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

Dating Apps Turn to AI to Help Users Find Love

AGENCE PRESSE-FRANCE - Nov 9 - The online dating sector is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help arrange meetings in real life and act as a dating coach. These new uses for AI - the science of programming computers to reproduce human processes like thinking and decision making - by dating apps were highlighted at Web Summit in Lisbon. eHarmony is developing an AI-enabled feature which would nudge users to suggest meeting in person after they have been chatting in the app for a while. "There is a lot of activity on dating apps but by and large there is not a lot of dates," said eHarmony CEO Grant Langston. "Guys don't know how to ask. It's astounding really how many people need help and we think we can do that in an automated way." British dating app Loveflutter plans to use AI to analyse chats between its users to determine their compatibility and suggest when they should meet. "We will ping a message saying 'You are getting along really well, why don't you go on your first date'," said Loveflutter co-founder Daigo Smith. Tinder founder Sean Rad said AI would "create better user experiences" and predicted iPhone's Siri voice assistant would in the future act as a matchmaker. An entirely voice-operated dating app called AIMM which uses AI to mirror a human matchmaking service is already being tested in Denver where it has ~1K users. Badoo is now using AI and facial recognition technology to let users find a match that looks like anyone at all, including their ex or a celebrity crush.

See full article at The National

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Badoo Is Facing An Investigation By HMRC Over Its Corporate Tax Bill

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK - Nov 7 - Badoo, part of the matchmaking empire controlled by Russian tycoon Andrey Andreev, is under investigation for its tax payments for the years 2013 to 2016. The news comes as Mr Andreev, 44, whose fortune has been estimated at over £1B, talks up plans to take the company public in a New York listing which could value it at several billion dollars. Badoo is structured with more than a dozen subsidiaries as well as other investments. Its parent company is listed as World Vision, a company incorporated in Bermuda, which in turn is controlled by Rimburg International, a company domiciled in the British Virgin Islands. A separate entity, Badoo Limited, also said it was under investigation. The company reported turnover of £144M for the year ending December 2017, up from £107M in the previous 12 months, for a reported loss of £5.6M. Badoo said the loss was "primarily due to the marketing focus of the business".

by Matthew Field
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk

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Why Dating Apps Are Trying To Stop Users Blanking Each Other

THE GUARDIAN - Nov 1 - Bumble and Badoo have announced plans to crack down on ghosting. Bumble has recruited an in-house 'ghosting' expert, Kate Leaver, and Badoo has introduced a series of suggested responses, such as: "Hey, I think you're great, but I don't see us as a match. Take care!" Leaver's role, building on the expertise she developed writing her book The Friendship Cure, is focused on pushing for "a revival of kindness and respect," she says. "People are ghosting everyone all over the place. I think they are too lazy, or too cowardly to have the difficult conversations," Leaver adds. "There has been some extreme psychological damage for people who are living without any explanation as to why they've been ghosted." Google, for instance, recently updated Gmail to introduce a feature called "nudges". The service prompts users to reply to emails that they "might have forgotten to respond to" and to "follow up" on emails they sent that never received a reply. While it can occasionally be useful, the feature is attempting to fight a symptom of information overload by adding more information to the pile. It's not enough to ignore an email. We now have to ignore it twice. Could nudging ghosters in the dating world simply add to the overload of the modern era? After all, as the psychologist Maya Borgueta has written in HuffPost, "ghosting is avoidance and often stems from fear of conflict. Which means that ghosting is about wanting to avoid confrontation, difficult conversations and avoid hurting someone's feelings." If that is the case, Badoo's pushy attempts to restart conversations could have the opposite effect: if you ghost because of a fear of confrontation, then it's not much help when your dating app begins confronting you.

by Alex Hern
See full article at The Guardian

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Badoo To Help Solve Ghosting Problem

COSMPOLITAN - Oct 25 - Dating app Badoo is introducing a new feature to curb ghosting as painlessly as possible. The app will now offer pre-existing responses to users who might've accidentally ghosted on their matches. After three days of not responding, the app will give them a gentle reminder to check back in. With one tap they can let others know they're still interested. If you're no longer interested, there are also a variety of polite responses they can send instead. The feature is currently being tested in Europe and will soon roll out for testing stateside before launching for everyone early next year.

