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

Dawoon Kang, Founder of Coffee Meets Bagel: "This Is How I Work"

LIFEHACKER - Feb 21 - After seeing the toxicity of other dating services, Dawoon Kang created Coffee Meets Bagel as a safer, friendlier alternative. "Dating apps have always had a huge imbalance in gender ratio. Because of that, guys get really frustrated and engage in behaviors that turn off women even more. So we wanted to create a great experience for everyone, and make a platform and experience that appealed to women," she says.

Q: What's your workspace setup like?
A: I have two monitors. My biggest "hack" is to put everything important on the calendar and to follow it to the teeth.

Q: What hacks went into Coffee Meets Bagel?
A: Manpower. In the beginning, everything on Coffee Meets Bagel was done manually. Manual matching. Manual approval. Matching was something that we quickly automated. Manual approving actually went on for quite a while, which was a real pain.

Q: Who are the people who help you get things done?
A: Everyone on my team, of course! I've started outsourcing more things that I know aren't my strengths, or that I simply don't enjoy doing.

Q: Do you have any dating hacks of your own?
A: Start by self-reflecting. We end up wasting a ton of time on the wrong people because we don't know what we want. Additionally, learn how to communicate.

Q: How do you recharge or take a break?
A: Exercise, meditation, and travel.

Q: What's your favorite side project?
A: Pole dancing.

Q: What are you currently reading, or what do you recommend?
A: I just read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It's a GREAT leadership book. I also just started reading The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli J. Finkel.

Q: What's the best advice you've ever received?
A: If you do whatever you said you are going to do every day, you will get whatever you said you are going to get.

Q: What's a problem you're still trying to solve?
A: I'm still trying to ensure that all singles out there get to experience connections that inspire them!

by Nick Douglas
See full article at Lifehacker

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Dating App Coffee Meets Bagel Sends Alert About Data Breach

FORTUNE - Feb 14 - Coffee Meets Bagel sent an email to users yesterday warning that some of their personal information may have been stolen. The company said it learned on Monday about an unauthorized access to a partial list of user data, but did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. The exposed information included names and email addresses used on the app before May 2018. The company reminded users: "we never store any financial information or passwords."

by Erin Corbett
See full article at Fortune

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What Will Online Dating Be Like in 2030?

MASHABLE - Feb 14 - Online dating isn't going away any time soon. If anything, it's likely to become further integrated into even more people's lives. "Online daters are exhausted," said Dawoon Kang, co-founder and co-CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel. "Machine-learning and AI may be able to help. People, a lot of times, don't know what they want. Better machine-learning could tailor your matches to your actions, rather than your stated desires", Kang said. Loveflutter, a UK dating app, has AI that matches people based on personality traits it decodes from their tweets. It also plans to use AI to coach users through meeting offline after analyzing their chats. Jean Meyer, the founder and CEO of European dating app Once, doesn't think the dating industry will crack the AI code. "The optimum for a dating service is to show you profiles of people that might be good enough, but not perfection," Meyer said. Pheramor, DNA Romance, and Instant Chemistry all analyze users' DNA to make matches. Video will play a larger role in dating apps, execs said, but how, exactly, is still unclear. Virtual reality in dating apps will also take cultural change.

by Brittany Levine Beckman
See full article at Mashable

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620M Accounts Stolen From 16 Hacked Websites Now for Sale on Dark Web

THE REGISTER - Feb 13 - For less than $20K in Bitcoin, it is claimed, the following pilfered account databases can be purchased from the Dream Market cyber-souk, located in the Tor network. Dubsmash (162M), MyFitnessPal (151M), MyHeritage (92M), ShareThis (41M), HauteLook (28M), Animoto (25M), EyeEm (22M), 8fit (20M), Whitepages (18M), Fotolog (16M), 500px (15M), Armor Games (11M), BookMate (8M), CoffeeMeetsBagel (6M), Artsy (1M), and DataCamp (700K). It consist mainly of names, email addresses, and passwords. There are a few other bits of info, depending on the site, such as location, personal details, and social media authentication tokens. There appears to be no payment or bank card details in the sales listings. The seller, who is believed to be located outside of the US, told us the Dubsmash data has been purchased by at least one person. Jenn Takahashi, spokesperson for the CoffeeMeetsBagel, said: "We are not aware of a breach at this time, but our security team is looking into this now." She also said they do not store passwords, and use third-party sites for authentication.

