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OPW - Dec 21 - We love Typepad for its simplicity and reliability (Wordpress gets hacked too much), but one of the hang ups we had was getting it to work well on mobile. As of today, we're finally looking good on mobile. You can view the news on mobile at opw.news for short, or on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter, or why not subscribe via email for a daily or weekly update. See the right bar of OPW at any time for Subscription options.
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
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TECH CIRCLE - Dec 21 - Dating app Heartonnect, operated by Trigbug, has been selected by Facebook for its FbStart programme. The programme helps early-stage mobile-focused startups to build and develop their apps. As part of FbStart, Heartonnect will receive credits worth $40k as well as services from Facebook and its ~30 partners such as AWS, Dropbox, Adobe and MailChimp to name a few. The startup differentiates itself from other dating apps by providing users the facility to directly make calls via VoIP to matches they have approved of. Users are verified through their Facebook profiles and OTP verification.
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VCCIRCLE - Dec 20 - People Group, the owner of online matchmaking site Shaadi.com, has acquired Frivil, a dating app owned by Delhi-based Thrill Pte Ltd. for an undisclosed amount. In January 2015, People Group had acquired 25% stake in the company for $1M and in a related deal, Fropper, owned by People Group, was brought under Thrill. Frivil's product, intellectual property rights and brand will become part of People Group, however the dating app will continue to operate as a separate entity from Shaadi. Frivil's founders Josh Israel and Devin Serago will help to integrate the app into the new parent company, but will not be joining the firm.
by Priya Prasad
See full article at VCCircle
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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ACCESSWIRE - Dec 19 - Snap Interactive, an online video chat and dating provider, has filed the Company's Form 8-K/A related to its previously announced merger with Paltalk, presenting the pro forma combined financials of the post-combination company and the historical financial statements of Paltalk. Pro forma combined revenues for the nine months ended Sep 30, 2016 were $21.8M, as compared to pre-merger Snap for the comparable period of $7.8M. Combined Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA was ($868k) thousand and $33k, respectively, as compared to pre-merger Snap ($2,293k) and ($622k) thousand, respectively, demonstrating improved Adjusted EBITDA profitability.
See full article at Snap Interactive website
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KNOWTECHIE - Dec 20 - A new survey conducted by www.bidvine.com asked 2k British social media and online dating users just how up-to-date their profile pictures were, with surprising results. Dating sites seemed to be the least up-to-date when it came to profile pictures, with POF users keeping the same profile picture for 3.2 years and Match.com users on average waiting 4 years to change their picture.
11% of those polled admitted that the pictures used for their online profiles were taken more than 10 years ago.
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FORBES - Dec 19 - As an MBA student at the University of Chicago, Paktor CEO and co-founder Joseph Phua learned the first-hand benefits of online dating. He returned to Singapore to launch an American-style mobile dating app. The Paktor team soon found that successful tactics used by US and European dating apps didn't translate to Asian societies because of their more conservative dating norms. So Paktor launched Group Chats (providing an environment to facilitate chats within a collective community). The app has now ~15M users, 5B swipes and the largest activity in the region by downloads and usage. They achieved this growth by deeply understanding their local customers and deploying Facebook's Account Kit to enable mobile phone numbers as a universal login.
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THE MOTLEY FOOL - Dec 19 - Match Group CEO, Gregg Blatt, described Tinder as a "rocket." Tinder is now the top grossing "lifestyle" app in 99 countries with~1.5M paid members. Match has made it clear that they are relying on Tinder. Tinder's home US market still has plenty of room to expand. At the time of Match.com's IPO it was stated that Tinder had 50M users. Currently only 3% of these users are paid members, but with paid member count growth rates of 26% in Q3 for the domestic market and 46% internationally, there is plenty of opportunity to monetize the user base. International expansion is high on the agenda for Tinder with the online dating market in Europe and China alone expected to be worth a combined $2.4B by 2021.
by Sarah Priestley
See full article at Madison.com
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NY TIMES - Dec 16 - By day, Mr. Ma was a police officer in China with a wife. By night, he led a life as a gay man, running a website for gays. In 2012, his superiors at a police department uncovered his website and he resigned. He lost his job, his family was struggling to accept his sexuality, so Mr. Ma created Blued, now China's most popular gay dating app with an estimated value of $600M and ~3M active daily users. Blued is only beginning to make a profit; most of its services are free. Attracting advertising remains difficult. The company is trying to increase its revenue by expanding into gay travel and entertainment. The spending power of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China is estimated at $460 billion, making them the largest market in Asia, according to LGBT Capital, an investment-management firm. Mr. Ma has set his sights on foreign markets, hoping to take on Grindr and Hornet but analysts said it would be difficult for the company to build a large following overseas.
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OPW - Dec 18 - For 12 years the Courtland Brooks agency has been dedicated to you, serving up the daily news with Online Personals Watch, keynoting at 40+ iDate conferences, and we've assisted over 100 dating and matchmaking service clients to grow and prosper. For a list of our testimonials please see this link. Need some help? Please email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com. We're here for you.
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
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PINK NEWS - Dec 18 - As part of the cooperation, Blued will be participating in an extension of the funding round to help expand upon the momentum and growth rates Hornet has been experiencing. Hornet raised $8M earlier this year from venture capital fund Ventech China. Hornet, founded in 2011, claims to be "the world's second largest gay social network" with 15M users, and 3M monthly active users.
by Joseph Patrick McCormick
See full article at Pink News
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PR NEWSWIRE - Dec 15 - Starting in January, eHarmony users can now see why they're compatible with a feature called "The Two Of You Together". They will be able to see the matches who score at an advanced level of compatibility and also why. Also anyone will be able to build a basic profile by answering a few quick questions and within ten minutes or less, start receiving matches. Users can then dig deeper on their own time to complete eHarmony's in-depth personality survey but this is no longer necessary to participate.
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OPW - Dec 18 - Did you know, Bryan Cranston the lead actor in Breaking Bad was a videographer for Great Expectations?!
See all posts on Great Expectations
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
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OPW - Dec 17 - I'm quite fascinated with video, but uncomfortable with it. The best way to conquer this fear is to dive right in, so I'm doing a 12 episode weekly video blog so I'm more familiar with video. You can see my silly experiment in vlogging at MarkBrooks.TV. See episode 2 for some thoughts on the idea of Internet dating. Episode 3 is out on Monday.
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
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BLOOMBERG MARKETS - Dec 14 - AshleyMadison.com's owner agreed to pay a steeply discounted $1.65M settlement to resolve state and federal probes into a 2015 hack that exposed personal data of 37M users. The fine was reduced ~90% from $17.5M due to an "inability to pay". Company spokeswoman Debra Quinn declined to comment on why the company can't afford to pay the full settlement, despite reporting more users than it had at the time of the breach.
by Erik Larson
See full article at Bloomberg Markets
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SF CHRONICLE - Dec 14 - The app, created by Sarah Persitz, Stephanie Volftsun and Jordan Klein, was launched in February and is still in beta testing. "Bubby is not about being Jewish," said Persitz. "It's about connecting under that umbrella of Jewish values."
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