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

Grindr Is the Dating App That Drains the Most Battery From a Mobile

GAY TIMES - Mar 30 - Uswitch has analysed the 50 most popular apps on major app stores and looked at how many battery-draining permissions an app used, and when it came to dating apps Grindr came out on top. Grindr had 28 battery-draining permissions, it was followed by Bumble which has 20, Tinder which has 18 and Hinge which has 13. Google has 72 battery-draining permissions, Facebook 50 and Facebook Messenger 46.

by Matt Moore
See full article at Gay Times

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Quarantine Together Is a Dating App for These Times

CNN - Mar 29 - Daniel Ahmadizadeh and Christopher Smeder designed Quarantine Together, a dating app for exactly this moment. The app launched on March 8. The app is text-based. Every day at 6PM, the app asks its registered users whether they washed their hands. If they say yes, they are introduced to another user by text. After 15 minutes, the matched users will be offered a link to video chat.

by Aditi Sangal
See full article at CNN

Mark Owen, Events & Adventures - Radio Interview

KRTY - Mark Owen, founder of Events & Adventures, talks about how social distancing is impacting dating and how Events & Adventures has adapted to this change to help singles stay connected during this difficult time. Events & Adventures is a social club for singles with year-round activities for singles including new virtual events, local events, exciting adventures, and world travel.

See the top news on Events & Adventures

Tinder Most Used Dating App Now

FORBES - Mar 29 - The 2020 SKYN Condoms Sex & Intimacy Survey was not designed to examine the current or post-COVID-19 world. Its data gathering and results just happened to take place while the global pandemic was getting its boots on and heading out from Wuhan. According to Skyn, 39% of respondents used Tinder over its rivals to find love. Generation Z folks said they were more likely than Millennials to use Tinder (48% to 36%). #2 was Match.com (33%) and #3 Bumble (19%).

by John Scott Lewinski
See full article at Forbes

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The Meet Group CEO: Video Dating Is up During COVID-19

KYW NEWS RADIO - Mar 28 - Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group says video dating has risen dramatically on all of his company's dating apps since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. On KYW In Depth, Cook talked about the dating changes people have made in response to social distancing and how COVID-19 could result in far reaching changes to dating culture.

See the top news on The Meet Group 

LGBT+ People Warned off Casual Sex

REUTERS - Mar 28 - According to Sensor Tower, Grindr downloads fell 19% in Spain and 8% in Italy. Gay app Scruff saw a drop of 7% and 10% week-on-week for Spain and Italy. But although the dating apps were down in terms of new users, operators reported higher usage by those on the site. Lesbian app HER had seen "a pretty heavy spike in usage". Over the weekend of March 14-15, HER reported its highest day of the year for "likes" on posts, with the overall number of likes rising by 16% over the weekend.

by Hugo Greenhalgh
See full article at Reuters

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Grindr Sale Finalized for ~$608.5 Million

QUEERTY - Mar 28 - The move came just four years after Kunlun bought the app from its original creator, Joel Simkhai. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S, a government watchdog group, ordered Kunlun to sell off a majority stake in the company last year. One of the new investors is James Lu, a Chinese tech mogul. A company called San Vicente Acquisition Partners was set up to make the purchase and allow the buyers to stay anonymous.

by Dan Tracer
See full article at Queerty

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com

Global Dating Insights Conference Updates

OPW - Mar 29 - The GDI Conference in NYC was a success, with ~60 attendees. Sadly, naturally, because of coronavirus the Singapore (12th May) and Los Angeles (11th June) conferences are postponed. However, Dominic and Simon are confident the London GDI show will still go ahead on 1st October. Google, Spectrum Labs, and Besedo are kindly sponsoring the GDI London show.

IDEA SUMMIT in Singapore and L.A. were in the works for the day before the GDI conferences and are similarly postponed.

In the mean time, we just uploaded these segments from my 'state-of-the-industry' from the last GDI London show. Top Dating Sites (1 min 6), User Growth (1 min 23), Gender Distribution (1 min), The Rise of Match Group (41s), Facebook Dating Threat (2 mins 44), Full Presentation (14 mins).

