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

9 Dating Apps and Sites That Died

MASHABLE - Here are nine dating sites and apps that died. RIP.

1. Sparked
   Facebook Dating launched in 2019, five years after founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook was a better dating site than Tinder. Facebook Dating has thousands of active users, while Tinder has millions. Facebook tried again with Sparked, a video speed dating app that launched last year. Sparked shut down less than a year after its inception.
2. Chappy
   UK reality star Ollie Locke launched gay dating app Chappy in 2018 with help from Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd. Chappy shut down and folded into Bumble just two years later.
3. Hater
   Hater made waves back in 2017. This app's niche was connecting people through things they despise. App founder Brandon Alper pitched Hater on Shark Tank in 2017 and received $200K from billionaire Mark Cuban, but the following year Hater wasn't making money.
4. HowAboutWe
   HowAboutWe was an innovative dating app in that singles snagged dates by suggesting activities with each other. HowAboutWe's demise was due to a buyout. Match acquired HowAboutWe in 2014, and the site is no more.
5. Spoonr
   First called Cuddlr, the app launched in 2014 to help people find platonic cuddle buddies. Cuddlr shut down in 2015 and rebranded as Spoonr months later. Spoonr closed in 2017 with a tweet: "It was fun while it lasted! SPOONR is now closed! Hugs."
6. Siren
   Siren launched in 2015 by two women of color to "fight the swipe" of dating apps created by men. Instead of swiping, Siren posed daily questions for users to answer and seek potential matches based on whose responses they liked. Siren shuttered in 2017 with a blog post. Co-founders Susie Lee and Katrina Hess claimed that investors didn't complete their payments, and the app ran out of money.
7. Missed Connections
   Oh, Craigslist Missed Connections. Gone too soon.
8. Yahoo! Personals
   A site with the same fate as Craigslists' personals, Yahoo! Personals shuttered in 2010 when it merged with Match.
9. GreatBoyfriends.com and GreatGirlfriends.com
   A two-for-one, GreatBoyfriends and GreatGirlfriends launched in 2002 by then-Elle Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. GreatBoyfriends and Girlfriends died after wedding site The Knot acquired them in 2005.

by Anna Iovine
See full article at Mashable

Is On-Demand Dating A Tinder Killer

MASHABLE - Aug 18 - Clover, Whim, Pure and HowAboutWe's Tonight app offer on-demand functions which cut to the chase so users can aggressively get on each others' calendars. Clover just closed $2M in funding (bringing total investment to $4M). Close behind Clover is upstart Whim, which launched in LA in 2014. Markedly different from Whim and Clover is the unabashedly more hookup-focused Pure, which is so radical and in-the-moment in its "demand" nature, that there are actually no profiles or Facebook integration. Having raised 10 times less investment capital than Clover ($400K versus $4M), Pure is already cash-positive.

by Mandy Stadtmiller
See full article at Mashable

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See all posts on Tonight              See all posts on Whim

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Match Group To IPO This Year

PR NEWSWIRE - June 25 - IAC's Board of Directors has approved the pursuit of an IPO of Match Group. Joey Levin, formerly CEO of its Search & Apps business, has been named CEO of IAC and joined its Board of Directors. Greg Blatt will remain Chairman, and Sam Yagan CEO of The Match Group. IAC expects The Match Group to issue less than 20% of its common stock in the IPO, with IAC's remaining stake in The Match Group represented by both high- and low-vote common shares. The IPO is expected to be completed during Q4 of this year.

See full article at IAC website

See all posts on Match

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

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HowAboutWe Launches New Dating App "Tonight"

METRO.US - Apr 16 - Tonight is a new dating app from HowAboutWe. “We’re bringing an entirely new experience to HowAboutwe,” said CEO and co-founder Brian Schecter. “The idea is that someone can say, ‘I want to go out tonight,’ and they can see users who also want to go out tonight.” Users get a “look book” of 20 people to like or not like, similar to Tinder or Hinge. Then, Tonight sets up the user with a “match” after both users like each other, but Tonight will only set users up with one match. Schecter is also relaunching HowAboutWe to be free for mutual matches. Users who like and like each other back will be able to message each other free of charge – a change from HowAboutWe’s old model, in which users had to pay to communicate.

by Andrea Park
See full article at Metro.us

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How Teachers And CEOs Are Alike: An Essay By Aaron Schildkrout

EDWEEK - Apr 11 - Aaron Schildkrout runs Growth Platform at Uber, in San Fran. Previously, he was the co-founder of HowAboutWe. He was a teacher for four years at Codman Academy Charter Public School, in Boston.

