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

Credit Card Debt A Turnoff For Potential Partners

REUTERS - Jan 25 - 49% of Americans find credit-card debt a turnoff according to a new survey by personal-finance site NerdWallet. 51% of women are wary of someone buried in bills (compared with 46% for men). 70% of Americans think there is a nasty stigma surrounding credit-card debt, versus other kinds of "good" debt like a home mortgage or student loans. 62% of seniors and 46% of millennials said they would take a pass on romantic partner in credit card debt.

by Chris Taylor
See full article at Money.com

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

AI Pacific Expands Festar To Asia, US, UK

DEAL STREET ASIA - Jan 24 - The app matches users based on mutual interests and connects them in real time for a 10 minute chat. Originally released in Japanese only, AI Pacific has made an English and Korean version for Android and is now available in beta in South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. During the beta release in Japan, Festar saw 75% of active users matching and chatting, and 29% of users who chatted for 10 minutes mutually selected "Talk More" to continue talking with unlimited private messaging. 53% of users came back to the app monthly, based on a 5-month trial period.

by Tomas S. Noda III
See full article at Deal Street Asia

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Tinder Partners With Healthvana, Adds STD Testing Locator

IBTIMES - Jan 22 - Tinder has added a health safety section with a link to health startup Healthvana, making it easier for people to find STD testing locations. The section provides guidance on proper protection. Back in Sep, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) posted billboards in LA that had silhouettes of people's heads with the words "Tinder, Chlamydia, Grindr and Gonorrhea." Tinder issued a cease and desist letter to the AHF. AHF will take down all the ads mentioning Tinder as part of a settlement.

by Kerry Flynn
See full article at IBTimes

See all posts on Tinder

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Major Spark Shareholder Buying More Shares

ANALYST RATINGS - Jan 22 - Lloyd I. Miller, bought shares of LOV for $292.3k. Over the last month, Miller has reported 5 buy trades for a total of $1.12M and has increased his holding by 3.16%.  LOV's market cap is $82.98M and the company has a P/E ratio of 21.2%. The company has a one year high of $5.10 and a one year low of $2.76. In the last 30 days, insiders have sold $1.36M worth of shares and purchased $1.41M. 

by George Macdonald
See full article at Analyst Ratings

See all posts on Spark Networks

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

SeekingArrangement Sees Increase In College Student "Sugar Babies"

OBSERVER - Jan 22 - The site, which boasts over 5M active members in 139 countries, has seen increasing use by college students in recent years, with 1.9M college students registered. The average sugar daddy or momma on the site is 45 years old, average sugar baby is 26. The majority of the sugar babies on the site are female. Sugar babies receive an average of around $3K per month. 1/3 of the sugar daddies on the site are married. Around 36% of the average sugar baby's allowance is spent on tuition, while 23% goes to rent, 20% to textbooks, 9% to transportation, 5% to clothing and 7% to other things.

by Julia Bianco
See full article at Observer

See all posts on SeekingArrangement

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Small Design Tweak Encourages Millions More Users For Dating Apps

BUSINESS INSIDER - Jan 22 - A handful of major companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon encourage developers to let new users to co-opt their existing account information instead of creating a new identity. Facebook recently made a small design tweak that hugely boosted its number of new logins. "We found by using the words 'Continue as [first name]' on the Login opening screen we increased new logins by millions per month," Deb Liu, VP of Platform said. Happn says that once it added Facebook login, it increased its conversion rates by nearly 90%.

by Jillian D'Onfro
See full article at Business Insider

See all posts on Happn

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

iDate Awards Party

OPW - Jan 22 - This is the party of the year for the Internet dating industry. The iDate awards happens next Tuesday. Come join us for a dinner, the awards ceremony and entertainment. Register here.  

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks

Match Parent Company Announces New Corporate Structure And Ticker

FOREXTV - Jan 21 - IAC will begin trading under: IAC. The five segments will include Match Group Inc., HomeAdvisor, video, publishing, and apps. Shares of IAC were inactive in premarket trade, but they have fallen 25% over the last three months, versus an 8% decline for the S&P 500. Match's shares have fallen 19% since their IPO.

The full article was originally published at ForexTV, but is no longer available.

See all posts on Match Group

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Dating Hacks App With Ready-made Messages

OBSERVER - Jan 20 - The app, launched on January 16, allows users to choose from over 500 messages with 30 categories, including After Date, Sexting, After Sex, What Are We?, Birthday, Not Interested, Stopped Responding, Questions and Romantic. Dating Hacks works as its own keyboard with Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, POF, Match, Bumble, Grindr, Coffee Meets Bagel and more, along with text messages.

by Margaret Abrams
See full article at Observer

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

iDate Miami Is Next Week! The Must-Attend Event Of The Year

OPW - Jan 20 - iDate is next week. So book your tix and see you there. Here's my top picks from the iDate agenda.

Zoosk CEO Kelly Steckelberg - Kelly is speaking about opportunities in the dating business.  Zoosk took it upon themselves to take on the incumbents in the industry and has done an amazing job over the years.  Kelly has been at Zoosk since 2011 and has held the CFO, COO and CEO positions. What's next for Zoosk, and where's the growth? This is a must-attend.