by Carina Hsieh
See full article at Cosmopolitan

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Bumble Owner Targets Nasdaq IPO To Become World's Top Matchmaker

BLOOMBERG - Oct 11 - The group behind Bumble is weighing an IPO in the U.S. as part of its plan to become the world's biggest dating business, according to founder Andrey Andreev. "We're now in very deep discussions with banks," including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Andreev said. Andreev, 44, is the majority shareholder of Bumble owner Rimberg International Corp., a holding company that also controls gay-dating app Chappy and London-based Badoo. Andreev, who founded Badoo in 2006, hopes the IPO will help his firm overtake Match Group. Andreev said revenue may be as much as $400M this year, which is less than a third of Match's $1.33B last year. Bumble would be the "umbrella brand" for any IPO, which won't happen before year-end, he said. Badoo invested $10M to help Wolfe Herd start Bumble, giving Andreev's group a stake of ~75%. Today, Bumble has 41M users, more than double from a year ago. "Bumble is going crazy," Andreev said. "Bumble is already in Germany, and it's growing at 500% a month there."

by Sophie Alexander & Benjamin Stupples
See full article at Bloomberg

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Gay Dating App Chappy Relaunches With 'Zero Tolerance For Abuse'

GAYSTAR NEWS - Sep 11 - Gay dating and social connection app Chappy has introduced a new design. Previously, users could say whether they were seeking 'Mr Right' or 'Mr Right Now'. 'Cute' and 'Sexy' moods now respectively replace those two options. Ollie Locke (of Made in Chelsea fame), Jack Rogers and Max Cheremkhin originally founded the app. Backing comes from dating app Badoo, with advisory backing from Whitney Wolfe Herd. Last month, Chappy announced Locke and Rogers were stepping down. Succeeding them is Sam Dumas as Global Head of Brand. Chappy says it will now have, 'zero tolerance for abuse or bullying of any kind.' Users reported for violating Chappy's terms and conditions risk a permanent ban from the app.

by David Hudson
See full article at Gaystar News

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Andrey Andreev Has Invested £3.5M In Dating App Lumen

UKTN - Sep 7 - Andrey Andreev, the man behind Badoo, Bumble and Chappy, has invested £3.5M in Lumen, a new dating app specifically for single over 50s. Launching in the UK, Lumen was co-founded by Antoine Argouges and Charly Lester. Lumen will be free, available to download on iOS and Android. All users will be required to upload a selfie and verify their identity.

by Yessi Bello Perez
See full article at UKTN

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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Andrey Andreev Is A Real Life Cupid With Five Dating Apps To His Name

CELEBRITY NET WORTH - Aug 27 - Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev is the king of dating apps. He's the man behind five successful online dating apps - Badoo, Chappy, Huggle, Mamba and Bumble. He was born Andrey Ogandzhantyants in Moscow but changed his name to his mother's maiden name because it was easier to spell. He's always been passionate about technology. He briefly attended the University of Moscow but dropped out at age 18 to move to Spain. In 1995, he founded Virus, an e-commerce site that sold computers and accessories to internet users in Russia. In 1997, he sold it for a few hundred thousand dollars. In 1999, he founded SpyLog, which was software that tracked visitors to websites. It was basically Google Analytics before that lunched in 2005. Andreev left SpyLog in December 2001. In 2002, he built Begun, a contextual ads company. Google almost bought Begun in 2008 for $140M but the deal never went through. Begun still exists, but Andreev left in early 2004. Andreev founded Badoo in Spain in 2006 and launched it in 2009. The company's headquarters are in London and there is a Moscow office. Badoo employs 300 people. Andreev will not disclose Badoo's revenue but said that Match Group is a good comparison for Badoo.

by Amy Lamare
See full article at Celebrity Net Worth

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The Most Right-swiped Universities In The UK Revealed By Badoo

BRINKWIRE - Aug 11 - University of the Arts London (UAL) and Leeds came out on top, with Durham and Southampton scraping in at the bottom. Badoo also found that UAL students send and receive the most messages out of all the universities in the UK (~6M) in the past year, with the university of Oxford coming in at 2nd place with ~4M messages and Leeds 3rd with ~3M.