Teaching is a lot more like being a CEO. They say the three jobs of the CEO are to make sure there is cash in the bank, to hire great people, and to define the vision. I’d add to that: to build highly effective processes. If you achieve these four things, you will have “nothing to do.” I became a data-driven teacher long before I was a data-driven CEO. I was often giving students 10 or more quantitative grades during every class. I would put a spreadsheet transparency on an overhead and would add micro-grades to it throughout the class. I would then add the grades to our school’s online grading system. Consequently, the students got addicted to checking — and improving — their grades. It’s the same for the CEO. The goal is for every single person in the company to qualitatively understand their goals and their progress toward these goals.

Luckily, being a teacher — like being a CEO—is profoundly fulfilling, independent of compensation and status.

by Aaron Schildkrout
See full article at EdWeek

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Avoid Delusional Thinking In Start-up Growth Strategy

@ANDREWCHEN - Oct 13 - IAC’s HowAboutWe co-founder, Aaron Schildkrout, explains a basic overview of why magical thinking is so pervasive in early stage online dating distribution strategies, with regards to Virality, Press, BizDev, Content, SEO, and Paid Acquisition / Direct Marketing. He explains that the most important and powerful customer acquisition tactic is building a product that people love. The other tactics are important — and sometimes become the key to growth — but in almost no consumer product cases can they be relied upon.

by Aaron Schildkrout
See full article at @andrewchen

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IAC: The Big Matchmaker

MARKETPLACE - Aug 8 - Tinder makes ~ 2M “matches” a day and is just one of the online dating brands under the banner of InterActiveCorp that includes Match.com, OkCupid, HowAboutWe, BlackPeopleMeet, and OurTime. Experts thought the future of online dating was in small niche sites, but the big sites are winning for a simple reason. “It’s like a shop,” said Mark Brooks. “You’ve really got to stock the shelves. You can’t make do with a few hundred people. You need to have thousands of active people on a dating site.” IAC doesn't combine all the sites into one because, as Sam Yagan explains, dating is “such an intimate and personal search process, that people care a lot about the emotional affiliation they have with the brand that they choose.” Having the sites under one roof provides opportunities for cross-promotion. The strategy has led IAC to control more than 1/4 of the $2.2B online dating market in the U.S., twice the next biggest competitor, eHarmony.

by Dan Bobkoff
See full article at Marketplace

Dating Startups Don’t Stand A Chance Against IAC

WIRED - July 17 - For dating startups, resistance against IAC is futile. Many of the companies that do come along with a new idea, like HowAboutWe, inevitably fail or surrender to IAC. Zoosk, which filed its S-1 with the SEC earlier this year, is one exception.

by Issie Lapowsky
See full article at Wired

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IAC Buys HowAboutWe, But Not HowAboutWe Couples

NY TIMES - July 14 - Match Group has acquired parts of HowAboutWe. The price is unknown, and the deal includes HowAboutWe’s dating and media properties. It does not involve the Couples side of the business. As a result, only a portion of HowAboutWe employees will move to IAC. Other employees will remain with the Couples business, while some have been laid off.

by Mike Isaac
See full article at NY Times

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Finding Love Through Social Media Is More Appealing

NY TIMES - June 28 - Last May, the Pew Research Center surveyed ~2,2K people and found that 15% had used social media to ask someone out on a date. Apps including Secret and Whisper, that allow people to post anonymously, are also being used to make love connections. Armen Avedissian, COO of eHarmony, said the popularity of social media appears to have led to a heightened awareness of dating apps and services. Aaron Schildkrout, co-founder of HowAboutWe, said it was possible for social media and dating apps to coexist and profit.

by Jenna Wortham
See full article at NY Times

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IAC To Acquire HowAboutWe

BUSINESS INSIDER - June 27 - The deal has not yet been finalized. It's expected to close on Monday, at which point, a number of HowAboutWe employees may lose their jobs. HowAboutWe and IAC have been in serious deal talks for the past week. It's unclear how much IAC will be paying for HowAboutWe, or if the brand will continue to standalone among the other dating brands in IAC's portfolio.

by Alyson Shontell & Hunter Walter
See full article at Business Insider

See all posts on HowAboutWe

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

HowAboutWe Interview With CEO Aaron Schildkrout

OPW INTERVIEW - June 16 - There's a couple of companies in the online dating industry that have done a good job with innovation, and HowAboutWe is a standout in thinking different. Here is our interview with Aaron Schildkrout, Founder and CEO of HowAboutWe.

