PR NEWSWIRE - Vaccines are giving people the confidence to go out and start meeting new people again. "The rate at which members are subscribing to sites across our network has risen by a third since Q2 this year, when the vaccination programme started," says Ross Williams, CEO of Venntro Media Group. Launched in 2003, Venntro.com is the company behind dating software provider, WhiteLabelDating.com. Empowering brands, marketers and affiliates to run their own online dating sites, White Label Dating provides the dating software, payment processing, customer support and more.
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WhiteLabelDating.com Has Reported a 30% Increase in Paying Users Since March
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Dating App Swoovy Raised $1.2M
AUSTIN BUSINESS JOURNAL - Austin-based dating app Swoovy has raised $1.2M seed round. Swoovy, co-founded by Brooke Waupsh and Jeff McMahon in 2018, is turning dates into volunteer opportunities. Like Tinder or Bumble, Swoovy matches users who mutually swipe on each other. After matching, the couple can choose a volunteer event with a local nonprofit.
See full article at Austin Business Journal
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
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OkCupid Introduces Feature in Support of Abortion Rights
NEW YORK TIMES - OkCupid has introduced a way for users to clearly indicate their support of abortion rights: a "pro-choice" badge that appears prominently in a dating profile. The feature was created in response to the passage of Senate Bill 8, which has made abortion illegal in Texas. For every profile that adds the badge, OkCupid will donate $1 to Planned Parenthood. In recent years, OkCupid has offered users different badges to signal their stance on various political issues, including a "Black Lives Matter" badge and a "Voter" badge. In May, the company added an "I'm Vaccinated" badge.
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Chinese Province Tries Speed Dating to Retain Graduates
THE WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS - A Chinese province is seeking to encourage students to stay local after graduating by offering to help them find a spouse. Anhui's "marriage assistance project" will include speed-dating events for university-leavers designed to "increase the successful rate of marriage matching", according to an announcement by the province. The province also plans to publish magazines on love, marriage and family, run a digital dating platform on WeChat and form a network of volunteers according to local media.
by Jing Lu
See full article at The World University Rankings
Mark Brooks: Marriage rates and birth rates are falling. I think we'll see more instances of Government interventions to spur on dating and matchmaking initiatives in the future. For example, Singapore have taken an active interesting in encouraging matchmaking businesses in the past. Iran has Hamdam, a state approved dating app. (See July 2021 news).
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Tinder Is Rolling out Videos in Profiles to European Users
GRATIS DATING TIPS - Tinder now allows users to add videos to their profiles. This feature is currently being rolled out in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
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Match Group Hopes for Savings From Looser App-Store Payment Rules
WALL STREET JOURNAL - In-app fees are Match's biggest expense, said CFO Gary Swidler. A federal judge in California last week ruled that Apple can't block app developers from sending their users outside its app store to pay. The case was brought by videogame company Epic Games. Separately, lawmakers in South Korea last month passed legislation that requires Apple and Google to open their app stores to alternative payment methods. An Apple spokesperson said the company is reviewing the California court ruling. Regarding the new law in South Korea, Apple said it believes the measure could undermine users' privacy protections, among other effects. "We believe user trust in App Store purchases will decrease as a result of this legislation," the company said. By offering a 10% discount on subscriptions, Match might be able to persuade about a third of its Apple users to pay directly, providing the company with an additional $80M in gross profit, predicts Jake Fuller, an analyst at investment firm BTIG.
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Denmark Wants to Ban Life Sentence Prisoners From Online Dating
THE LOCAL - Convicted criminals serving life sentences should be restricted from coming into contact with the outside world by using social media to discuss their crimes publicly, said Denmark's Ministry of Justice. That would effectively ban them from activities such as featuring on podcasts or writing about their crimes on social media. Current rules enable prison inmates serving life to write to, call and receive visits from people with whom they have established contact during their sentences. The bill, which would need parliamentary backing to become law, could come into effect on January 1st 2022.
