LA TIMES - July 26 - eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren left retirement four years ago to bring the site back to relevance. Mission accomplished. Now he is returning to retirement and Grant Langston, VP of brand marketing, assumed the CEO role Monday. His focus will be on improving the company's website and app. "Newer dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel have attracted millions of young users with simpler interfaces. It's time for eHarmony to catch up", Langston said. Leading the effort is Ken Walker, a former executive at job search start-up ZipRecruiter who was named chief product officer last month. The product went neglected as Warren prioritized turning around other facets, Langston noted. eHarmony's TV ads had become less effective in driving user sign-ups. He doesn't expect other executives who may have been skipped over for the CEO position to depart, but he's sure that there will be personnel changes.
55 posts categorized "Outlets - LA Times"
eHarmony's New CEO Vows To Make The App Simpler
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Tinder CEO Sean Rad: "Getting Fired Turned Out Great"
LATIMES - May 14 - In late 2014, Sean Rad was removed from the CEO role and replaced by a former eBay executive - Christopher Payne. "I felt humiliated, I wanted to leave and never look back", he said. "I would give that title up in a second if it meant I could continue building at Tinder," he said. "Not being a leader anymore is exactly what taught me to lead". "Being a leader doesn't mean being an expert with all the answers". Five months later, Rad was back in as CEO.
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Three Day Rule Lands Funding
LATIMES - Mar 29 - Three Day Rule has raised $650K from the Dallas Angels Network investment group and $550K from several wealthy individuals. The company's 20 matchmakers use software and intuition to find potential partners for customers, who pay ~$4K for three months of assistance. Agreements with Match.com, JDate, Christian Mingle and OkCupid allow Three Day Rule to choose from people listed on those dating sites too. Match.com led a $1.25M investment in Three Day Rule in 2014.
by Paresh Dave
See full article at LATimes
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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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Gay Dating App Grindr Gets $93M Investment From A Chinese Company
LATIMES - Jan 12 - Gay dating app Grindr has handed majority ownership to Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun World Wide Technology for $93M valuing Grindr at $248M post-investment. Grindr had been exploring a sale or fundraising round for much of last year.
by Paresh Dave
See full article at LATimes
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
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Whim Dating App Sets Up Dates Quickly
LA TIMES - Jan 28 - Eve Peters, the former product lead at OKCupid Labs, launched Whim, a dating app that takes people offline as soon as possible. If two people are interested in each other (both swipe right), they're going on a date. They tell the app when they're available, and it'll tell them when and where they're meeting. Whim will launch as a subscription service priced from $12 to $30 a month. Clover, another dating app, recently added On-Demand Dating, similar to what Whim has planned.
by Tracey Lien
See full article at LA Times
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Train Spottings: Matchmaking For New Yorkers On The Move
LA TIMES - Jan 8 - Erika Christensen started Train Spottings, a matchmaking service for New York's subway riders. "If you want to meet someone, you have to go where people are. They're on the subway," said Christensen, who launched Train Spottings two years ago. Train Spottings recently claimed its first marriage. Erika approaches both men and women on the subway platforms and asks them whether they are single. If they say yes, she gives them her business card.
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Lulu: Controversial App For Rating Men
LA TIMES - July 14 - Lulu lets women rate their male friends, lovers and ex-boyfriends. When women download Lulu, it syncs with their Facebook accounts to verify that they’re female. Men are blocked. Once in the app, women can read anonymous reviews posted by other Lulu users and add your own ratings and create a profile for a male. The percentage of real and independently written reviews is unknown. Males can tell their sides or remove their profiles from Lulu through a separate app called LuluDude. Lulu founder Alexandra Chong originally raised $1M in 2011, and secured an additional $2.5M in seed financing in 2012.
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eHarmony Study: Couples Who Met Online Have Happier Marriage
LA TIMES - June 3 - The study was led by John Cacioppo, a respected social psychologist at the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and scientific advisor to eHarmony. Those who turn to the Internet to find a mate may be more committed to finding a long-term relationship than those who don't. People open to online dating may have other strengths, including certain cognitive skills such as empathy, persistence or impulse-control, that help foster happiness in committed relationships. Online daters may also be hunting for a mate from a larger and more diverse pool of prospects, he said. As a result, they may be more likely to find a compatible long-term match. Finally, online dating sites may give potentially compatible partners more opportunities to reveal themselves to one another before meeting face-to-face.
by Melissa Healy
See full article at LA Times
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Tinder Aims To Make Dating Easier
LA TIMES - Mar 10 - Tinder, a new free dating app that, in a twist on the "hot or not" game, matches users with potential partners in their area without the risk of rejection. Since October, the app has helped make ~20M matches, the company said. Tinder is financially backed by InterActiveCorp's business accelerator Hatch Labs. After downloading the app, Tinder syncs to your existing Facebook profile and integrates public data about you to rate your compatibility based on your shared friends, interests, networks and location. If you're interested in a person, you swipe left; if you're not, you can move on to the next candidate by swiping right. It's all anonymous until both Tinder users say they like each other. Then they can chat using the app.
