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Whim Dating App Sets Up Dates Quickly

LA TIMES - Jan 28 - Eve Peters, the former product lead at OKCupid Labs, launched Whim, a dating app that takes people offline as soon as possible. If two people are interested in each other (both swipe right), they're going on a date. They tell the app when they're available, and it'll tell them when and where they're meeting. Whim will launch as a subscription service priced from $12 to $30 a month. Clover, another dating app, recently added On-Demand Dating, similar to what Whim has planned.

by Tracey Lien
See full article at LA Times

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Jan 29, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

15 Things I Learned At iDate

OPW - Jan 28 - I managed to attend several sessions at iDate, and here's a smattering of things I picked up that I thought might be of interest to you.

Google - One day we won't have machines, the cloud will all be viewed as one big computer with infinite computing power and memory.
Snapchat - Doesn't have their own IT dept. They're run entirely in the cloud.
Divergent Netiquette - We protect user privacy but it seems that this has the consequence of allowing people to not be held accountable for unpalatable behavior. Their netiquette is diverging more and more from their real world etiquette. We need to figure out a way to bridge the divide so people behave better.
FTC – There's lots of quality players. A few rogue sites with risky behaviors. Its hard to compete when your competitors or doing things that are dodgy or illegal. FTC is more keen to help.
Fraud - 12% of the adult population been hit by some kind of mass marketing fraud.
Scam Victim Suicides – There are more suicides by scam victims in Australia than homicide victims.
Affiliates – You're liable for your affiliates behavior! So police them carefully.
Scammer Language - Scammers will often put in their profiles, 'I'm not a scammer.' Thats a clear sign for other scammers to know not to bother messaging them and that they are indeed a scammer.
eHarmony – Adaptability is the most powerful dimension that shows up most in healthy relationships.
eH+ - eHarmony's matchmaking service has been beneficial to their brand. It's starting up in Britain and Australia soon and is in L.A. right now. They hire PhD's, and family therapistsas matchmakers. It's profitable, but not a large piece of their business yet. Intros are made to people who hit 80% of their requested criteria.
Hire slow - Take longer to hire people. Hire slow and fire fast!
Seasonality - Know your market seasonality and time your product announcements to optimize.
Socks! - The iDating industry is $4B a year. Meanwhile, the sock industry is $20B a year! 5X dating. Huh!?
Serendipity Fails - A number of people discovery services were flawed because of critical mass problems inherent with serendipity. Highlight, Roamz, and At The Pool. All failed.
Brazil - You lose business if you are not physically present in Brazil because 60% of local credit cards only work with local businesses. Namoro Online is the biggest Brazilian dating site with 2.5M users. ParPerfeito is owned by Match. POF, Be2 and Ashley Madison are also big. 80% of people in Brazil now have credit cards.

Post by Mark Brooks @

Jan 28, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bumble Has Better Initial Traction Than Tinder, Witney Wolfe Says

BUSINESS INSIDER - Jan 28 - In August, Whitney Wolfe was in the middle of a very-public sexual harassment lawsuit with Tinder, which is now valued at ~ $750M. She says she came up with the name and initially promoted it on college campuses. She was given a cofounder title. One person who reached out to Wolfe after the lawsuit was Andrey Andreev, the co-founder of Badoo. Now he’s partnered with her on a new dating app that resembles Tinder, Bumble. They recruited another Tinder co-founder who departed, Chris Gulzcynski, and Tinder’s former VP of Design, Sarah Mick. Bumble, like Tinder, uses profile swiping to match single people in the same town. But on Bumble, women are forced to make the first move. Wolfe says the initial traction is even better than Tinder’s was, with ~100K downloads in a little over one month and high user engagement.

by Alyson Shontell
See full article at Business Insider

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Jan 28, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Risk Factors For Cheating: Age, Gender And Relationship Satisfaction

WSJ - Jan 26 - People are more likely to cheat on a partner in the year before a milestone birthday, according to researchers who worked with Ashley Madison. This suggests that there is roughly a 10-year cycle for heightened risk of infidelity. Here are the risk categories. People who engage in infidelity typically fall into more than one.