Spark Networks CEO Michael Egan - Its been a big year for Spark.  Michael has been at the helm for a year now.  I'll interview him. I'm focused on what happened in 2015, and what happens next for Spark.

Pure CEO Roman Sidorenko - Pure app is #2 to Tinder in the USA in the current iTunes rankings. Roman is in a short CEO therapy session. How? What? Where did he come from? Find out, and advise him.

Revolution Force's Sean Christian - ...spent 10 years at Friendfinder and knows a thing or two about effective use of the affiliate channel. He's talking about dating affiliate strategy.

Psychologists Dr Brenner and Dr Borg - Will advise on how to add value to your dating site with expert guidance. People need guidance, and I'm convinced we're not providing enough.  Lets see what they have to say. A fresh perspective.

Verizon's Tushar Chaudhary - Tushar heads an innovation center at Verizon and will talk about dating's migration to mobile. Should be insightful.

Book your tix for the iDate Awards gala.

...and that's just day 1! Here's my top picks for day 2.

Venntro (White Label Dating) CEO Ross Williams - Is talking about how to grow your dating site without advertising. A hot topic, and Ross is in a unique position to observe success formulas!

Diverse (Mixi.com) President Hiroshi Tsumoto - Look to the future. Look to Japan for inspiration. The Japanese market is fascinating, and Mixi is the dating site leader. But it's not a dating site! It's a social network! Come and get some insight on how this site and app works and what Diverse is working on. 

Lunch Actually Founder Violet Lim - I've known Violet Lim and her husband for 9 years now.  She's one of our great innovative thinkers, and her company is expanding across Asia.  Again, look to Asia for inspiration. Violet is the best of the best!

FTC's Steve Baker - Make sure you're on the right side of the law. Steve Baker is spelling out some best practices.

SNAP Interactive CEO Alex Harrington - Alex has been at SNAP two years now, and ran Meetmoi for 4 years prior to that. SNAP is public. I'm interviewing him about his thoughts on the public market. What's next and where's the opportunity?

Dating Factory VP Jenny Gonzalez - Is overviewing the Latin American market. This is a hot market, and is monetizing nicely now. Get some insight on the opportunity there.

Speed Dating Luminaries Dan Gudema and Tom Jaffee - Have been banging out speed dating events for over 10 years now with predating.com and 8minutedating.com. Events are very challenging, and they've been through the wringers. Get insight on how to get events right.
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Full Disclosure: I worked for FriendFinder in 2003. Pure and Dating Factory are current Courtland Brooks clients. White Label Dating is a former long term client. I was VP at Cupid in 2004 when we acquired Predating.com.

Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks

Happn Reaches 10M Users, Adds Voice

TECHCRUNCH - Jan 19 - The French-based app is growing fast and the startup says it is on track to reach 30M users by the end of the year. Happn is also introducing a new voice feature, where users can send audio recordings to potential mates. The clips can be up to one minute long and are supposed to make it easier to showcase personality before meeting up.

by Katie Roof
See full article at TechCrunch

See all posts on Happn

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

ElitePartner Dismisses Employees

GRUENDERSZENE - Jan 15 - The Hamburger dating service was sold more than six months ago and has reportedly dismissed a total of 15 employees. Before the layoffs, the company founded in 2004, employed 90 people. The Internet Group Tomorrow Focus sold the dating portal for 22 million euros to the British private equity firm Oakley Capital.

by Kim Richter
See full article at Gruenderszene

See all posts on ElitePartner

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Match Group Owns Tutor.com And The Princeton Review

MOTLEY FOOL - Jan 19 - In the first six months of 2014, Match's education business generated just $9M (~2% total revenue). But in the first six months of 2015, that figure surged to nearly $51M, (~10.5% total revenue). That gain was driven by the acquisition of The Princeton Review in the second half of 2014. In its S-1 filing, Match explains that it acquired The Princeton Review because "it relies on many of the same competencies as our dating business, such as paid customer acquisition, a combination of free and paid features, deep understanding of the lifetime values of customers, and strong expertise in user interface development."

by Sam Mattera
See full article at The Motley Fool

See all posts on Match Group

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Grindr's Sale To Chinese To Signal A Boon For Gay Dating Apps?

SBS - Jan 20 - Despite homosexuality only being decriminalised as recently as 1997 and the scene still largely underground due to social stigma, Grindr is actually not even the most popular gay dating app in China. Blued claims more than three million daily users and is expected to soon become a publicly-listed company. Grindr claims to have a presence in 196 countries around the world and is used in countries where homosexuality is illegal or considered taboo. In the second half of the 2014-15 financial year, Grindr said its users in India grew by nearly 50% from the same period the year prior.

by Genevieve Dwyer
See full article at SBS

See all posts on Grindr
See all posts on Blued

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Tab Dating Chrome Extension

LIFE HACKER - Jan 19 - Tab Dating is a simple add-on: users log-in with Facebook details, and then set up a profile adding photos and a brief description to receive matches right in their browser.

by James Laird
See full article at Life Hacker

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team