FORTUNE - Sep 29 - To combat overzealous swipers, Tinder has turned to a new tool, called Interana, for analyzing data. Some users swipe right too often to maximize their chances of finding a match. Earlier this year, to combat this behavior, Tinder set a daily limit of right swipes. Then it rounded up profiles of the most prolific right-swipers and watched what happened. "We saw those users actually converge in behavior," said Tinder VP of Technology Dan Gould. "They learned the value of the right swipe." Tinder is using data to improve the user experience. It is using software from a startup called Interana, which premiered in 2014 and counts two former Facebook engineers among its founders. With Interana, queries that were taking hours were cut down to less than a second. Now, Interana is everywhere inside Tinder, troubleshooting network connectivity issues and measuring the effectiveness of social media partnerships, among other things.
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How Tinder Is Using Data To Make Users' Right Swipes Count
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There Will Be A Social Discovery Conference Prior To iDate London
IDATE - Sep 29 - If you register for iDate (Internet Dating Conference) in London, taking place on October 14 - 16, you will get a free pass to the Social Discovery Pre-Conference on October 14. Check out the agenda. The online dating industry is constantly seeking to innovate and reinvent itself. At previous iDate events it was noted that some of the most insightful ideas were sparked from outside the industry. Social Discovery has proven its place in mobile and online networks over the last 5 years. Don't miss the opportunity to network and build relationships with a group of social discovery professionals.
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Dating Apps Fire Back At Billboards Linking STD Spread
ASSOCIATED PRESS - Sep 28 - The AIDS Healthcare Foundation targets Tinder and Grindr in billboards and bus benches that are aimed at reminding users about the risks of STDs. Within two hours of the first billboard going up, Grindr pulled commercials that the foundation pays for on the dating site to promote free STD testing. Tinder sent a cease and desist letter claiming the campaign falsely associates the dating app with the spread of venereal diseases. The foundation would not remove the references to the apps. The signs are currently on a dozen billboards in Los Angeles and 45 bus benches.
by Brian Melley
The full article was originally published at ABC News, but is no longer available.
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Three Day Rule Matchmaker Reveals How She Tracks Down True Love For Her Clients
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - Sep 28 - Anna Leifeste is a full-time matchmaker at Three Day Rule, a personal matchmaking company based in Los Angeles. The dating service charges $3,5k for its three-month package, and $5k for six months that includes date coaching, styling and professional photography, according to Online Personal Watch. Anna, who has a master's degree in counseling psychology from Northwestern University, describes her day as a matchmaker.
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Danish Dating App Teazr Is Expanding To The US
ONLINE POST - Sep 24 - Teazr has received 1.5M kroner ($225K) to market the app in the US, which has been the goal of the three founders – Daniel Delouya, Umar Akram and Simon Degn – from the start. Teazr is similar to Tinder but users must take and send a selfie when they get a match before they can chat together. Teazr launched on the Danish market in June this year, and so far ~15K users have downloaded the app.
by Lucie Rychla
See full article at Online Post
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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A Billboard Suggests Tinder And Grindr's Users To Get Tested For An STD
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 28 - The site FreeSTDCheck.org and AIDS Health Foundation is leveraging the popularity of Tinder and Grindr to get the word out about getting yourself checked out for a sexually transmitted disease.
by Drew Olanoff
See full article at Tech Crunch
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IAC Interactive Has Gone On Sale With Catalysts Looming
SEEKING ALPHA - Sep 26 - Shares of IAC have fallen 20% while the company is in the midst of monetizing Tinder, in anticipation of an IPO later this year. The shares have been sold off in the last several weeks, from $85 to the current $68. Match Group is expected to rake in $900M in revenue this year with ~22% of the market share in the dating apps industry. While Tinder has yet to turn a profit, it has a surging user base that may be worth billions with ~74% of mobile dating market share. Some analysts have pegged the value of the entire Match Group to be ~$5B alone. With the Tinder CEO stating that the company is realizing 800M swipes per day, the company stands to reach as many people as half the active daily users that are currently on Facebook. The monetization from this active user base is enormous.
See full article at Seeking Alpha
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Bumble Dating App Is For Women That Know What They Want
FORBES - Sep 26 - Dating app Bumble launched in December and is backed by Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo. Users create profiles by linking to their Facebook profiles. Users are then suggested matches, and much like Tinder, have the option to swipe right or left. When both parties swipe right on each other's images, they are both alerted to the match, though only the woman has the option to initiate a conversation. The app has recently introduced "VIBee" status which rewards frequent and respectful interaction.
