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

New Niche - A Dating App Only for the Vaccinated?

THE STAR - Feb 16 - Samantha Yammine, a scientist who often talks on Twitter about health issues, says she's received messages about "dudes on dating apps claiming they're 'totally safe for close contact' because they have received the vaccine. "Basically, getting the vaccine is the hottest thing you could be doing on a dating app right now," said Michael Kaye, global communications manager for OkCupid. 43% of ~1,500 members of another site, Coffee Meets Bagel, said they were right now more attracted to someone who had been vaccinated. For university student Brittany Biggerstaff, people who say they are vaccinated are not more attractive because of the shot - but it does mean they have put their faith in science. "It gives insight on a potential partner's political views and knowledge about science and medicine," she said. Dawoon Kang, the co-founder of Coffee Meets Bagel, agrees.

See full article at The Star

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CMB's First "Save the Date" Podcast With Author Jess McCann

OPW - Oct 4 - "Save the Date" is Coffee Meets Bagel's new podcast. Each episode, CMB's Chief Dating Officer Dawoon Kang invites an expert to explore what it takes to go on great dates. Jess McCann is a dating/relationship coach and the author of the books, "Cursed?", "You Lost Him at Hello" and "Was It Something I Said?". She has coached men and women on how to get the relationship they have always wanted.

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Coffee Meets Bagel's New "Save the Date" Podcast

CMB - Sep 24 - Each episode, CMB's Chief Dating Officer invites an expert to explore what it takes to go on great dates.

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More Swiping, Less Meeting: How Online Dating Has Gone More Virtual

SCMP - Aug 26 - Online dating apps are more popular than before, but users are becoming more selective about meeting up in person amid social distancing measures. Instead, daters are chatting on apps longer, and getting creative with virtual options such as video calls, online games and Netflix Party. In a survey of ~1,200 Hong Kong-based users in late July, Coffee Meets Bagel found that 95% said it was "at least somewhat important" that their date took Covid-19 precautions seriously, with 8 in 10 considering it a deal-breaker if their date did not wear a mask, and 7 out of 10 feeling the same if their date did not adhere to social distancing guidelines.

by Iris Deng & Tracy Qu
See full article at SCMP

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Dating Apps Pivot to Video

WALL STREET JOURNAL - July 1 - With social distancing recommendations and laws in effect across the country, meeting people online and developing relationships virtually has never been more popular. Georgia Wells, WSJ's technology reporter and Mark Brooks, CEO of the Courtland Brooks consultancy-agency explore what this shift means for the future of online dating.

See full article at Wall Street Journal

Online Dating in the Coronavirus Era

WALL STREET JOURNAL - June 10 - "It's giving us a chance to rethink the way we date and meet people," said Dani Fankhauser, who co-founded XO, a new app that aims to facilitate meaningful and more playful relationships. XO uses in-app icebreakers games like "Kiss, Marry, Fight" (choose which of three celebrities/cartoons/brand mascots you want to Kiss, Marry or Fight). This week Coffee Meets Bagel is rolling out a "Virtual Date Nudge" to facilitate socially distanced relationships. Once two people have swiped and started chatting, the app prompts each one to select a digital-date idea from a list of six, including a game night, a virtual museum tour or the swapping of recipes to cook together over video. When one person selects one, signaling "I'm open to it," the other is alerted.

by Rachel Wolfe
See full article at Wall Street Journal

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Dating Apps Adapt and Engage to Combat Isolation

MARKETING MAGAZINE - Mar 27 - Singapore-based dating agency Paktor Group has seen a 28% increase in its installation rates in Singapore as compared to the previous year. There was also a 17% increase in app engagement during this period, with users logging into the app more frequently throughout the day. Meanwhile, Tinder has also seen an increase in its app engagement since mid-March. Its in-app conversation length saw an increase of 10% to 30% in Southeast Asia and Europe markets, as compared to February. Globally it has also seen daily messages increase by 10% to 15% in the United States, and an increase of up to 25% in daily conversation in Italy and Spain. On the other hand, Coffee Meets Bagel's founder and CEO, Dawoon Kang, said it saw an initial dip in its new user signups from mid to end February in Singapore, which recovered in March.