See full article at Brinkwire

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Why Facebook’s Dating Service Will Fail

CTECH - July 13 - Former AOL and dating service Badoo executive Amit Shafrir explains why he believes the recently announced Facebook dating service stands little chance of succeeding.

1. Single app policy
   Facebook has announced that it will incorporate its dating service into its flagship app. A separate app focused on dating would be the correct approach. Here is why:
   - Context
   Everything we do, we do within a certain context. When we browse LinkedIn we are in a work or professional context; when we browse Facebook, we are in a social context; and when we are using a dating app, we are in a fun, entertainment or optimistic context.
   - Demographics
   Millennials and members of Generation Z, who are the prime targets of any dating service do not generally use Facebook. They do use Instagram.
   - Promotion
   It would look somewhat off to have other Facebook assets promote the main Facebook app, and given the different demographics, would probably not be very effective.
   - Virality
   A great dating app should have a natural buzz to it. That is not Facebook. App store Users searching for dating apps on Apple's App Store or Google Play   would not see Facebook among their results.
2. Monetization
   Monetization is simply not in Facebook's DNA.
3. Thinking small
   My sense is that Facebook is not treating this opportunity with the gravitas that its potential merits. It is limiting itself to a small subset of its vast user base of over 2B, and to a subset of potential functionality.

by Amit Shafrir
See full article at CTech

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~65% Of Women Prefer To Pay For The First Date, Study Finds

INDEPENDENT.CO.UK - July 7 - A new study from Badoo has revealed that 65% of women prefer to pay on a first date. Badoo asked 2K 18-30-year-old female Brits. The poll also found that 74% of British women who use the dating app are also making the first move and starting conversations with new matches.

by Sarah Young
See full article at The Independent

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Can Match Fend Off Facebook And Bumble?

FORTUNE - June 27 - Globally, there are 600M singles online - a number that's expected to jump to 700M by 2020 - yet the industry's biggest player by far, Match Group, is estimated to claim just 10% of that. If Match Group wants to stay No. 1, it will need to defend its turf. Those who know Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg say she is likely to be up to the task. She knows the industry inside and out, and she takes Match's mission almost as a personal responsibility. The company's biggest competitors include eHarmony, Spark Networks, Badoo and Bumble. Bumble claims 34M total registered users. Of its active users, roughly 10% are paid; last year the company is said to have pulled in $100M in subscription revenue. It has a Goliath-size backer: Wolfe Herd created Bumble with the help of Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo. Andreev owns 79%, Wolfe Herd 20% (the remaining 1% is split between two additional employees). For a few years, Tinder and Bumble coexisted but things recently turned testy. In March, Match filed its suit against Bumble, accusing it of patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. Four days later, Bumble fired back with an angry letter. A few days after that, it filed its own suit against Match, claiming Match had fraudulently obtained sensitive information during acquisition talks. But both companies were hit with a much bigger tsunami of news on May 8, when Zuckerberg made his announcement. Match Group is working on new female-friendly features, like a Gentleman's Badge, a designation recently added into its European Meetic brand that men earn through certain behaviors, such as filling out an entire profile or engaging in lengthy email correspondence; men with the badge get 33% more attention from women.

by Leigh Gallagher
See full article at Fortune

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Badoo To Drop Swiping

TECH CRUNCH - June 6 - Badoo, a UK-based dating app with ~388M users globally - whose majority-owned app Bumble is currently being sued by Tinder in part for its use of swiping - says that it will be removing the swiping from its own app. Badoo is rolling out a new feature called Badoo Live which are live video broadcasts to let people show off their personalities. Users will be able to send messages during a live session, which works on a principle similar to Facebook Live. Once a match is made, users can start a live video chat with each other.

by Ingrid Lunden
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Facebook's Lawyers Could Face IP, Trade Secret Challenges

LAW.COM - May 18 - Match Group has been engaged in litigation on multiple fronts lately. Facebook might want to have its in-house lawyers review Match's recent intellectual property lawsuits if the company wants to avoid the potential for litigation in its latest venture. Match filed two lawsuits back in March: one against Bumble, and another similar complaint against Chinese dating app TanTan. Bumble has yet to file a response. Facebook will need to be cautious when hiring any employees from Match to help develop its own platform, attorneys said. Facebook has in fact hired at least 25 employees from popular dating sites in recent years, according to a search on LinkedIn. Two of them were from Bumble and Badoo.

