OPW - Feb 4 - Match Group's new CEO, Andrey Andreev moves on, US Inquiry Over Underage Use, Tinder & GDPR, Grindr hit with a class-action lawsuit.
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FINANCIAL TIMES - Jan 31 - Blackstone's all-cash acquisition of Mr Andreev's stake in MagicLab (Badoo, Bumble) closed this week, valuing the group at around $3bn. Mr Andreev (45) said. "It's given me ability, time and money . . . I don't want to retire." He said that one idea is focused on charity and donations - something he wants to make "more accessible . . . the same as what I did with dating". MagicLab is now led by Whitney Wolfe Herd. Andreev founded Badoo (now 425m+ users) in 2006 as a hybrid of social networking and dating and pioneered the "freemium" business model. A non-compete agreement with Magic Lab means that Mr Andreev will no longer be in the dating business. Twenty former Magic Lab staff have joined him in a new venture, based in Mayfair, that will retain Mr Andreev's longstanding focus on mobile apps and social networking. He plans to hire more soon.
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FORTUNE - Jan 30 - MagicLab, the parent company of Bumble and Badoo, should reform its workplace policies following allegations of sexual harassment, a U.K. law firm has found. MagicLab hired Doyle Clayton, a British firm specializing in employment law, to investigate allegations of a misogynistic and hostile work environment for women raised in a July Forbes story. In its statement, Doyle Clayton said there was "a lack of credible evidence in relation to most" of 24 specific allegations Forbes raised in its story, including "the more serious ones." It did, however, find there was evidence to support three allegations, which it described as "minor".
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MIRROR.CO.UK - Jan 7 - Badoo was the first dating app to test video feature in 2016, which can only be activated once both parties have matched and exchanged one message. The call happens through the app so there's no need to share any personal details like a phone number. Tristan Pineiro, head of communications, claims that the chances of a real life date being a success are higher if you've had a video call before.
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SENSOR TOWER - Dec 16 - The top grossing dating app worldwide for Nov 2019 was Tinder with ~$82M in user spending, which is up 12% YOY. 41% of Tinder's revenue was from the US, followed by 8% from UK and 4% from Germany. Bumble was #2 with ~$18M in gross revenue, up 29% YOY. 77% of Bumble's revenue was from the U.S., followed by 9% from UK. The next top grossing app was Badoo, followed by Pairs and Tantan.
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SENSORTOWER - Nov 13 - The top grossing dating app worldwide for Oct 2019 was Tinder with ~$88.7M in user spending, which represented 18% growth from Oct 2018. ~43% of Tinder's revenue was from the U.S., followed by 7% from UK and 5% from Australia. Bumble was #2 with ~$20M in gross revenue, which represented 44% growth YOY. 77% of Bumble's revenue was from the U.S., followed by 9% from UK. The next top grossing app was Tantan, followed by Pairs and Badoo.
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OPW - Nov 12 - Match Results, Magic Lab Acquisition, The Meet Group, Facebook & Tinder whitelisting.
For the top weekly dating industry news in ~2 minutes subscribe to OPW's Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker, Google podcasts, Spotify, Anchor or Stitcher.
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TECH CRUNCH - Nov 9 - Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo, is selling his entire stake in MagicLab, the company that owned both Bumble and Badoo (and other dating apps), to Blackstone, which is one of the world's leading investment firms. He will step away from the business in the process, and Wolfe Herd, Bumble's founder, becomes the CEO of the whole company, retaining much of her stake in the business. That stake is at ~19%. The deal values MagicLab at $3B. Blackstone also will be making an investment in the company as part of the deal.
by Ingrid Lunden
See full article at Tech Crunch
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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
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FORBES - Nov 8 - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered entering the online dating business as far back as 2014, but he put the idea on the back burner, instead giving Tinder special access to its users' data, leaked emails between top executives show. The leaked correspondence is part of an ongoing lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, a now-defunct app developer that sued Facebook in 2015 for restricting user data access, alleging the actions were uncompetitive. The correspondence shows how perilously close Tinder came to losing key access to Facebook user information that helped Tinder grow rapidly in its early years, when members often used their Facebook logins to access the app. When Facebook further restricted the kind of information third-party apps could access after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March 2018, Tinder's app crashed. Tinder was on Facebook's radar in 2013. Zuckerberg wrote in January 2014 to two executives: "Tinder's growth is especially alarming to me because their product is built completely on Facebook data, and it's much better than anything we've built for recommendations using the same corpus." In 2014, Facebook announced it would start preventing third-party app developers from having access to data on users' friends, including birth dates, photos and pages they liked. The company gave a May 2015 deadline for developers to comply with its new set of access rules. However, Zuckerberg made some companies and apps an exception. Tinder was one. Facebook agreed to give Tinder a special data-sharing agreement, internally known as "whitelists," if the dating app shared trademark rights on "MOMENTS." which was the planned name for a photo app that Facebook wanted to launch, an email exchange in March 2015 showed. When asked about this agreement in 2018, a spokeswoman for Tinder said: "Tinder never received special treatment, data or access related to this dispute or its resolution." Other dating apps that had whitelist agreements with Facebook include Bumble, Badoo, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge and jSwipe.
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TECHERATI - Oct 21 - Dominic Gallello is the CMO at Badoo. In this interview for ad:tech London, Dominic talks about Badoo's support of the LGBTQ+ community, the male mental health crisis, whether we can use technology to facilitate change.