AdultFriendFinder Will Stream Weddings so People Don't Have to Postpone During Pandemic

NEWSWEEK - Mar 27 - Weddings, along with concerts, parades and other events, are postponed because of coronavirus. AdultFriendFinder is offering to stream weddings for free on its website and gives engaged couples the opportunity to exchange nuptials in front of their family, friends and loved ones while still social distancing. CEO Jon Buckheit said "There's been a big increase in video chat and video streaming, and that's something that we've always offered on the site. So we have the technology to do it, and we thought that we should offer [to stream weddings] at no charge to people who want to use our site for that purpose at this time" in private, password-protected channels, or with the world in a public channel.

by James Crowley
See full article at Newsweek

ProSieben Shares Rally After CEO Conze's Departure

REUTERS - Mar 27 - Shares in ProSiebenSat.1 Media rallied by 9% on Friday after the departure of CEO Max Conze. ProSieben announced that Conze was leaving with immediate effect and CFO Rainer Beaujean would assume his responsibilities. Conze had sought to accelerate a pivot to digital commerce and advertising to offset a relentless decline in ProSieben's core commercial TV franchise, but while this preserved top-line growth it squeezed profitability and pushed up debt. The recent announcement of the $500M takeover of The Meet Group incurred the disapproval of Italian broadcaster Mediaset, which took advantage of a precipitous decline in ProSieben's share price to up its stake to 20%. Mediaset wanted ProSieben to change course and concentrate on its core media business. Analysts at Citi said it was possible that Mediaset could partner with Czech investor Daniel Kretinsky, who owns a 10% stake in ProSieben, to make a takeover bid.

See full article at New York Times

See the top news on The Meet Group 

Dating Apps Adapt and Engage to Combat Isolation

MARKETING MAGAZINE - Mar 27 - Singapore-based dating agency Paktor Group has seen a 28% increase in its installation rates in Singapore as compared to the previous year. There was also a 17% increase in app engagement during this period, with users logging into the app more frequently throughout the day. Meanwhile, Tinder has also seen an increase in its app engagement since mid-March. Its in-app conversation length saw an increase of 10% to 30% in Southeast Asia and Europe markets, as compared to February. Globally it has also seen daily messages increase by 10% to 15% in the United States, and an increase of up to 25% in daily conversation in Italy and Spain. On the other hand, Coffee Meets Bagel's founder and CEO, Dawoon Kang, said it saw an initial dip in its new user signups from mid to end February in Singapore, which recovered in March.

by Grace Ong
See full article at Marketing Magazine

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US iPhone App Store Spending Per User Doubled Between 2016 and 2019

APPLE INSIDER - Mar 26 - iPhone owners increased their App Store spending to an average of $100 per person in 2019, up 27% from 2018. This number comes from premium app purchases and in-app purchases, not including sales of goods like products from Amazon, or Uber rides. Subscriptions made up $3.6B of revenue from the top 100 subscription apps alone.

by Wesley Hilliard
See full article at Apple Insider

Bumble Is Giving Away £5,000 Grants to 150 Small Businesses in Need

STANDARD.CO.UK - Mar 27 - As the UK goes into lockdown, with only 'essential' services allowed to remain open, small businesses are taking a hard hit. Bumble is asking its users to nominate local small businesses in need. Bumble has decided to give 150 grants of up to £5K to small businesses. Grants will be awarded across the world. Bumble says it will 'prioritise businesses led by women and non-binary founders'.

by Laura Hampson
See full article at Standard.co.uk

See the top news on Bumble

Swiping Right on Match Now

SEEKING ALPHA - Mar 24 - People are forced to date online now, especially since they're cooped up in their houses, and this is going to benefit Match in the short term. Over the long run, Match has many growth catalysts like international markets or its other apps that should allow it to continue expanding revenue and margins. Match Group has always been too expensive over the past few months, trading at close to a 50x PE despite just modest growth. Well, now the company has fallen substantially from highs and is trading at just over 30x PE, making it much more attractive to buy. Data shows that Tinder downloads have increased by 13% in the US over the past week, but most other dating apps saw a decline in downloads worldwide. Perhaps people default to downloading Tinder as it is the most popular dating app.

See full article at Seeking Alpha

See the top news on Match Group

How Coronavirus Is Transforming Online Dating

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW - Mar 25 - Dating apps have struggled; after all, the whole point of dating is to physically meet someone. Match has seen stocks tumble 25%, and had to balance public health with mission statements. "Tinder understands that our members are oftentimes meeting new people in-person, and, given the current environment, we wanted to remind them of the precautions they should take," the company said in a press release, citing the World Health Organization. The firm is now rolling out a feature that lets users match with people outside their immediate geographical area. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of dating app Bumble, was far more explicit in a public letter: "Please date virtually for now." One way to do it is by reinventing the speed date. Dawoon Kang, cofounder of Coffee Meets Bagel, says the app has begun hosting virtual meetups for 10 to 15 members at a time, consisting of a video call moderated by a company representative. A participant who is interested in another can email the representative; if two people feel sparks, the representative connects them.

by Tanya Basu
See full article at MIT Technology Review

See the top news on Tinder                           See the top news on Match Group
See the top news on Coffee Meets Bagel       See the top news on Bumble