues and profits of online dating businesses, software selection, marketing strategies, latest business trends, new technologies, and more.
| |
TECH IN ASIA - Nov 18 - Paktor, a Singapore-based dating app with ~1.5M registered users, has raised $5M in the last 12 months. The company has just announced its latest funding from Vertex Venture, a VC subsidiary of Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings. The money will be used to expand into new markets like Malaysia by next quarter. Its key markets have been Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. It will also release a desktop version of its app, and will venture into offline matchmaking.
by Terence Lee
See full article at Tech In Asia
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
| |
OPW - Nov 18 - Date.city is available for sale through auction. You can bid here. The current price is $50. Also contact me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com if you are interested in any of the following domains.
| |
NEWNOWNEXT - Nov 16 - OkCupid has expanded the available options members can select for sexual orientation and gender identities. The list of sexual orientations now includes asexual, demisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible, pansexual, queer, questioning and sapiosexual. Gender has now been extended to include agender, androgynous, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, gender Nnononforming, hjra, intersex, trans man, trans woman and two spirit, among others. Facebook rolled out several new gender options earlier this year.
by Dan Avery
See full article at NewNowNext
| |
BOSTON GLOBE - Nov 17 - WiGo, a college-only app based in Boston that helps students coordinate their social plans, has received an investment from Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, the co-founders of Tinder. The size of the investment was not disclosed, but TechCrunch reported that it totaled ~$700K. WiGo (short for “who is going out”) was launched in January 2014.
by Jack Newsham
See full article at Boston Globe
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
| |
WANT CHINA TIMES - Nov 17 - Chinese gay flirting app Blued is now valued at ~$300M despite having not made a single dollar of profit. Blued launched in 2012 by former police officer Geng Le. It has recently announced $30M funding from American VC firm DCM. 20% of the app's 15M accounts belong to overseas users. The company will soon launch new value-added services and cooperation deals with e-commerce and online gaming businesses.
The full article was originally published at Want China Times, but is no longer available.
| |
TECH CRUNCH - Nov 17 - Antidate is a new dating app where women aren't visible until they send an expression of interest to a guy, such as starting up a chat or tapping on a guy’s profile to say hey. Male users are visible within the app to women, including their location. A full version of Antidate launched last week. Its founders are currently on the hunt for investors.
| |
NY POST - Nov 15 - The Grade, a free matchmaking app that launched this week by Snap Interactive, uses an algorithm to boot users with bad grammar and dirty messages. It ranks profiles A+ to F based on popularity, message quality and response times. Like Tinder, The Grade users swipe right to like a profile. If two users match, they can begin messaging. But daters with a D grade get a warning, and daters with an F are bounced.
by Kate Briquelet
See full article at NY Post
| |
VENTURE BEAT - Nov 16 - A couple of new and upcoming dating apps, including Whim and Clover, are cutting out the chit-chat and taking users straight to the dates. Whim was founded by an Okcupid Labs alumna, Eve Peters. The app hasn’t launched yet (beta-tested in LA in the summer). It will serve up potential dates based on mutual availability, location, and a few other preferences that users can reject or accept. Once a date is mutually set, Whim tells both users when and where the date will take place. Clover launched in the spring and is now adding “on-demand dating", a feature similar to Whim.
| |
TECH CRUNCH - Nov 15 - New dating app Clover is a sort of OKCupid meets Tinder but with the focus on getting offline as soon as possible. Clover's users add in the calendar where and when they’d like to meet up with someone. The app then suggests a potential prospect to join them and they decide if they’d like to spend their time with them. Clover is free to use but offers premium service for $9.99 as well as some pay-to-play features, i.e name change for 99c.
| |
WALES ONLINE - Nov 14 - In a poll of 11 to 17-year-olds by McAfee, 35% reported that they have experienced cyber-bullying, up from 16% last year. The study also found that one in six of (17%) of the youngsters polled are using Tinder every day, with almost half of those (46%) aged 15 and under. Tinder is open to those who are 13 or older, with under-18s only able to match with people in the same age bracket. One per cent of parents admitted helping set up Tinder profiles for their children.
by Hayden Smith
See full article at Wales Online
| |
RE/CODE - Nov 12 - The app intended to attract “high quality” singles is launching in San Francisco Wednesday in hopes of matching singles who are more “ambitious” and “engaged” than users of other dating apps. The League keeps a “flakiness score” for users to determine whether or not they are engaging with others in the community. The waiting list for The League is more than 10K people across the country. $750K in seed funding was received from IDG Ventures, xSeed Capital, and Cowboy Ventures.
| |