by Stephanie Forshee
See full article at Law.com

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The Story Of Huggle, A Dating App Acquired By Badoo

STANDARD.CO.UK - May 4 - The social app Huggle was recently acquired by Badoo. Launched in 2016, the app connects people based on mutual places and interests. Huggle was founded by Stina Sanders and Valerie Stark. Stark had moved to London from Russia and was finding it hard to make friends in a new city. She turned to social media, using Instagram's geo-location feature to find people who frequented the same places as her. The two eventually met at the same yoga studio and struck up the friendship that would lead to the app's beginning. Neither Sanders nor Stark had a background in tech but they were able to use Stark's connection to Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo, through a previous business partner to get the app started. Huggle was built using Badoo's back-end. This took care of the tech side of things and allowed Sanders and Stark to set about building the business, focusing on marketing and design.

by Amelia Heathman
See full article at Standard.co.uk

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Badoo Adds Live Video Chat

TECH CRUNCH - May 2 - Live video in a dating app context raises some immediate risk flags, including around inappropriate behavior which could put off users. "I pressed 'play' last night and after about 45 clicks on 'Next' encountered 5 straight up penis shots," said TechCrunch's former co-editor Alexia Tsotsis when she tested video chat app Chatroulette back in 2010. Clearly Badoo will be hoping to achieve a much better ratio of quality conversation. The video chat will only be switched on once both parties have matched and exchanged at least one message each. The company also says live video can help enhance dating app safety - saying the feature can be a way for users to suss out a stranger to see whether seem trustworthy before risking meeting in person, and also help to weed out fake profiles and catfishing.

by Natasha Lomas
See full article at Tech Crunch

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A Large Percentage Of Millennials Are Willing To Date Someone Older

ASKMEN - Apr 25 - Badoo surveyed 10k of its users and found that 32% of 18 to 24-year-olds would date someone over the age of 35. 27% of women have dated someone a decade older than themselves and 15% of Badoo users are interested in the 50-plus category. As many as 13% of men reported they would date someone 20 years older than them.

by Joel Balsam
See full article at AskMen

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Badoo's New Feature Matches Friends Of Friends

REFINERY 29 - Apr 5 - The new 'Friends of Friends' tool allows users to easily discover and scroll through their Facebook friends' Badoo profiles, as well as (crucially) their friends' Badoo profiles. If they match with a friend of a friend, they can then chat to or video call them directly. For some people, the idea of being easily discoverable to their Facebook connections on a dating app may be a step too far. The tool does, however, have the potential to make others feel more secure.

by Natalie Gil
See full article at Refinery 29

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Internet Dating Analysis: Who's Growing And Who's Firing

OPW - Apr 5 - According to Linkedin Match.com is showing no growth over the last two years, with 598 employees. Tinder is the big growth story with 320 employees and 116% growth over the last 2 years. PlentyofFish is also broken out from Match, and is up 15% over the last 2 years with 94 employees. Meanwhile, OKCupid are have been quite stable at 64 employees.

Badoo is stable at 560 employees. Over the last 2 years they've grown their personnel count 22% to 560 people!

Zoosk is stable at 170 employees. They dipped to 158 employees but actually show 1% employee growth over the past 2 years.

eHarmony has leveled off to 239 employees in the last 6 months but is down 27% over the last 2 years.

Meanwhile Venntro Media in the UK, which runs White Label Dating, shows a 43% decline to 66 people, and just lost their CTO of ten years.

See full article at IDEA blog.

Post by Mark Brooks, CEO IDEA

For Badoo's Founder Andrey Andreev Food Is His Biggest Passion

BUSINESS INSIDER - Mar 25 - Badoo CEO Andrey Andreev eats at Michelin-starred restaurants almost every day. He often adds his own dishes and cocktails to restaurant menus. Andreev's regular weekday lunch is at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and he takes no longer than 30 minutes. But he also likes to eat fast when he's socialising in the evenings. The Michelin-starred L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Covent Garden charges £65 for a five-course lunch, and is the restaurant close to Badoo's office where Andreev used to eat daily. Andreev said that the restaurant's menu includes an onion soup that he created.

by James Cook
See full article at Business Insider

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