Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Why Investors Don’t Fund Dating

ANDREWCHEN - May 28 - It’s hard to get a dating product funded by mainstream Silicon Valley investors. They refuse to invest in the dating category in the same way that many refuse to invest in games, hardware, gambling, etc. Here are the reasons usually given for why investors don’t do dating:

Built-in churn
The better your dating product works, the more your customers will churn. The churn rate for dating site is usually 20-30% monthly = 93% annual churn. You have to have a strategy to replace almost your entire customer base each year.

Dating has a shelf-life
Being "in the market" as a single person looking to meet others has a limited time window.

Paid acquisition channels are expensive
This is an area where the new mobile dating apps excel. They have the ability to tap into organic viral/word-of-mouth installs.

City-by-city expansion sucks
Dating products inherently rely on a local marketplace, and bootstrapping a series of marketplaces is very hard, and expensive.

Hard to exit
The lack of exits might be more the result, not the cause, of investor disinterest in dating.

by Andrew Chen
See full article at AndrewChen.co

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Japan’s Eureka, Developer Of Dating And Couple Apps, Acquired By Match Group

THE BRIDGE - May 27 - Since its launch in 2008, Tokyo-based startup Eureka has developed Pairs and Couples, mobile apps for dating and couples. The company has been wholly acquired by The Match Group. Details of the acquisition price has not been disclosed. Pairs is a Facebook-based dating and marriage hunting app launched in 2012 and has acquired ~1.5M users in Japan and 800K users in Taiwan to date. Couples is a memory-sharing and messaging app for couples, and has acquired ~2.2M users.

by Masaru Ikeda
See full article at The Bridge

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Adult FriendFinder Was Warned About The Hack

CHANNEL4 - May 27 - The owners of Adult FriendFinder were warned that it had been hacked more than two months before Channel 4 News exposed the leak of 4M people's sensitive data. The company said the warning ended up in its spam folder, despite an email from an employee indicating that it had been read.

by Geoff White
See full article at Channel4

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Baihe.com Offers Free Of Charge Commutation For Members

PR NEWSWIRE - May 27 - Baihe.com members are now able to communicate with other members free of charge instead of paying membership fees. Baihe.com’s initiative will overturn the current business mode and trigger an industry reshuffle. Mr. Tian Fanjiang, CEO of Baihe.com, said the company aims to increase online market share to ~61.8% via the new initiative to become a leading online dating site in China.

The full article was originally published at Blackbird PR News, but is no longer available.

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Online Dating Site Launched By Iranian Government

BBC NEWS - May 28 - With a high rate of divorce, authorities in Iran have launched a state-run online dating site. ~22% of marriages among Iranians end in divorce. The vast majority occur between couples under 30. The new site is called hamsan.tebyan.net and is run by the Islamic Development Organisation, an institution under the supervision of the Supreme Leader that promotes the Islamic lifestyle.

by Nassim Hatam
See full article at BBC

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AdultFriendFinder's Profiles For Sale For $17K

THEHILL - May 26 - According to multiple reports, the giant database of user data stolen from AdultFriendFinder is going for 70 bitcoins ($17K) on the dark Web. It would be easy for hackers to user the leaked information to identify people in real life through Facebook. This could put users at risk of extortion and blackmail. The hacker is also offering to break into any company or website for ~$170K worth of bitcoin.

by Cory Bennett
See full article at TheHill

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New Dating App "The Grade" Eliminates Users With Low Grades

SFWEEKLY - May 26 - Launched in November in New York, The Grade assigns grades to users based on their behavior on the app. Each user's grade gets displayed to other users, and users with an F get kicked off the app. According to a survey The Grade team conducted on Facebook, 77% of women on dating apps had been asked to send an "inappropriate photo," and 90% had received inappropriate messages. The Grade has 50K users to date. 500 users have been booted so far, and there are currently 1K users who are "on the verge" of meeting the same fate.

by Jessica Nemire
See full article at SFWeekly

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$49 Serendip Watch Vibrates When A Match Is Nearby

DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - May 26 - Serendip watch is designed to be worn by single people looking for 'the one' and gives wearers a signal when a potential match is nearby. The Serendip claims to be the 'world's first dating smartwatch,' although it is still being developed and is raising cash on Kickstarter. The watch vibrates when a potential match is in sight, but it's not clear exactly how the watch will point out ‘the one’ in a busy train. The Serendip is available to pre-order on Kickstarter for $49 and is expected to ship in January next year.

by Sarah Griffiths
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk

This post also appears on Wearable.ai.

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New Dating Apps Are Killing Monogamy

WASHINGTON POST - May 26 - OpenMinded is a new non-monogamous dating site. The site's founder, Brandon Wade, expects swingers, polysexuals and experimental 20-somethings to use his site. "If you look at marriage, it developed as a survival strategy and a means of raising kids," Wade said. "But relationships are no longer a necessary component of life." There's a long history of married men sleeping around, says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and one of the world’s leading relationship researchers. "What is new is that women are now also being more adulterous - and so people are beginning to be more open about it."

by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Washington Post

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SparkLabs Global Invests In Dating LATAM

MARKETWIRED - May 26 - SparkLabs Global Ventures, a global seed-stage fund, invested in Latin American dating startup - Dating LATAM. The startup's MiMediaManzana.com site currently has ~300K registered users. It started originally in Peru and is now in Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.

See full article at MarketWatch

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Shaadi.com To Go Global

THEHINDUBUSINESSLINE - May 25 - Shaadi, the Mumbai-based site, a part of People Group, is exploring opportunities in the South-East Asian markets like Vietnam and Malaysia, besides developed and unorthodox markets like the US. "We are looking to make at least 2-3 acquisitions overseas in the next few years," said Anupam Mittal, Founder and CEO of People Group. He also added that the company has set aside ₹60-70 crore for these acquisitions.

by Priyanka Pani
See full article at TheHinduBusinessLine

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Hacked Data Reveals That Only 6% Of UK Adult FriendFinder Users Are Female

DAILYMAIL.COM - May 25 - Only 1,596 of the 26,939 users with a UK email address identified as female. That means the ratio of male to female AFF members in the UK is 16:1. ~4M users of AdultFriendFinder had highly sensitive information, including birthdays, ZIP codes, sexual orientations and email and IP addresses, exposed during the hack.

by Evan Bleier
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk

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Dating App "Ten" Only Matches People In The Same "League"

MIRROR.CO.UK - May 21 - Part Tinder, part Hot or Not, dating app Ten lets users rate each other’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 and only matches people in the same 'league'. Users can't see their overall ratings. The iPhone app is based on the theory that people who are similarly attractive form more successful relationships.

by Olivia Solon
See full article at Mirror.co.uk

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Cheating Men Abandon Dating App Hinge After Being Exposed

MIRROR.CO.UK - May 21 - Last week, Hinge decided to include Facebook relationship status in the profiles. ~450 men abandoned the app over the course of one weekend. A Hinge spokesman said: "We see a natural attrition rate week to week, but this was 40% higher than normal for men. Women, on the other hand seemed to appreciate the news, with 26% more than normal joining."

by Jasper Hamill
See full article at Mirror.co.uk

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