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

Dating Apps' Patent Victories Challenged at Federal Circuit

BLOOMBERG - Grindr, eHarmony, Coffee Meets Bagel, and other dating apps are facing appeals of dismissed lawsuits that accused them of patent infringement. Wireless Discovery asked the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reconsider a pair of Delaware federal district court orders that invalidated four of its asserted patents. Wireless Discovery had accused the dating apps of infringing patents covering social media technology that helps people meet online and exchange contact information.

by Kelcee Griffis
See full article at Bloomberg

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Hong Kong Watchdog Takes Swipe at Tinder's Age Based Fees

THE STANDARD - The Consumer Council claims Tinder has an "unfair" pricing mechanism that charges users an annual subscription according to age. The council registered accounts for users aged 18 to 68 with intervals of 10 years.  The highest fees are for 38-year-olds, followed by for 18-year-olds and 58-year-olds. The cheapest are for those whose ages are 28, 48 and 68. The app charges 38-year-old platinum account holders HK$1,318 annually, which is 42% higher than users from the lowest-priced group. The watchdog urged Tinder to make rectifications. The council also found dating apps reveal users' personal information for marketing and advertising after a trial of nine popular ones in Hong Kong between October and December. The nine tested were Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, Goodnight, Heymandi, OkCupid, Omi, Paktor, SweetRing and Tinder. All were found to have preset permission to use account owners' data, including name, gender, sexual orientation, date of birth, location, e-mail address and phone number for marketing or advertising. Only three apps allowed users to opt-out.  Age is not covered under Hong Kong's anti-discrimination laws, an Equal Opportunities Commission spokesman said.

by Eunice Lam
See full article at Teh Standard

Mark Brooks: Do you think Tinder, and nay, the industry at large, make rectifications? Is age-based pricing logical and justifiable, or just wholly unfair? Your comments, please.

Dating Sunday Is the Best Day for Those Returning to Dating Apps

STYLIST.CO.UK - Some experts predict that 'Dating Sunday' will be the best day to be on a dating app in 2023. 'Dating Sunday' (which this year falls on Sunday 8 January 2023) refers to singles joining new dating apps or returning to old favorites on the first Sunday of the year. Typically, dating apps experience a massive surge in users and activity on Dating Sunday. In 2018, Coffee Meets Bagel saw a 75% increase on the first Sunday of the year compared to the previous 30 days, while Tinder experienced a 41% jump in downloads. Inner Circle, meanwhile, is expecting a 40% increase in new members on Dating Sunday 2023. 

by Leah Sinclair
See full article at Stylist.co.uk

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Delbert Ty - CMO of Coffee Meets Bagels - How Regional Disparities in Maturity Can Help Us Predict the Future

LTR - Delbert has been building businesses and making impactful brands for the last 15+ years. He started his career in P&G working on its most iconic brands. He then took his talent to the world of technology and startups. Now he is CMO of Coffee Meets Bagel. He emphasizes that CMB focuses on delivering the highest quality matches looking for long-term relationships. It is designed for serious intent & efficiency.  

Delbert predicts the future of the dating industry with analogies such as laundry. Laundry has its own kind of convergence. He maps that convergence and compares this to the dating industry convergence. People me people at work, and througn friends, and matchmaking services, and then the web came along. That's where the first generation of online dating services, match, eHarmony, OkCupid, and then eventually mobile came along. Online dating really exploded in popularity and homogenized. He believes everything eventually follows the same trajectory.

We have a very extended Q&A session with Delbert where we discuss the rise of influencer marketing and it's challenges.

LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.