by Chris Williams
See full article at The Register

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Co-Founder & CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel on Reddit AMA

CMB BLOG - Jan 29 - Coffee Meets Bagel's Co-Founder and CEO Dawoon Kang braved Reddit's AMA (Ask Me Anything) on January 22 to answer the questions on everyone's mind: from tips for online dating, to where the name "Coffee Meets Bagel" came from.

Q: How can I increase my match rates on CMB?
A: Have an effective profile (longer profiles are better than short ones) and respond to chat requests when you receive them.

Q: Is Dating Sunday really the busiest day for online dating?
A: It was actually the biggest chat day in CMB history! The next most-popular day was the following Sunday (Jan 13)

Q: What are some of the best online dating icebreakers?
A: Jokes are great. Secondarily, commenting on someone’s profile is also a great way to hit it off.

Q: What's your online dating philosophy?
A: Quality over quantity.

Q: How does 'Discover' work?
A: The idea of Discover is to open up the pool of matches to people you might not consider otherwise.

Q: What are you doing about online dating bots?
A: This is a real problem on our app. This quarter, our goal is to get ourselves set up to use a third party safety specialists.

Q: What does the name 'Coffee Meets Bagel' mean?
A: We choose bagel as an homage to New York (where CMB started), and coffee just goes well with bagels.

See full article at Coffee Meets Bagel Blog

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Coffee Meets Bagel Goes Anti-Tinder With a Redesign Focused on Profiles & Conversations

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 12 - Coffee Meets Bagel is announcing a significant makeover, which includes a change to the way the app works. The app has ditched the big "Pass" or "Connect" buttons. Instead, Coffee Meets Bagel's new interface puts more emphasis on user profiles - showcasing more of the text, and giving users the option to "heart" the profile or comment. Before a match takes place, users can tap a new commenting button that allows them to respond to the user's profile directly, before making a connection. Coffee Meets Bagel says that during its beta testing, members who sent comments to their matches had a 25% higher chance of getting liked back. And when comments led to conversations, there was a 60% increase in total messages exchanged. Coffee Meets Bagel has raised ~$20M since launching back in 2012, and has 7M installs to date, according to data from Sensor Tower, and ~$25M in gross revenue. Users spent ~$900K in the app last month, up 30% from Nov 2017.

by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch

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The Subtle Way Dating Apps Reinforce Our Racial Biases

HUFFINGTON POST - Nov 22 - A new study out of Cornell University suggests that dating app algorithms don't do us any favors as far as sexual racism goes. To conduct the study, the researchers downloaded the 25 top-grossing apps in the iOS app store as of fall 2017, including Tinder, OKCupid, Hinge, Grindr, Meetville and Coffee Meets Bagel. Then they looked for features that could affect users' discriminatory behavior toward other users. This included terms of service, their sorting, filtering and matching algorithms and how users are presented to each other. They found that most apps employ algorithms that cater to users' past personal preferences and the matching history. So if a user had matched with white users repeatedly in the past, the algorithm was more likely to suggest more white people as "good matches" moving forward.

by Brittany Wong
See full article at Huffington Post

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Coffee Meets Bagel User Files Suit Over Alleged Lack of Refund Policy

COOK COUNTRY RECORD - Nov 20 - Pandi Rrapo has filed a class action complaint in Cook County Circuit Court against Coffee Meets Bagel, alleging violation of the Illinois Dating Referral Services Act (DRSA). He alleges the dating app failed to offer a refund after he canceled premium services within three days of enrollment.

by Jenie Mallari-Torres
See full article at Cook County Record

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Coffee Meets Bagel Meets Redis Labs To Solve Performance Challenges

PR NEWSWIRE - Oct 23 - Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel has turned to Redis Enterprise to dramatically improve its app performance and smoothly scale operations as the company expands internationally and experiences massive user base grows. Redis Labs is the home of Redis, the world's most popular in-memory database, and commercial provider of Redis Enterprise that delivers superior performance, matchless reliability and unparalleled flexibility for personalization, machine learning, IoT, search, eCommerce, social and metering solutions worldwide.