by Grace Ong
See full article at Marketing Magazine

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How Coronavirus Is Transforming Online Dating

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW - Mar 25 - Dating apps have struggled; after all, the whole point of dating is to physically meet someone. Match has seen stocks tumble 25%, and had to balance public health with mission statements. "Tinder understands that our members are oftentimes meeting new people in-person, and, given the current environment, we wanted to remind them of the precautions they should take," the company said in a press release, citing the World Health Organization. The firm is now rolling out a feature that lets users match with people outside their immediate geographical area. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of dating app Bumble, was far more explicit in a public letter: "Please date virtually for now." One way to do it is by reinventing the speed date. Dawoon Kang, cofounder of Coffee Meets Bagel, says the app has begun hosting virtual meetups for 10 to 15 members at a time, consisting of a video call moderated by a company representative. A participant who is interested in another can email the representative; if two people feel sparks, the representative connects them.

by Tanya Basu
See full article at MIT Technology Review

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OKCupid: "Now Is Not the Time to Go to a Bar"

DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - Mar 20 - Several dating apps have warned users not to meet their dates in person. Most are encouraging some form of virtual dating, either by phone or video chat. Coffee Meets Bagel has even suggested several creative virtual dates Just last week, an OKCupid survey found that 88% of users were still willing to go out on dates - though the situation has been changing rapidly. OKCupid tweeted a message on March 16. "We don't know who needs to hear this, but now is NOT the time to go out with your date to a bar. FaceTime, Skype, call, text, call, message on our app....all very romantic right now," they wrote. Hinge has had a similar message about staying home for its users. "Love in the time of Coronavirus is absolutely possible, and we're here to help you through it," they wrote on Twitter and Instagram.

by Carly Stern
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk

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Mark Zuckerberg Let Tinder Get Special Access to Users' Data

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.

by Angel Au-Yeung
See full article at Forbes

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Coffee Meets Bagel - 5M Matches and 166% Revenue Growth

SF BUSINESS TIMES - Oct 23 - Dawoon Kang trusts her dating app so much that her last two long-term relationships were people she met on her own site. Kang is co-founder and co-CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel, a San Francisco-based dating site company she started with her sisters Arum Kang and Soo Kang in 2012. The app has recently celebrated 50M match milestone, and saw 166% revenue growth between 2016 and 2018. To help build on the company's momentum, Coffee Meets Bagel this year hired a CFO, who is an alumni of Zynga and OpenTable; a CTO, who was formerly of Hearsay Systems; and a vice president of analytics who spent time at Lyft and Facebook. One of the app's most valued subscription features is an analytics report on users' matches. The report allows them to see their potential dates' response rates, match rates and tendency to start a conversation. They also let users know if a match has read their message and whether there might be a connection before choosing to start a conversation. Coffee Meets Bagel ditches the traditional swiping model.

by Ahalya Srikant
See full article at SF Business Times

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Coffee Meets Bagel Announces New Feautures Like 'Unlimited Takes' and 'Priority Likes'

YAHOO FINANCE - June 13 - Coffee Meets Bagel Co-CEO and Co-founder Dawoon Kang shared an exclusive announcement about her dating app; this includes new offerings like 'unlimited takes' and 'priority likes.' She mentioned that Coffee Meets Bagel made a big investment into the dating app, and doubled its subscription base. She would not disclose the number of paying users.

See full article at Yahoo Finance

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Study: People Who Use Dating Apps Are More Likely to Have Eating Disorders

CNBC - May 31 - A Harvard study found that people who use dating apps are 3-16 x more likely to have an eating disorder than those who don't use the apps. Women were particularly vulnerable, with those who use apps such as Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel having 2.3 to 26.9 times higher odds of using elevated "unhealthy weight control behaviors." That includes self-induced vomiting, fasting or using diet pills and laxatives, which are all symptoms of eating disorders.

by Ashley Turner
See full article at CNBC

Podcast With Coffee Meets Bagel CEO

SLATE - Feb 25 - Dawoon Kang, CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel dating app, talks about co-founding the company with her sisters, her effort to make online dating less overwhelming and the challenges of raising money. Full podcast.

by Seth Stevenson
See full article at Slate

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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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