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INDEPENDENT.CO.UK - Oct 17 - Melanie Brown, aka Mel B, has ventured into the podcasting world with a new series "The Truth Flirts", created by dating app Badoo. Each week, Mel B will be joined by a panel of celebrity guests to discuss the highs and lows of dating. Guests reveal their truthful opinions on topics from ghosting to gold diggers, politics to parenthood. Mel B revealed that she isn't on dating apps herself but finds the concept "fascinating".
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THE SCOTTISH SUN - Oct 8 - A woman who was branded fat on a Tinder date gone wrong is starring in a rival app Badoo's new online dating show - Badoo Dating SOS. Jade Savage, 28, spent four hours travelling to see a man she had met online but he insulted her as she walked out of the train station. The creep told curvy size-14 Jade she had "put some weight on" and accused her of looking nothing like she had on a previous date - just four weeks earlier. Jade managed to raise £1K on a GoFundMe page, which she set up as a joke, to get her wasted £93 that she spent going on her date. The Badoo online show sees Jade go on two dates with men that the dating app experts have chosen for her.
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TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - Oct 6 - Bumble CEO & founder Whitney Wolfe Herd enjoyed a £4M dividend ahead of a possible float for the firm's parent company. Badoo is the UK-headquartered majority owner of Bumble, which also controls gay dating app Chappy and over 50s app Lumen. Wolfe Herd owns ~20% of Bumble. According to UK accounts for Badoo, Bumble now makes up 48% of the business, making it the crown jewel in Mr Andreev's dating empire. Andreev snapped up a 79%c stake in Bumble and has bankrolled founder Ms Wolfe Herd, creating a rival to Tinder. Badoo has been rumoured to be preparing for a US listing itself, with its Bumble asset valued on its own at north of $1B.
by Matthew Field
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk
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REPUBLIC WORLD - Oct 6 - Tinder was the most downloaded app in the online dating category during September 2019, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Tinder had close to 5.5M installs in September, resulting in a total of 4% increase from the same period last year. Badoo was the second most installed dating app worldwide. Tantan, MeetMe, and Happn rounded out the top five most installed dating apps worldwide for the month. Here is the full list of top 10 dating apps.
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BANGKOKPOST - Aug 19 - In Thailand, Badoo was once the most downloaded dating app, but has been overtaken by Tinder. To Tinder, this is a surprising achievement because Asia was not their target market when the app was introduced in 2012. Seeing the high demand in Asia, Tinder is now working on building a new version of the app called "Tinder Lite". Tinder Lite will be 25% faster while consuming 20% less battery on devices and it will take up 25-times less storage space on Android device. Match Group believes Asia will comprise 25% of Tinder's total revenue by 2023.
by Sopheavuthtey Borin
See full article at Bangkok Post
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MEDIA POST - Aug 8 - Emogi, a tech company that creates visual content for messaging apps, is rebranding to Holler and announcing an integration with dating app Badoo. In a pilot test, Badoo found users were engaging more with one another when they were sending GIFs and stickers.
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OPW - July 16 - Ten years ago I tried an experiment doing video news updates from locations like Prague and Venice. They were a lot of work, and and way too long really. I think 2-3 minutes is about all the time you have, so here's a new experiment. Two Minute Tuesday News Updates. Please let me know your thoughts.
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BUSINESS INSIDER - July 10 - Badoo founder, Andrey Andreev, is launching an independent investigation into his workplace culture after an explosive report by Forbes. Forbes spoke to 13 former employees who described naked cocaine-fueled parties, software updates named after porn stars, and inappropriate remarks made by Andreev. Andreev said he has was "shocked and saddened" by the allegations and has brought in HR firm Peninsula Group to conduct an investigation.
by Isobel Asher Hamilton
See full article at Business Insider
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TECH CRUNCH - July 10 - Following an extensive report in Forbes about Bumble's parent company and its billionaire founder Andrey Andreev, the female-first dating app's founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has issued a statement. She says she was "mortified by the allegations" and "saddened and sickened to hear that anyone, of any gender, would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace." The allegations went beyond portraying a sexist work environment and detailed racist attitudes of the Badoo founder.
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FORBES - July 7 - Andrey Andreev's biggest asset is Badoo, a European- and Latin American-focused dating app that, with 60M users, stands as one of the world's largest. His buzziest, however, is Bumble, the dating app focused on empowering women. Andrey launched his first dating company - Mamba - in 2004. It was a bare-bones desktop dating site for Russian users. Finam Holdings invested $20M in Mamba for a 90% stake; Andreev sold the rest to Finam in 2006 for an undisclosed amount. Building off the success of Mamba, Andreev launched Badoo in 2006. In 2010, Badoo launched its iPhone mobile app. The company went from 20M user sign-ups to 100M in four months, mostly in Europe and Latin America, and notched $200M in revenue. (Forbes estimates that last year Badoo had a bit over $300M in revenue.) Simultaneous with this growth, Badoo began earning a reputation for wild parties. More concerning, several former employees say office behavior was hostile and discriminatory toward women. Andreev maintains that he is a collaborator and unifier, not racist or sexist as others allege. Wolfe Herd, who spent Bumble's formative period walking around London with Andreev for days, says she has never witnessed toxic behavior in the Badoo headquarters. And she stands firmly behind Andreev. "What I've seen firsthand from Andrey is creative and motivating behavior. Andrey has never been anything but kind and respectful to me."
by Angel Au-Yeung
See full article at Forbes
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