See full article at PR Newswire

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Coffee Meets Bagel Hires New CFO And CTO

CHEDDAR - Oct 10 - Coffee Meets Bagel is adding two new executives to its C-suite. Dawoon Kang, CEO and founder of Coffee Meets Bagel, shares her news and explains what sets the app apart from others.

Q: What made you start CMB?
A: There is a gender imbalance on dating apps – 64% men and 36% women. In general guys are twice as active on dating apps as women. So they get frustrated because they don't get any replies to their messages and women are overwhelmed. So we decided to create a product that speaks to women.

Q: How are you different from apps like Bumble where women make the first move.
A: We are known to be app for people looking for real connection. We invest a lot of time and resources into our algorithm that selects the best quality matches for our users.

Q: You made ~50M matches. What contributed to this type of growth?
A: The big member base, of course. Lot of singles are tired of swiping and our users are really looking for real connections with fewer number of people.

Q: How much do you invest in your algorithm?
A: As you know, earlier this year we raised our B series and we are now building up our data science team.

Q: How much do you reach out to your users for feedback to see if your algorithm is working?
A: All the time.

Q: You have some big announcements for us...
A: We have hired our first CFO, Quincy Yang, who comes from OpenTable and new CTO, Will Wagner.

See full article at Cheddar

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Coffee Meets Bagel Now Allows Mobile Phone Number Login

VENTURE BEAT - Aug 15 - Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel is giving users another way to sign in, as some remain wary about connecting to apps with their Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They now have the option to sign in by providing a phone number instead. By August 20 all Android and iOS users will be able to choose between the two login options. Coffee Meets Bagel says it saw a 378% increase in the number of requests for alternative login options after the Cambridge Analytica news broke in March.

by Anna Hensel
See full article at Venture Beat

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Coffee Meets Bagel Co-founder Found Her Partner On The App By Using A Few 'Cheesy' Lines

BUSINESS INSIDER - June 23 - Coffee Meets Bagel cofounder and co-CEO Dawoon Kang met her current partner on the app several years ago. In her profile, she mentioned that she was "in pursuit of my personal legend" and was looking for someone who "aspires to be a contribution to the world." Kang was not interested in being cool when she put together her Coffee Meets Bagel profile. And whatever she did clearly worked, because she's still dating the person she met on the app. In May, the app raised $12M, meaning it has raised a total of ~$20M since launching in 2012.

by Shana Lebowitz
See full article at Business Insider

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CoffeeMeetsBagel: There's A Big Difference Between How Men And Women Date Online

BUSINESS INSIDER - Jun 19 - In 2016, dating app Coffee Meets Bagel introduced "#LadiesChoice," a new format that offered men and women distinct user experiences. Men would receive up to 21 "bagels," or matches, every day at noon, and the app would then present women with a curated selection of the men who had liked them. Users who identify as LGBT would receive up to six matches a day. According to Dawoon Kang, a Coffee Meets Bagel cofounder, the company made this change because they'd seen stark differences in the way men and women date online. "The more bagels we give to men, the more engaged they are. They like it. They actually like going through profiles and checking out different women." On the other hand, Kang said, "When we gave more bagels to women, the attention that they give drops significantly. They stop responding. They stop checking." In 2016, scientists at Queen Mary University of London, Sapienza University of Rome, and Royal Ottawa Health Care Group found that women on Tinder generally swipe right only for men they're seriously interested in, while men are less picky. But when it comes to sending that first message, the researchers found that just 7% of male matches sent a message, compared to 21% of women.

by Shana Lebowitz
See full article at Business Insider

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Coffee Meets Bagel Raises $12M For International Expansion And Live Events