Gender - Men are more likely to cheat.
Age - Not only 9-enders are at heightened risk of cheating. People 35 - 50 tend to be focused on careers and kids. So people younger or older have a greater chance of cheating.
Opportunity - Researchers call this “environmental” risk. For example: traveling frequently without a spouse put people at a heightened risk for infidelity.
Relationship Dissatisfaction

by Elizabeth Bernstein
See full article at WSJ

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Jan 28, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Antidate: The Dating App Where Women Are Invisible

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - Jan 27 - Antidate is a new dating app that puts men in the passive position. Antidate was launched by Hatty Kingsley-Miller and Mo Saha. "Girls can see the guys on a map, but guys can't see the girls at all unless they are approached via a 'tap'. The girls have to make the first move." It's still early days for Antidate but the signs are positive. “We're relying on word of mouth, especially Twitter," says Kingsley-Miller. "We have ~600 users, but the feedback has been really positive".

by Caroline Kent
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk

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Jan 28, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shaadi.com Takes 25% In Thrill

ECONOMIC TIMES - Jan 26 - People Group has bought about 25% stake in dating applications maker Thrill in a cash and stock deal valued at close to $1 million. As a part of the transaction, Mumbai-based People Group has also merged its dating platform Fropper with Delhi-based Thrill Applications.

by Harsimran Julka
See full article at Economic Times

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Jan 26, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Topface Hacked For 20M User Names

BLOOMBERG NEWS - Jan 26 - User names and e-mail addresses of 20 million visitors to a dating site based in Russia have been hacked and offered for sale online. 50% of the credentials were for people in Russia, and 40% came from the European Union.

by Peter Burrows
See full article at Boston Globe

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Jan 26, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Jan 25, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

21Pictures: Find THE ONE Based On Just 21 Snaps

DAILY MAIL - Jan 23 - A new dating website is aiming to match people with just that - encouraging them to pick their matches simply on raw intuition and the help of a few snaps. Matches will be hand-picked after users have answered 21 short questions about basic core values and worldviews.

by Olivia Foster
See full article at DailyMail

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Jan 25, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dating App The League Raises $2.1M

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 22 - Investors in the round include IDG Ventures, Structure.vc and Sherpa Ventures along with angel investors, including Allen DeBevoise, Naomi Gleit, Mark Leslie, Russ Siegelmann, and Peter Kelly. One additional undisclosed venture fund and an undisclosed angel investor also participated. The cash will be used to double its two-person engineering team and continue its very methodical rollout strategy.

by Jonathan Shieber
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Jan 23, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Crowd Mobile Buys Hong Kong Start-up Kiss Hugs

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST - Jan 22 - Kiss Hugs, a mobile dating app, was launched in November 2013 and Hong Kong-based angel investor Bigcolors took a 12.5% stake in the company a month later, providing most of its seed capital. With the sale of Kiss Hugs, Bigcolors has made a return of 5.6 times on its investment in the space of a year. Crowd Mobile notes that Asia is an attractive market for its high level of smartphone usage and significant growth in in-app spending.

by Howard Winn
See full article at South China Morning Post

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Jan 23, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew Weinreich Launches Intensive Startup Bootcamp

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 22 - Weinreich, the founder of dating app MeetMoi, is joining the ranks of business schools, serial entrepreneurs and even national foundations offering startup entrepreneurs a compressed education in how to succeed in (starting up) a business. Rather than charge hefty fees to participants, Weinreich is partnering with service professionals like the law firm Goodwin Procter and others to defray the cost of the two-day program Weinreich calls "Roadmaps To Entrepreneurship".

by Jonathan Shieber
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Jan 23, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

'Invisible Boyfriend' The World's Saddest Dating App

TECH TIMES - Jan 21 - "Invisible Girlfriend and Invisible Boyfriend" are the result of one man's frustration, and a little bit of desperation. Co-founder Matt Homann was newly divorced and tired of feeling pressured to jump into something new. Subscribers can choose a name, personality, age, race, hairstyle and photo for their new virtual companion - or, can have the app build one for them. Features include having fake texting conversations, fake phone calls and receiving fake handwritten letters, all in a bid to fool family and friends into thinking you're not as lonely as they think.

by Steven Schneider
See full article at Tech Times

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Jan 23, 2015 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tinder Founder Is Still CEO

NY POST - Jan 21 - Nearly four months after his very public ouster from the mobile matchmaking app, the Tinder co-founder still sits in the IAC-controlled company’s chief executive seat, the company said Wednesday.