MASHABLE - Sep 28 - Tinder has begun trialling a new service called Tinder Boost. It allows paying users to skip the line, appearing as one of the first profiles when someone opens the app. Users can purchase "boosts" any time, and if they already pay for Tinder Plus, they get one free "boost" every week. Tinder is currently testing Tinder Boost amongst users in Australia exclusively.
« August 2016 | Main | October 2016 »
Tinder Is Testing New "Boost Function"
| |
Russia Blocks Its Most Popular Gay Site
THE DAILY BEAST - Sep 23 - BlueSystem claims ~100k page views a day. Now it's banned throughout the country by the government's telecommunications agency, Roskomnadzor. "The Kremlin is afraid of gays," the BlueSystem team wrote in a post last week on its VKontakte social media page. The BlueSystem site, which can still be accessed outside Russia - and may be available using VPN from inside - published news about human rights violations, court hearings, and the banning of gay parades all across the country.
| |
Bumble Will Let Users Get Verified
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 22 - Bumble, the female-led dating app, is launching photo verification as a way to rid impersonators from the platform. Users will be assigned one of 100 different selfie poses. They then take a picture of themselves mimicking the pose. The picture will be reviewed by a Bumble team. While Verification won't be mandatory for all users, anyone who has had their profile reported as being potentially fake will have to verify within 7 days of being reported. If they don't verify in this time period their profile will be hidden and they will be temporarily denied access to seeing matches.
| |
Hinge Will Focus On Serious Relationships
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 27 - Dating app Hinge is launching an entirely new version of the app that will focus on serious relationships. The new app, built from the ground up, will go live on October 11, and it will be a paid app for all users. Hinge is ditching its old app and also the swipe feature.
| |
BeautifulPeople.com To Open LA Club
THE SUN - Sep 27 - Dating site BeautifulPeople.com is opening an exclusive new club where every guest is vetted to ensure they are attractive enough to enter. Managing director of BeautifulPeople.com Greg Hodge says that they are just following the site's users' wishes, as they are apparently tired of going on nights out surrounded by people they don't consider pretty enough.
by Guy Birchall
See full article at The Sun
| |
Berkeley International Is Launching In Ireland
IRISHMIRROR - Sep 27 - The elite match-making service is open to those aged 35 and over and costs a minimum of €6k per year to join. The Dublin office joins other key locations around the world including Cannes, Milan, London and New York.
by Anita McSorley
See full article at IrishMirror
| |
Ashley Madison Is Confident About Its Comeback
MARKETINGWEEK - Sep 27 - Last summer, a team of hackers released the details of 35M members of Ashley Madison. Since then, Ashley Madison has added 5M new users, according to the company's new CEO Rob Segal. Their latest TV campaign focused on women. "The campaign made us grow our female users by 18%." It has replaced the provocative previous slogan, 'Life's short. Have an affair' to 'Find your moment'. The overarching goal is to make Ashley Madison a female-focused brand that prioritises open relationships rather than affairs.
by Thomas Hobbs
See full article at MarketingWeek
| |
Tinder Invested In Female-Friendly Network "Hey! Vina"
FORBES - Sep 27 - The investment is Tinder's second recent move to expand beyond the dating world and into more platonic networks. In July, the company launched Tinder Social to help groups of people to meet other groups for a night out. Hey! Vina, which was founded by Olivia June Poole, is a mobile app that uses surveys and interests to help women find friends online and then meet in the real world. While Poole gets Tinder's cash and institutional knowledge, Tinder will gain valuable insight on how to build and run a platonic platform as it looks to diversify away from dating.
by Steven Bertoni
See full article at Forbes
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
| |
Peekya - A New Free Dating App
HUFFINGTON POST - Sep 23 - Peekya is a free new app that has the technology and business savvy to give Tinder a run for its money. Peekya was developed by FarSighted Media, a company known for developing both web-based and mobile apps such as PokerRun.org and BuddyBall.org. Peekya has attracted some well-known investors (Francois Einwaechter and Thomas Podstawski - both owning 40% of Peekya). Peekya works with Facebook accounts. Users choose who (male/female/age...), what (hike, dinner, movie...), where, and when and then receive a list of matches.
| |
Tinder Now Lets Users Use Music To Find A Date
BUSINESS INSIDER - Sep 21 - Tinder and Spotify have announced a partnership that will let users choose any song from Spotify to display as their "anthem," a kind of personal theme song, which potential dates can listen to without leaving the app. They can also opt to have Tinder display their top artists on Spotify. This feature will be available in every Tinder market where Spotify is also present.
| |
Match Group On How To Improve Users' Retention
APP ANNIE - Sep 22 - There's an art to reducing churn, but there's also a science. Here is a Q&A with two experts in user retention at Match Group: Sushil Sharma, SVP of Product, Analytics and Design, and Ram Reddi, Director of Mobile Product.
Q: What can you implement to improving retention?
A: A features that users will love and want to use every day, also push notifications that bring the user back to the app.
Q: What do you A/B test to prevent churn and increase retention?
A: We thoroughly test every major feature and change. We are constantly testing onboarding and checkout flows, app navigation, profile setup, search features and push notifications.
Q: For your app, what is a "loyal" user?
A: A "loyal" user for us, even though short-lived, is one who rates their dating matches, and responds to interest from prospective dates in a timely way.
Q: How do you benchmark your retention and churn rates? Are there specific external tools, resources or methods you use?
A: We use App Annie Intelligence to measure how we stack against our competition in terms of downloads, engagement and new releases. We monitor downloads, engagement and app releases of our competitors on a biweekly basis.
Q: What are some strategies you think we'll see emerging in the next year for keeping retention high?
A: Artificial intelligence and location-aware notifications. Pokémon GO is a good example of a high retention product that has completely brand new hooks.
| |
Tinder's Newest App, Tinder Stacks, Lets You Swipe On Anything
TECH CRUNCH - Sep 22 - Tinder is launching a new application for social polling. It is called "Tinder Stacks". The new feature will allow users to swipe right or left on anything they want – whether that's polling their friends which photo should be their new profile picture or what outfit should they wear tonight. While Tinder Stacks is discoverable though Apple's iMessage App Store, it's not technically a standalone app. Instead, the new app is included with the flagship Tinder app.
| |
Grindr To Run Hackathon For LGBTI Equality
GAY STAR NEWS - Sep 21 - The hackathon is being supported by HackerNest, Planned Parenthood, DevPost, and the White House's Opportunity Project. It was launched in the summer and will culminate on Sep 25 with an event at the Grindr's LA headquarters, where tech individuals and teams can demonstrate their ideas for digital solutions to the challenges faced by gay and trans communities. The challenges include: LGBTQ homelessness; trans visibility and empowerment; international LGBTQ issues; and access to sexual health services and PrEP.
| |
Hinge CEO Is Not Afraid Of Making Big Changes
BUSINESS INSIDER - Sep 17 - When Hinge was floundering in 2012, Justin McLeod spent $25k on a huge 2,000-person launch party to kick-start its growth. The company only had $32k left in the bank at the time. It worked. Now McLeod hopes another big bet can save Hinge. The app is bleeding users and has plummeted to a 1.5-star rating as McLeod and his team has been working on something totally new. The new product will be unveiled this week.
by Nathan McAlone & Biz Carson
See full article at Business Insider
| |