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Gay Dating Apps Join Health Experts to Fight Hate Speech and Racism
PRESS RELEASE - Building Healthy Online Communities, a consortium of HIV and STD prevention organizations, has released a report with the results of its "NiceAF" campaign's research to combat online hate speech and racism. The report contains recommendations for apps and sites to take, based on input from ~5.5K users. BHOC worked with Adam4Adam, Daddyhunt, dudesnude, Grindr, GROWLr, Jack'd, Manhunt, SCRUFF, and POZ Personals to recruit its users to share their ideas. BHOC asked users to suggest and then rate a number of steps that apps should take to reduce discrimination and hate speech. The full report is available at NiceAF.org.
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FTC Warns of Extortionists Targeting LGBTQ+ Community on Dating Apps
BLEEPING COMPUTER - The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warns of scammers targeting the LGBTQ+ community via apps such as Grindr and Feeld. Fraudsters pose as potential romantic partners on LGBTQ+ dating apps, sending explicit photos and asking their targets to reciprocate. Victims are blackmailed to pay a ransom, usually in gift cards, under the threat of leaking the imagery. To make threats more credible scammers will state the names of exactly who they plan to contact (found online by using a phone number or social media profile) if victims don't pay up. The FTC advises LGBTQ+ dating apps users to avoid sharing explicit photos. Online dating platforms including Grindr and Feeld have also warned their users.
This warning comes after a similar one issued by the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) who has seen a massive increase in sextortion complaints since January 2021, leading to financial losses of over $8 million until the end of July. It received 16k+ sextortion complaints thru July 31, almost half of them from victims age 20-39. Victims should contact law enforcement, and file a complaint with the FBI IC3 immediately at www.ic3.gov.
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Byte of Life: the Economics of Tinder
DAILY TROJAN - Tinder is the undisputed leader of the dating app ecosystem. The app found its place during the 2010s tech startup boom because of its quirky yet simple matchmaking system and its swipe feature. Tinder's algorithm utilized an "Elo score," which assigns a number to each user based on the self-learning algorithm's perceived beauty of them. In 2019, Tinder announced that it updated its algorithm. Scrapping the Elo score for a less competitive system, their new algorithm supposedly matched users based on similar swiping histories and common user profiles. It eliminates great matches that probably would have occurred if the Tinder algorithm wasn't used in the first place. While Tinder's revenue and user base grow each year, Tinder is not the future of dating. This is because algorithms are fundamentally opposite in nature to one of the most important factors in human relationships: unpredictability!
by Miguel Mercado
See full article at Daily Trojan
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46% Single Indians Looking for Committed, Serious Relationship: Bumble Survey
EVERYTHING EXPERIENTIAL - Bumble has revealed that one in two (46%) single Indians are looking for a committed, serious relationship in 2021, post the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. "One in five people are looking to get married. More than one in three (33%) are feeling hopeful about dating right now as lockdown restrictions lift across India. Meanwhile, 33% of single Indians are using video dates to really get to know each other better before meeting IRL," the survey said.
by Abhishek Sharma
See full article at Everything Experiential
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White Label Dating Partners With Fonix to Enable Phone-based Carrier Billing
PRESS RELEASE - Dating SaaS platform, WhiteLabelDating.com, has partnered with Fonix to facilitate carrier billing for online dating subscriptions. The Fonix Carrier Billing platform enables White Label Dating to charge subscriptions to a member's mobile phone bill.
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Investors See Big Potential in Smaller Online Dating Companies
WALL STREET JOURNAL - Since Jan '19, App Annie data show U.S. users have spent 7.4M hours on dating apps a month on Android phones alone. Match Group and Bumble collectively boast ~$50B in fully diluted market value, but plenty of businesses are trying. Coffee Meets Bagel, which hits users with algorithmically curated matches every day at noon, has made ~130M matches since its launch in 2012. Hily, which works to make it easier to start conversations, has 22M users. Snack, which is focused on video-first dating, was the 10th most-downloaded dating app in the U.S. last month, according to App Annie. Some just need a larger platform to help them take off. Hinge, in which Match took a majority stake in 2018 before acquiring it in 2019, saw ~100K U.S. downloads in Jan '18. By Mar '21, it was closer to 600K. Berlin-based Spark Networks did $233M in revenue last year. And then there is eHarmony owner ParshipMeet, which is preparing for a 2022 IPO. In the Q2 it had €139M ($164.2M) in revenue.
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