HowAboutWe is all about getting offline. Tell us more about that. 
We wanted to make online dating all about meeting up in the real world. Even with HowAboutWe for Couples we want to make date night happen. Studies show that if you repeatedly surprise each other, then you're 300% more likely to be happy in your relationship.

Delightful closed down after three months. What's your thoughts on what happened?
This is a huge space. There are a lot of companies that got it right in terms of direction, but not necessarily in terms of execution. The big winners are yet to be determined.

You're maintaining the relationship with the people that you've been successful with, rather than losing them to the wind.
The couples space is going to be 20x bigger than the dating space ever will be.

How is the acquisition of Nerve working out? 
It's going really well. We have a significantly sized and very skilled editorial team that is now building content for Nerve.com, Swimmingly.com, which is focused on relationships; Famously.com, which is focused on celebrity relationships; and The Date Report, which was our original blog.

I hear that Zoosk revenues are approaching 50/50 for mobile.  How's that compare with HowAboutWe? 
Views are higher, but revenue is trailing only slightly. We're seeing those two lines converge. Mobile is our most important channel by far. We're seeing the most engagement there. I think that this trend will only continue.

How do you deal with location in your apps? 
We want to provide extremely relevant information based on where you are. We connect singles with people who want to date in the same places. Our next "You&Me" release will include a major location feature that lets couples track their adventures together.

It seems like you're bringing together some pieces of the pie which would serve a higher service level – less time invested but more help getting to the date quicker – a' la matchmaker. Is this an area that you believe in?
Very much. There is a large market opportunity around a matchmaking service that is facilitated by the Internet. People who buy luxury goods want a carefully crafted, curated, personalized concierge service-level experience for finding love.

Do you have a wearable game plan? 
Finding the user experience in the wearable space that will work in the dating space is tricky. It's much easier in the couples space. We already have a prototype for You&Me on Google Glass.

See all posts on HowAboutWe

HowAboutWe Launches You&Me Messaging App For Couples

TECH CRUNCH - May 1 - You&Me and is the first standalone project out of the company. Users have a whole set of options for the type of messages they can send their partners. There are standard photo, text, and video messages, as well as the ability to send voice memos and their favorite song. The You&Me app is free and available now in the App Store.

by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Online Dating Sites As Political Activists

WASHINGTON POST - Apr 18 - When Gary Kremen, founder of Match.com, did his first TV interview, he said his site would “bring more love to the planet than anything since Jesus Christ.” Neil Clark Warren started eHarmony with a vision to “literally change the world.” Three weeks ago, OkCupid helped galvanize support for the ouster of Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla. Dating site may go to bat for certain interest groups, but only when doing so is easy, cost-free and consistent with building its brand. eHarmony has been alone in its willingness to risk resources and sacrifice customers over politics. From 2006 to 2008, the site spent millions to fight gay daters who demanded that eHarmony cater to them. “As online dating plays an important role in how we fall in love, we have a growing responsibility to advocate for our customers,” says Brian Schechter, co-founder of HowAboutWe. “This of course involves advocating for equal rights and respect for all sexual orientations.”

by Dan Slater
See full article at Washington Post

See all posts on Match.com        See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on OkCupid            See all posts on HowAboutWe

Q&A With Aaron Schildkrout, Co-Founder Of HowAboutWe

NY OBSERVER - Apr 8 - Aaron Schildkrout cofounded HowAboutWe four years ago with his longtime friend, Brian Schechter.

Q: What originally motivated you to found HAW?
A: Online dating sites were broken. They were focused on keeping people online. HAW is all about getting offline.

Q: How did you decide to make HowAboutWe for Couples?
A: We realized that couples also need to explore new places for their dates.

Q: Have you expanded in any other ways?
A: We created HowAboutWe media, which is the third division of our company. We had created a company blog called The Date Report. We acquired Nerve.com, and launched two additional blogs.

Q: Are there any leadership tactics unique to running a dating service?
A: You have to have a great product, be different and really innovate. You also have to be very good at customer acquisition.

by Jordyn Taylor
See full article at NY Observer

See all posts on HowAboutWe