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

Match Group Financial Results Out

MATCH GROUP - Aug 4 - Total revenue grew 27% YOY to $708M. Operating income was $210M, up 7% YOY. Adjusted EBITDA was $263M, up 15% YOY. Payers increased 15% to 15M, up from 13M last year. Tinder Direct Revenue grew 26% YOY, driven by 17% Payers growth to 9.6M. All Other Brands collectively grew Direct Revenue 28% YOY. In Q2 Match Group closed the acquisition of Hyperconnect, which brings two new brands into its portfolio - Azar and Hakuna. Combined, these two brands have ~570K Payers with RPP approaching $35 and ~90% of their revenue coming from à la carte. Azar, launched in 2014, enables users to video chat with people around the world, powered by real-time language translations. The user base is predominantly in Asia and growing in Europe. Hakuna, launched in 2019, is an interactive, social live streaming app that enables group video and audio broadcast. For Q3, Match Group expects total revenue of $790M to $805M, representing 23%-26% YOY growth.

See full article at Match Group website

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You've Got a Friend in New Social-Media Apps

WALL STREET JOURNAL - Mar 6 - Dating apps are taking a platonic turn. An analysis by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz showed friend discovery is the fastest-growing category of mobile social apps in the U.S. Citing data from Apptopia, with friendship apps like Itsme, Wink and Yubo being the fastest-growing apps nationwide. Bumble BFF accounted for 9% of its total monthly active users as of Sep 2020. That traffic seems to have come mostly organically. Match Group has also been chasing friendships and other platonic connections. It estimates this market is twice the size of dating. Match Group paid $1.7B in cash and stock for South Korean social-media company Hyperconnect in its biggest acquisition ever. Hyperconnect is already generating profits and did $200M in revenue in 2020, up 50% YOY. Hyperconnect owns two video apps in Azar, which is the highest grossing one-to-one video chat app in the world; and Hakuna, which offers group live video, audio and avatar-based streaming.

by Laura Forman
See full article at Wall Street Journal

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Match Stock Hits High on Hyperconnect Acquisition as Tinder Growth Slows

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY - Feb 10 - Match's stock popped 7.7% to an all-time closing high of 171 on the stock market today. The Hyperconnect acquisition comes just as Match rival Bumble goes public. Hyperconnect garnered $200M in fiscal 2020 from two mobile apps, Azar and Hakuna. Match expects the South Korean company to grow revenues 40% to 50% in 2021. Japan recently became Match's second biggest market, behind the U.S. But Tinder growth has slowed in the U.K., Brazil and India amid the coronavirus pandemic. Match has pivoted to video chatting amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

by Reihardt Krause
See full article at Investor's Business Daily

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Match Group to Acquire Hyperconnect for $1.7B

PR NEWSWIRE - Feb 10 - Match Group is acquiring Hyperconnect for $1.725B in cash and stock. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 2021 pending customary regulatory approvals. Hyperconnect is a leading social discovery and video technology company based in Seoul, South Korea that operates Azar and Hakuna Live. Azar is the highest grossing 1-on-1 live video and audio chat app globally, allowing users to connect with others from around the world, instantly translating voice and text. Since launch in 2014, Azar has tallied 540M downloads. Hakuna Live is an interactive, social live streaming app that enables group video and audio broadcasts with various features including virtual gifting, AR powered avatars, profile enhancements, and communities built around shared interests. Since launch in 2019, Hakuna Live has been downloaded ~23M times with strong momentum in South Korea and Japan. Hyperconnect is profitable and generated ~$200M in revenue in 2020, a 50% increase from 2019.

See full article at PR Newswire

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Korean Startup Azar Once Again in Europe's Top-Grossing Non-Game Apps

KOREATECHDESK - Jan 29 - Korean startup HyperConnect's video-chatting app Azar has once again made it to the list of Europe's top most favored apps and ranked 6th in revenue generation in 2020, according to Sensor Tower (after Tinder, Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, and Google One). Azar was also ranked 4th on Google Play Store. Azar allows users to chat casually with people of similar interests. In 2021, Hyperconnect has entered the North American market with Slide, a video-first dating and social discovery app. Hyperconnect, which has trumpet SoftBank amongst its investors, subsequently launched a live-streaming service dubbed Hakuna Live that had over 10 million downloads in its first year. Combined, revenue during the first half of 2020 came in at 123.5 billion Korean won (US$113.3 million), up 80% year-over-year, while operating profit vaulted 265% to 17.7 billion Korean won (US$16.2 million).

See full article at KoreaTechDesk

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Live Video Chat Apps Get in on Action

ECONOMIC TIMES - July 21 - A new ecosystem of 'Live video chat' apps has silently garnered millions of users. These apps allow users to video-call strangers. Four such apps - Chamet, LivU, WHO, and Azar - are among the top 10 grossing apps on the Play Store in India right now. According to Sensor Tower, leading apps in this category make between $200K and $300K a month in revenue from India via in-app purchases. A lot of user reviews for these apps on Google Play Store allege that they send racy messages through in-built chatbots or showcase fake profiles to lure users. Some even urge Google to look into these apps to check for malpractice.

by Sanghamitra Kar & Shephali Bhatt
See full article at Economic Times

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China's Tinder - Tantan - Is Rising in India

QUARTZ - May 9 - Tantan, China's favourite dating app, is now the fifth-most popular in India by combined monthly active users on iOS and Android phones, according to App Annie. In May 2018, Tantan did not feature among the top 10, but zoomed to the 4th position by July. It has since slid one spot following the launch of Bumble in December.

Top dating apps in India
(as on May 2018)    (as on March 2019)
1. Tinder                 1. Tinder
2. Happn                 2. Happn
3. Azar                    3. Azar
4. Badoo                 4. Bumble
5. OkCupid              5. Tantan

Tantan translates in Mandarin to "talk." Launched in 2014, the app bears a high resemblance to Tinder, and was acquired by the Chinese social network Momo in February 2018. Tantan has ~90M registered users in China. The dating app has been advertising aggressively on TikTok.

by Kuwar Singh
See full article at Quartz

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Online Dating In South Korea

KOREA HERALD - Aug 17 - The value of the domestic online dating industry in South Korea is now estimated at 70B won ($62M), according to a 2017 study released by Hongik University in Seoul. As of July, ~920K Koreans were seeking to find romantic partners through mobile dating apps, of which 81% were men and 62% were in their 20s or 30s, according to market research firm Nielsen Korea. More recently, Azar has emerged as the dating app preferred by the younger crowd, coming in No. 3 on the app store chart. Even though it is described as a mobile messaging app, it is also considered a dating app for Korean users since its main feature allows for meeting random people via video chat. Tinder made its debut in the Korean market in 2015. While online dating apps are popular, KakaoTalk, the country's most popular mobile messenger with some 40M users, is the prime battlefield of love.

by Catherine Chung
See full article at Korea Herald

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Summarized by the IDEA team