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

Ukrainian CEO Alex Pasykov Shares His Thoughts on a Difficult but Rewarding Year

TECH.EU - Alex Pasykov, CEO of the Hily dating app and LGBTQ platform Taimi, reflects on a difficult but rewarding year, operating his businesses in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. Despite the challenges of scaling a business during wartime, Pasykov learned the importance of setting ambitious goals, trying new things, and providing his team with comfortable working conditions. His team's ability to work creatively without electricity during blackouts demonstrated their resilience and teamwork. Pasykov and his team also volunteered in the community, providing supplies and support to those affected by the war. Pasykov encourages businesses to always have a plan for the worst-case scenario, as there are many potential threats to any business.

by Alex Pasykov
See full article a Tech.eu

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Ukraine

OPW - Alex Pasykov is Founder/CEO of Hily & Taimi, and is Ukrainian. I think he says it best (and recommends two impactful charities) in his post on Linkedin w/respect to the pure terror happening in Ukraine right now.

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

Hily Dating App Creates 15 Profiles of Adoptable Pets in Austin

PATCH.COM - Aug 12 - Hily has partnered with Austin Pets Alive! to create 15 profiles for homeless cats and dogs looking for their forever home. The campaign, called "It's a petch!", started on Aug. 2 and will continue through the end of this month. Each pet profile features cute photos and a short introduction of each pet.

by Meagan Falcon
See full article at Patch.com

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Why to Consider React Native When Building an App From Scratch

FORBES - Apr 20 - Aleksandr Pasykov is the founder of Hily Dating App and Taimi, the biggest LGBTQ+ platform featuring a social network and dating app. He started working on Taimi in 2017. "We realized there's a demand for a safe online space where LGBTQ+ people could build relationships. We needed a framework that would allow us to create the app from scratch in a short time, and our developer built the app in less than two months using React Native." React Native is an open-source app framework that was released by Facebook in 2015. It allows developers to combine native code with React, making it perfect for updating existing applications. React Native offer unprecedented speed and efficiency, and you can create and update apps on Android and iOS simultaneously. One issue is the framework’s performance. For example, if you want to add a newsfeed to your app, React Native may not have high enough speed and performance levels, so such changes will have to be made in native code. Another challenge companies may face is the lack of React Native experts.

by Alexander Pasykov
See full article at Forbes

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Hily Launches a New Feature That Blurs Inappropriate Pictures

MEDIUM.COM - Mar 5 - Hily's new safety feature will detect any inappropriate or explicit content and warn users about it by blurring the image. The senders of the inappropriate pics will be notified and get a warning. In addition, their in-app "risk score" will go up. Once users' "risk score" reaches a certain level, the app will limit their activity.

See full article at Medium

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Wonderland Teamed up With Hily for Love Stories Videos

WONDERLAND MAGAZINE - Dec 14 - Wonderland have teamed up with Hily for Love Stories, a video series chronicling different journeys that can be achieved with the dating app - showcasing different friends and couples.

See full article at Wonderland Magazine

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Hily Streaming Feature Is Live

MEDIUM.COM - Nov 30 - After a couple of months of testing, Hily dating app is launching Live Streams, which are free and available globally. To go live users click on the "play" symbol in the app menu, agree to the conditions listed above, set a welcome message, and start streaming. If a streamer turns the Live Talks feature on, anyone can join the Live Stream and talk to the streamer for 90 seconds.

See full article at Medium

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Hily Dating App Comes to Japan

BUSINESSWIRE - May 26 - Hily, one of the fastest-growing dating apps in the world that gathered ~11M users just in one year, is now available in Japan. Hily's primary goal is to provide its users with better communication. The app matches the users based on ~40 entry points. Hily's newest feature called Compatibility Quiz allows users to check if they are compatible with people they want to swipe right on. The system will show detailed results with points they had in common and a description of their prospective relationship. For Hily, the Japanese launch is the first move to Asia. Last year, the dating app successfully rolled out to 20 countries in Europe and Latin America.

See full article at Businesswire

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Dating App Hily Launches Video Calls

ABNEWSWIRE - May 21 - According to Hily's last poll of its 1500 users, 52% of respondents would love to try virtual dating. The app is now launching a new video chat feature. Hily enables its users to call only those people with whom they have a match. Also, the users can switch off the video calls function in the settings at any time.

See full article at Virtual Strategy

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Hily Is Encouraging Singles to Take Their Profiles More Seriously

DIGITAL JOURNAL - Apr 28 - Dating app Hily has launched a new video campaign called "Is This Profile Really Fake." Five short clips are meant to break myths about the profiles users think are fake. According to Hily's recent survey, singles called fake almost every profile they didn't like. 53% of them believe if the profile has only one picture, it is fake. According to Hily's moderation team, 17% of Hily's verified users have only one image. 48% of users think if a person in the picture is "too beautiful," it means the profile is fake. So this campaign gives users a perspective on what profiles people think are fake and encourage them to take filling in their dating profiles more seriously", says Hily's Head of Business Development Halyna Virt.

See full article at Digital Journal

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Hily to Adopt Snapchat Stories

DIGITAL JOURNAL - Apr 3 - Dating app Hily is partnering with Snapchat to allow users to share their snaps in Hily profiles. Hily is the first dating app to adopt this new Snapchat feature called App Stories. To post their Snapchat stories to Hily, the users will have to connect the two apps. Everyone on Hily will see a pop-up banner with a set of clear instructions on how to use the new feature. The users will be able to repost Snapchat stories directly or share snaps without publishing them to Snapchat first. Hily (an acronym for "Hey, I like you") is a Las Vegas-based dating app with ~15M users around the globe.

See full article at Digital Journal

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Taimi Hits 5 Million Users Worldwide

OPEN PR - Apr 1 - Taimi, the LGBTQI+ social network and dating app now has ~5M users. The app launched in 2017 as a gay dating app at first, but in 2019 it became a full fledged LGBTQI+ app. Taimi was created by Alex Pasykov, a founder of a popular dating app Hily.

See full article at Open PR

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Study: Half of American Singles Tried to Score a Last-minute Valentine's Date

MENAFN - Feb 11 - Hily dating app asked 3K of its single users from the U.S. if they feel pressure with Valentine's Day coming. 42% of women and 47% of men struggled to find a date before Valentine's Day just because they didn't want to be alone. Only 6% of female users and 8% of male users have actually succeeded in it. 38% of men and 36% of women feel like they need to find a date. Hily is an acronym for "Hey, I like you". Hily's CEO Alex Pasykov also founded Taimi, the first LGBTQ+ dating app and social network.

See full article at MENAFN

See the top news on Hily

OPW Podcast - The Top Dating Industry News for Dec 17th

OPW - Dec 17 - Acquisition rumor?, Rankings Update, Hily growth, The League video dates.

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.