TECH CRUNCH - May 31 - The round, led by U.K. VC firm Atami Capital, brings the app's total up to ~$20M since launching back in 2012. Coffee Meets Bagel limits the number of matches it offers during a 24-hour window. Late last year, it expanded its offering with a video profile feature. This month, it introduced additional CMB Experiences to bring users together in the real world.

by Brian Heater
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Photos From CoffeeMeetsBagel's Sleepaway 'Dating' Camp For Adults

BUSINESS INSIDER UK - May 21 - 150 people attended a very first sleepaway camp for singles, organized by the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel. During the 3day camp, several singletons had coupled up, while others were pretty close to doing so.

by Tanya Dua
See full article at Business Insider

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CoffeeMeetsBagel Raises ~$7M

PITCHBOOK - May 4 - Coffee Meets Bagel has raised ~$7 million in Series B funding, per an SEC filing. The funding values the San Francisco-based startup at about $82M. The round comes just as Facebook enters the online dating game. Coffee Meets Bagel, named because matches are referred to as "bagels" in the app, has previously raised ~$10M in equity funding from investors including DCM Ventures, Quest Ventures and Azure Capital. The founding team consists of three sisters, Arum, Dawoon and Soo Kang. The trio famously pitched to Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in an episode that aired in 2015.

by Kate Clark
See full article at Pichtbook

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The Latest Relationship Trend Is 'Slow Dating'

BUSINESS INSIDER - Mar 22 - Dating apps are starting to offer fewer, more curated matches. Dating app Once delivers users one match per day. Then, users have 24h to decide whether they are interested. Once has been available in Europe since 2015; it launched in the US in Feb 2018 and now has 200K US users. Coffee Meets Bagel, which launched in 2012, also presents women with one "bagel" (match) a day. (Men receive up to 21 matches every day and select the people they like, so the app chooses women's bagels from among the men who indicated they liked them.) The League, which launched in 2015, is a more selective dating app for ambitious professionals. Then there's Happn, which debuted in 2014 in Paris. Users who subscribe to Happn Essential get 10 chances to "Say Hi" to another user every day. It's possible that daters and app-developers alike have begun to observe the effects of what social scientists call "choice overload" or the "paradox of choice." The more options you have, research suggests, the less likely you are to make any decision at all.

by Shana Lebowitz
See full article at Business Insider

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CoffeeMeetsBagel To Host Camp Meets Bagel, A Sleepaway Camp For Adults

DIGITAL TRENDS - Feb 14 - Coffee Meets Bagel is launching CMB Experiences to help users connect in the real world. These Experiences promise to be "unique, real-world events and spaces where people can go offline and engage in a fun, novel, delightful experience together." And it's all going to start with a sleepaway camp. It's called Camp Meets Bagel, and it's an "all-inclusive sleepaway camp for adults" that will take place from Thursday, May 10 to Sunday, May 13. In total, CMB expects ~300 people at Camp Southwoods. The app partnered with Camp No Counselors, the camp for adults, in order to put on the programming. Tickets are on sale for $675 per person and include all the activities for the weekend as well as complimentary transportation to Camp Southwood from New York City.

by Lulu Chang
See full article at Digital Trends

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Online Dating Stats From Singapore

MARKETING INTERACTIVE - Feb 13 - Tinder is a clear favourite in Singapore. 84% of Singaporeans have heard of Tinder and 51% of those who have ever used online dating say it is considered respectable. The highest scoring service for reputation is Coffee Meets Bagel. According to a new YouGov research, as many as a third of Singaporeans have used internet and online dating apps. This rises to 43% among Millennials.

by Rezwana Manjur
See full article at Marketing Interactive

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Coffee Meets Bagel To Host A Matchmaking Running Event

SCMP - Feb 2 - RunDate 2018 is a matchmaking event, hosted by dating app Coffee Meets Bagel and Asian cultural online platform Honkiee. It aims to help runners find potential partners through a series of athletic activities. Held once again at the Science Park in Sha Tin on February 11, the event's second edition will be open to 2K runners, and includes a new age group for adults aged 60 or above. Out of 1,300 runners that joined last year, more than half were successfully matched with a partner.

by Rachel Cheung
See full article at SCMP

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