THE PLUNGE DAILY - May 25 - Aisle, India's second most downloaded dating app, has introduced "Settle Down" feature, which allows users to display their plans of settling down by giving them options about whether they wish to settle in one year or two. With Settle Down users get better clarity and don't have to second guess the intentions of people they are connecting with.
PRESS RELEASE - May 24 - Dating Group, the parent company of Dating.com, DateMyAge, XOXO, Tubit, ChinaLove, and DilMil, has completed the acquisition of DilMil and plans a major expansion of its operations within India. In 2020, Dating Group signed the terms of the acquisition with DilMil investors and its founder, KJ Dhaliwal. Upon completion of the acquisition, Mr. Dhaliwal joined Dating Group and was appointed Chief Strategy Officer. Since the acquisition a little more than a year ago, DilMil has seen a 50% growth and a 38% increase in active users.
ABC7 NEWS - May 24 - In-person dating came mostly to a halt during the pandemic. Now that things are opening up, many people are still taking things slow. OkCupid says there was a 680% jump in the use of the term "vaccinated" in user profiles in April compared to February. Four in 10 daters say they'd cancel a date with someone who didn't want to get the COVID vaccine. In a partnership with the White House to encourage vaccines, dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish announced they will create virtual vaccination status badges. Some apps will also let users filter out potential matches based on vaccination status. Hinge says more than half its users say they plan on going on more in-person dates after getting their shots.
BUSINESSWIRE - ParshipMeet Group, a leading provider of interactive dating solutions, will provide livestreaming video to MocoSpace, a social gaming and chat app through its Live video Platform as a Service (vPaaS) product. ParshipMeetâs vPaaS solution powers Live video for some of the world's largest livestreaming video dating apps. MocoSpace is the largest mobile chat and gaming community in North America, with ~100M registered users.
JAPAN TIMES - May 22 - Japanese dating app operator Net Marketing said personal data of 1.71M users, including names and photos, was likely leaked due to unauthorized access to its server. The operator of the Omiai dating app said data collected between January 2018 and last month might have been stolen. The data included addresses and dates of birth from identification, including passports, drivers' licenses and health insurance cards, provided to the company. As of last September, the company had ~5M subscribers.
YOUR TANGO - May 22 - The increasingly popular Bumble BFFs has become a surprisingly active place for men to seek out friendships. The launch of the BFFs service spiked male engagement on the app by 83%, in comparison to 43% for women. The app was originally made by women, for women, with CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd establishing the service to give women more control over their dating lives. Studies show that men lack friendships in general. A 2016 UK survey found that one in ten men couldn't recall the last time they made contact with their friends. Over half of the men reported having two or fewer friends they would discuss "a serious topic" with, and 19% of men over 55 said they lacked a close friend.
THE JERUSALEM POST - May 22 - Heyoosh, a new Israeli dating app, hopes to bring dating back offline by placing a focus on in-person encounters while protecting users' privacy. Heyoosh lets users input where and when they met someone they clicked with. If the other person also has Heyoosh and puts in the same info, the system will show their picture to both people searching and ask if this is the person they're looking for. If both people say yes, a secure chatroom will open for 24 hours.
LTR - May 24 - The GDP per capita in the DAX region is about 80% that of the US, with Switzerland standing out at over 30% higher than the US. According to Henning Wiechers, CEO of Metaflake, the German economy is lagging from a technology perspective, but still represents the largest dating market in Europe with $250m in online and mobile dating revenue. The largest growth segments are gay dating and singles over 50. In recent years, the German dating market has consolidated around matchmaking. The momentum came from the formation of the Parship Elite Group and its acquisition of eHarmony. Spark Networks and Insparx are the other major online matchmaking companies in Germany. Henning Wiechers provides his analysis of the DAX online dating market in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
PR NEWSWIRE - May 21 - Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, BLK, Chispa will give vaccinated U.S. users dating "Boosts". U.S. users will get vaccination badges to display on their profiles, as well as free "Super Likes" and other boost-type features. The campaigns will launch in the coming weeks and run until July 4th.
THE GUARDIAN - May 21 - Justin McLeod, CEO of Hinge, talks about its massive rise in users, his difficult romantic past, and why people are now ditching their partners and looking for someone new. The pandemic has had a big impact on the dating landscape, he says. People switched to video dating, for a start. It was moving that way anyway, he says, but the "pandemic accelerated it". "There have also been reports of people being in 'quarantine relationships', where it was good enough for the lockdown, but not the person [they were] really looking to be with. And so those relationships are starting to end."
MASHABLE - May 21 - At the Snap Partner Summit Thursday, Snap announced a new partnership with Bumble. The dating app is bringing the Snapchat camera to video calls and video messages, so users can access AR lenses directly in Bumble. Bumble is also adding video messages, which users can now send with lenses like hearts or effects like fox ears.
PR NEWSWIRE - May 20 - Mr. Zhiyong (Ben) Li is resigning from his position as the Company's CFO due to personal reasons, effective May 20, 2021. Mr. Li will serve as the Company's financial advisor for the next six months. Mr. Junchen Sun, the Company's Vice President, Finance, will assume the role of acting CFO.
SEEKING ALPHA - May 21 - Soulgate, the Tencent-backed operator of a social networking app, is planning a $100M Nasdaq listing. Soulgate's monthly active user base roughly doubled to 33.2M in March from a year earlier, with 9.1M daily active users. Soulgate's rapid growth has come at a high price. In the last quarter, the money-losing company spent 471M yuan ($71.9M) on sales and marketing, or nearly double its total revenue of 238M yuan. Aimed at Generation Z, Soulgate displays neither images nor real names of its users. Users take a personality test when they sign up.
MASHABLE - May 20 - "Are You Sure?" or AYS? is a real-time warning that utilizes AI to detect inappropriate language. The machine learning was based on what members have reported in the past and, according to Tinder, will evolve and improve over time. When a user types a message that the AI flags, the AYS? prompt pops up. It notes that what they're saying may offend their match, and asks them to pause before sending. In early testing, AYS? reduced harmful language in sent messages by 10%. Tinder also reported that since Does This Bother You? launched, reports of inappropriate messages increased 46%.
SKY NEWS - May 20 - Put 'arranged marriage UK' into Google search, and one of the first things to pop up is the UK government's guidelines concerning forced marriages which explain they are illegal. Dr Aisha K. Gill, a professor of criminology and an expert on forced marriage explained: "An arranged marriage is a marriage which is based on choice and consent, and that's absolutely key in understanding it. An arranged marriage is when someone else such as a family member, a matchmaker, even apps, helps you find a person to marry."