The September LTR was kindly sponsored by vPaaS by Meet Group and Courtland Brooks

Swiping Right On AI

FORBES - Jennifer Flashman, Tinder's director of analytics, explained that in leveraging AI to build better user experiences, the future of dating will increasingly occur over texts and DMs rather than blind dates and phone calls. AI apps are only as good as the data behind them. AI can help recommend the perfect TV show, and it can even help us find a life partner. Hinge has a "Most Compatible" feature, which analyzes a user's preferences and sends recommendations of matches that it thinks will be a particularly good fit. Coffee Meets Bagel shares a selection of curated profiles for users to look at each day at noon via their "smart algorithm". AI could even help combat catfishing and creepy messages. Tinder's "Are You Sure?" algorithm scans messages and compares them against text that's been reported for inappropriate language in the past.

by James Freeze
See full article at Forbes

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Circles.Life's Delbert Ty Takes on Global CMO Role at Coffee Meets Bagel

MARKETING INTERACTIVE - Former Circles.Life head of marketing, Delbert Ty, has joined dating app, Coffee Meets Bagel as global CMO. In his new role, Ty will be responsible for scaling the growth of CMB, while reporting to CEO Arum Kang. Ty has also had marketing experience working with the likes of Duracell and P&G.

by Deepa Chevi
See full article at Marketing Interactive

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Coffee Meets Bagel Campaign: True Love Can't Be Found in a Checklist

CAMPAIGN ASIA - 'Ditch your list' and 'find something real', Coffee Meets Bagel advises in a new campaign.

See full article at Campaign Asia

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Podcast With Coffee Meets Bagel's co-Founder

FOX NEWS RADIO - This week, Liz Claman is joined by the co-founder of dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, Dawoon Kang, to discuss how she went from Korean immigrant to a successful entrepreneur. Dawoon shares how challenging it was to assimilate into a new country and culture. She also explains how she faced adversity to build a new dating app focused on long-term relationships.

See full article at Radio NB

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Investors See Big Potential in Smaller Online Dating Companies

WALL STREET JOURNAL - Since Jan '19, App Annie data show U.S. users have spent 7.4M hours on dating apps a month on Android phones alone. Match Group and Bumble collectively boast ~$50B in fully diluted market value, but plenty of businesses are trying. Coffee Meets Bagel, which hits users with algorithmically curated matches every day at noon, has made ~130M matches since its launch in 2012. Hily, which works to make it easier to start conversations, has 22M users. Snack, which is focused on video-first dating, was the 10th most-downloaded dating app in the U.S. last month, according to App Annie. Some just need a larger platform to help them take off. Hinge, in which Match took a majority stake in 2018 before acquiring it in 2019, saw ~100K U.S. downloads in Jan '18. By Mar '21, it was closer to 600K. Berlin-based Spark Networks did $233M in revenue last year. And then there is eHarmony owner ParshipMeet, which is preparing for a 2022 IPO. In the Q2 it had €139M ($164.2M) in revenue.

by Laura Forman
See full article at Wall Street Journal

How Advances in Technology and Science Could Impact the Dating and Matchmaking Industry

FORBES - Aug 5 - The art and science of matchmaking is a billion-dollar industry. Yet, many pitfalls exist such as safety, security and ineffective matching methods. These issues aren't as prevalent with professional matchmakers, however, not every singleton can afford to pay $15K and $150K for a high-end matchmaking service. This exposes a huge opening in the industry for dating apps and professional matchmakers to merge. How realistic is this, and what kind of technology or science can help achieve this idealistic goal?

Blockchain Technology
Companies such as Hicky and Viola have both implemented blockchain to increase transparency by requiring users to validate their identity via face and voice recognition, which is then fully encrypted and stored into the blockchain.

Artificial Intelligence
AI can help gather in-app user behavior data for machine learning algorithms to curate more relevant matches based on its users' core values, beliefs and personality traits. Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, Tinder and Badoo all now use AI .

Augmented Reality
AR can be described as a visual or audio overlay of digital life on real life, distinct from the purely digital landscape of virtual reality (VR).