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Dating App Hinge Tested Opening Lines. Here Is What Works
VOX.COM - Sep 25 - Dating app Hinge wrote 100 opening lines, varied by length, structure, content, etc., and then selected 22% of its users to take part in the experiment. For one month, when those users matched with someone new, they received an in-app prompt to send one of our conversation starters (the starters were randomized)," Hinge then compared response rates for the various lines. In general, lazy greetings like "hey, what's up" didn't do well. Also men are the worst at responding to messages. If they don't get a note immediately after matching, the odds of a reply fall 25%.
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Channel 4 Will Be Filming At iDate London
IDATE - Sep 23 - The UK Channel 4 will be filming at iDate London October 14-16. They will be doing a documentary on the dating industry and new technology. If you want to be interviewed, please reach out to me at [email protected].
Post by Mark Brooks @
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Matchmakers & Dating Coach Track At iDate London
IDATE - Sep 23 - Genevieve Zawada will host the "Matchmakers & Dating Coach Track" at the next iDate Internet dating conference, taking place in London, on October 14-16, 2015 at the Strand Palace Hotel in London.
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How Ross Williams Set Up A £43.2M Dating Network
LONDONLOVESBUSINESS - Sep 23 - Ross Williams is the CEO of Venntro Media Group, a parent company of WhiteLabelDating.com. The company claims 1700 partners, 25K sites and 45M members worldwide.
Q: How big is the market?
A: The UK online dating market is valued at £165M and is expected to grow to £225M by 2019. A third of adults in the UK use a site powered by us.
Q: How do you make money?
A: Our largest revenue-generating product is White Label Dating. We operate on a revenue sharing model so we only make money if our partners do.
Q: Who’s bankrolling you?
A: Venntro is completely privately owned. Steve Pammenter and I founded the business in 2003, juggling a dozen credit cards and paying them off each month.
Q: What advice would you give other entrepreneurs trying to secure that kind of finance?
A: Juggling credit cards is a gamble. You need to be confident that the business model is going to work. It’s very hard to monetise a product if you haven’t thought about revenue generation from the off.
Q: What do you believe the key to growing this business is?
A: Move with the market. It is a constantly developing market – if you stop innovating you could end up with getting left behind.
Q: What metrics do you look at every day?
A: Revenue per customer and customer engagement.
Q: What’s been the most unexpectedly valuable lesson you’ve learnt so far?
A: Ensure that you have multiple levels of redundancy in all areas of the business.
Q: What’s been your biggest mistake so far?
A: In 2014, our payment processing provider made the decision to exit the dating market, giving us 60 days notice to find a new solution. We didn’t have any redundancy. We worked around the clock to resolve the issue but it was touch and go. We now have four payment providers in place.
Q: Which London startup/s are you watching?
A: I love what HER are doing at the moment. Clocked.co have also a unique product and have built a great team. The Inner Circle have a great marketing strategy, with a lot of headline grabbing campaigns.
See full article at LondonLovesBusiness
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Meetic Laid Off Most Of Its Staff In Spain
SABEMOSDIGITAL - Sep 22 - IAC has decided that they can manage the Spanish business from France, and laid off most of Meetic's staff in Spain. This will also affect Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands, which will also be controlled from Paris, and the Nordic countries, which will be led from UK. Meetic laid off more than 10 people including the country manager Jose Ruano, and marketing director, Miguel Javier Mangas. The remaining staff (rumored to be just 3 people) moved into a smaller office.
by Miguel Ángel Uriondo
The full article was originally published at Sabemos Digital, but is no longer available.
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AshleyMadison.com Says Suits Filed Anonymously Are A No-Go
NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL - Sep 21 - So far, 11 lawsuits have been filed against Avid Life Media, which operates AshleyMadison.com, most of them class actions accusing the company of negligence in allowing its customers’ personal info, like credit card numbers, to be hacked. Avid filed a motion to combine all the lawsuits in the Eastern District of Missouri. Their planned defense includes challenging the anonymity of the cases as procedurally improper under federal rules. Plaintiffs in some of the cases said they filed anonymously to protect their privacy. But anonymity could be an issue, said Gary Mason, a lawyer who filed one case against Ashley Madison. "It's going to be hard to prosecute a case on behalf of the class, a representative lawsuit, with someone who's not willing to step forward and publicly disclose who they are," he said.
by Amanda Bronstad
See full article at The National Law Journal
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