by Jessica Naziri
See full article at LA Times
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eHarmony Founder Has His Heart Set On Reviving The Dating Site
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Dec 13 - Neil Clark Warren came out of retirement to take over as CEO. In the last three years, he said, new memberships, retention rates and time spent on the site were all down. eHarmony growth has slowed: Its 2012 revenue is estimated at $275M, up 3.8% from last year. That's down from 2008, when eHarmony saw 16.4% YOY growth. Now, just 15% of eHarmony's staff has been with the company at least five years. Warren wants to make eHarmony a broad "relationship site" that includes services to help users make new friends, find the right job, become better parents, cope with aging and solve interpersonal problems, among others. How eHarmony manages that wealth of member information — users fill out an extensive questionnaire when they join the site, answering questions about their daily habits, likes and dislikes, past experiences and goals — will be the key to whether the new ventures are successful, said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry consultant. "I've seen a few Internet dating companies moving into other areas and failing," Brooks said. "But in the case of eHarmony it makes a lot of sense because they have deeper information on their users than any other company I can think of." Still, Brooks said he doesn't want eHarmony to lose focus on its core business, which "no question should have been a half-a-billion-a-year-revenue company by now."
eHarmony declined to release financial details but said new memberships increased 20% in the last month from the month before. It also said a member's average total amount spent on the site is up 15% year over year.
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Hybrid Social Networks Help Users Connect Online, Meet Up Offline
LA TIMES - Nov 9 - Hybrid social networks are connecting strangers with similar interests online, then directing them to meet in person. The sites are doing especially well among 20s - 30s. Grubwithus is a Venice start-up that enables users to attend group meals. Grubwithus has tripled its user base since the beginning of the year, with meal reservations growing 15% month over month; the company claims 80K subscribers. It launched out of start-up accelerator program Y Combinator and has raised $7.6M in financing from investors including Ashton Kutcher and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Still, some of the start-ups have been slow to get off the ground. After receiving $5M in funding in the spring, Lifecrowd, an experience marketplace for in-person group activities such as kickball and kayaking, went offline a few weeks ago. On its website, the company promises to "be back soon with an even better Lifecrowd." Another rising tech start-up is Grouper, which connects two groups of friends for face-to-face hangouts after pairing them online. Users apply for membership and are matched with someone else on the site. Each person then invites two other friends to join in for drinks; after prepaying online for the first round of drinks, the group of six meets at a bar chosen by Grouper. The setup takes away some of the awkwardness of meeting someone new alone, said Michael Waxman, Grouper's co-founder and chief executive.
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Niche Dating Sites Changing The Dating Game
LA TIMES - Oct 28 – Hyper-specific niche matchmaking sites are changing the online dating game. Site like Atlasphere, VeggieDate and DisabledCupid allow users to find potential matches from people who share very important common traits. Dr. Robert Epstein, a San Diego County research psychologist, believes this can be the basis for a successful relationship.
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eHarmony CEO Job Is A Good Match For Jeremy Verba
LA TIMES - July 22 - Jeremy Verba, 49, became CEO of eHarmony in August 2011, replacing Greg Waldorf. Verba received a bachelor's degree in architecture from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School. As a 10-year-old, Verba worked as a newspaper boy. He later worked as a salesman at a hardware store or as a waiter and a garbage collector. "Every work experience teaches you something about yourself. I learned a lot about people and jobs that aren't necessarily fun." After getting his MBA, Verba held several positions in technology and media, including CEO of Piczo and GM of Zynga. "I've always migrated to businesses that have big impact, and that's what attracted me to eHarmony", he said. After noticing that many eHarmony users access the site from their smartphones and tablets, Verba has been working to grow the company's social media presence and improve its mobile platform. Mobile traffic now accounts for a third of eHarmony's activity.
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Skout App May Shut Teen Forum Permanently
LA TIMES - June 21 - Skout shut down its forum for 13- to-17-year-olds last week and assigned a team of security specialists to determine whether it can make the app safe for teens. If not, the company plans to close that forum for good. The alleged assaults on two girls, ages 12 and 15, and on a 13-year-old boy underscore how tough it can be to keep kids safe on a new generation of mobile apps. Skout was originally created as a flirting app for adults, and users had to be 18 or older to sign up. It morphed into more of a social networking app that finds people nearby with whom a user can swap messages, photos and virtual gifts and make plans to meet up. But so many of the app’s users were kids (~15%) that last year Skout opened a separate forum for teens.
by Jessica Guynn & Michelle Maltais
The full article was originally published at The Republic, but is no longer available.
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eHarmony Helps Couples Share Their Love Story On Facebook
LA TIMES - June 14 - While some couples have tried creating a single Facebook account to share between the two of them, which can get a little messy, an upcoming eHarmony app will let couples share their blended life. It's not limited to users of eHarmony. eHarmony's Facebook app capitalizes on Facebook's Timeline by culling from users seperate accounts, shared check-ins, posts between the two of them and photos they're both tagged in. From that information, it puts together a timeline of their romance from their first meeting.
by Michelle Maltais
The full article was originally published at LA Times, but is no longer available.
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