DNA Matchmaking
DNA Romance is a dating app that matches partners based on the information hidden in their DNA to forecast romantic chemistry. Dr. Tim Sexton built the app on the basis that partners with opposite immune system genes (MHC genes) have much higher romantic chemistry.

by Taylor Wade
See full article at Forbes

Coffee Meets Bagel Prepares for Post-Pandemic Dating

YAHOO FINANCE - May 26 - CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel, Dawoon Kang, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss their new 'ready to meet' tool to make people comfortable dating post-pandemic and how the pandemic has changed dating. Ready to Meet makes it easy for users to indicate if they're ready to meet in person. 65% of said they are more likely to like somebody who is vaccinated. Watch the full interview here.

See full article at Yahoo Finance

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Does Banning People With Felonies From Dating Apps Make Anyone Safer?

THE MARSHALL PROJECT - May 20 - Match Group plans to launch a feature allowing daters to run background checks on potential matches. The company says its efforts are aimed at keeping users safe. But civil rights advocates say the record checks extend an unfair practice of imposing "collateral consequences" long after people have finished their sentences. "Meeting strangers can be risky, and I worry that this approach will mislead people into thinking they're safe," said Sarah Lageson, a Rutgers University sociologist who studies the growing use of online criminal records. People with felonies - anything from a $10 drug conviction to capital murder - are banned for life from some dating apps including Match Group's apps, Coffee Meets Bagel, Zoosk. A representative for The Meet Group said that only two of the company's apps - Skout and GROWLr - have a ban, based on policies it inherited when it acquired those apps. The representative said The Meet Group would reconsider that part of the policy.

by Keri Blakinger
See full article at The Marshall Project

See the top news on Match Group                 See the top news on The Meet Group
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Founder of Coffee Meets Bagel: "Being an Immigrant Had a Huge Impact on My Identity"

CNBC - May 4 - This story is part of the Behind the Desk series where CNBC gets personal with successful business executives to find out everything from how they got to where they are to what makes them get out of bed in the morning to their daily routines. For Dawoon Kang, co-founder of dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, entrepreneurship is in her blood. Both her parents started their own businesses in Korea. Kang emigrated from Korea to the U.S. when she was 12 with her sisters Arum and Soo. Arum had the idea to create Coffee Meets Bagel in 2011, and the following year Kang quit her job at JPMorgan to launch the app with Arum and Soo.

by Taylor Locke
See full article at CNBC

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Is It Worth Paying a Premium to Find Love?

THE GUARDIAN - Apr 25 - Tinder has three levels of subscription, Tinder Plus, Tinder Gold and Tinder Platinum, each with different prices. The monthly fee is also linked to age. Users aged ~30 are being charged £27.49 or £29.49, while those under 30 are being charged £13.99 or £14.49. Tinder Plus seemed more random. Some users over 30 are being charged £19.49, most are being asked to pay £4.99, £8.99 or £9.99. Bumble charges £14.99 a month for Bumble Boost, and £32.99 for Bumble Premium. Coffee Meets Bagel charges £34 a month for its Premium service. Grindr also offers a more expensive package - Unlimited, at £31.99 a month. While most apps allow users to pay for premium services for just a month at a time, Plenty of Fish has a minimum premium subscription of three months for £39.99. The minimum time period to subscribe to eharmony's premium subscription is six months for £99.99. The dating and relationships coach Kate Mansfield argues that the most dateable people will be snapped up before they sign up for a paid-for service. Quality, confident people don't need to pay for matchmaking services. Instead of a paid-for app, she advises working on yourself: "Invest in coaching or therapy to get yourself in the best place possible and then use apps' free version to find love."

by Robert Beck
See full article at The Guardian

See the top news on Tinder                      See the top news on Bumble
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Coffee Meets Bagel Now Lets Singles Declare Vaccination Status

NEW YORK POST - Mar 12 - Coffee Meets Bagel is adding a person's COVID-19 vaccine status to their profiles. This new feature comes as some 19% of the US population has received at least one dose. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines for those who have been fully vaccinated. People who have been vaccinated can gather indoors - and without masks - with others who have done the same.

by Zachary Kussin
See full article at New York Post

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