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

Bumble Responded To Match Lawsuit With An Ad

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 20 - Tinder's parent company Match Group is suing its competition Bumble, accusing the app of stealing trade secrets and patents. The complaint also says that Bumble has rolled out two new features that were "learned of and developed confidentially while at Tinder". Bumble is responding with a full-page ad in the New York Times, "We swipe left on your multiple attempts to buy us, copy us, and now, to intimidate us." The ad goes onto say that Bumble isn't afraid of aggressive corporate culture. "That's what we call bullying, and we swipe left on bullies," it says, noting the thousands of users the company has blocked for "bad behavior."

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the IDEA team

Bumble Is Becoming The LA Clippers' Jersey Sponsor

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 6 - Bumble's logo will now appear on the jersey of the LA Clippers. The multi-year, eight-figure partnership comes a little over a year after the league announced a program to include sponsored patches on team's jerseys. So far about 20 teams have inked deals with sponsors, including tech companies like Stubhub, Fitbit and Rakuten. Bumble says they will work with brands that have strong female representation in executive management.

by Fitz Tepper
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Bumble Is Hiring An Editorial Director To Build Out Its Media Brand

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 10 - Bumble is hiring Clare O'Connor as its first Editorial Director, who will work directly with CEO Wolfe Herd and Bumble's content team to develop editorial content for their new arm called Bumble Media. O'Connor most recently was a staff writer at Forbes where she covered woman entrepreneurs, workplace equality, and diversity in tech and Silicon Valley. Outside of written editorial content Bumble will also invest in original video content spanning a range of format and genres. This video effort will be led by TV producers Erin and Sara Foster, who together are Bumble's Heads of Creative. The video below made by Bumble is a good example of what this may look like.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

The League Is Making Everyone's First Profile Picture Black And White

TECH CRUNCH - Oct 23 - Exclusive dating app The League is going monochrome. Starting today, everyone's first profile picture will be displayed in black and white. The goal here is to get users to spend more time taking a holistic look at a potential match, and make sure they're not making a rash decision before saying yes or no. "It's easy for people to make snap judgments based on hair, skin or eye color, but harder to do when a photo is in monochrome" explained the startup.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Turned Down $450 Million Buyout Offer From Match Group

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 23 - Match Group offered to acquire Bumble for $450 million over the summer, according to sources close to the deal. Bumble launched in 2014, reached 1M users within a year of launch and reportedly has 18M registered users now. Since, they launched BumbleBFF (a service for meeting new friends) and BumbleBiz (for professionals looking for a new job) and introduced paid features. A source close to the company estimates the value of Bumble at over $1B.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Launches SuperSwipe And In-app Currency

TECH CRUNCH - July 13 - Bumble's new SuperSwipe feature is similar to Tinder's Super Like button, which launched in late 2015. At the time Tinder said that conversations initiated with a Super Like lasted an average of 70% longer than other conversations. To let users pay for this new feature, Bumble is launching Bumble Coins. Priced at $0.99 each with a discount for buying in bulk, these coins will become the official in-app currency to pay for SuperSwipes, as well as additional paid features that the dating app will be launching before the end of the year.

by Fitz Tepper
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WittyThumbs Helps Decipher What Messages Really Mean

TECH CRUNCH - June 6 - WittyThumbs is essentially RapGenius for dating conversations. Users take a screenshot of their text messages, upload it to the site, and other users can annotate and give feedback. There's also a premium option to chat with a dating expert for one on one feedback – this is billed by the minute, and starts at $30 for 30 minutes of advice.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Is Opening A Physical Space In New York For Dates To Meet Up

TECH CRUNCH - June 2 - Bumble is opening a pop-up location in New York City. While the space will be open during the week for couples to meet up (or friends to just stop in and check it out), there will also be a series of events focused on relationships, female entrepreneurship and more. The space will also have a coffee (and real) bar, as well as Bumble merchandise for sale (where all proceeds go to charity). It will be located in Soho at 158 Mercer Street.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Exclusive Dating App The League Is Launching In 10 More Cities This Summer

TECH CRUNCH - May 24 - Originally launched in early 2015, the app is still only in 7 cities – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C and London. But the startup just announced they are adding 10 cities before the end of August. They are: Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Seattle and Toronto. The startup will also be hosting a launch party in each city.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Is Launching Video Stories

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 10 - Bumble is releasing BumbleVID, a feature which will allow users to record 10-second videos directly within Bumble, which will disappear after 24 hours. Users can also add pre-recorded videos, but only ones taken in the last 24 hours.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Vs Tinder

TECH CRUNCH - Jan 3 - Now that Bumble is just about two years ago, we can start looking back and comparing it to where Tinder was at its two year birthday. Back in 2014 Tinder was expanding beyond college campuses and set on becoming dating app for all. Two years in the company was seeing a billion swipes a day, and matching ~12M people a day. On average, active users were spending ~90 minutes per day in the app. Bumble, on the other hand, reported that just 18 months after inception users were spending ~100 minutes a day in the app. And two years after launching, the company is matching ~4M people a day and seeing ~220M swipes per day. Swipe-based dating apps are much more common than they were two years ago. There is much more competition, and when Tinder was young it was one of the only app-based dating platforms in the space.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Invests In Gay Dating App Chappy

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 14 - Bumble, the dating app that puts women in the driver's seat, has invested in gay dating app Chappy. The details were not disclosed but Bumble is the sole investor in the round and will take an equity stake. In exchange, Bumble will be offering product development and marketing support. Chappy is a gay dating app based in the UK.

by Fitz Tepper
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This post also appear on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Is Monetizing With Paid Features

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 16 - Starting today users will be able to pay for three new features for $9.99 per month, with discounts available if they prepay for 3 or 6 months. The three features are called Beeline (shows only users who swiped right), Rematch (keeps expired matches in users' queue) and Busybee (extends the 24-hour window so users can have another day to try to match with someone). Bumble has still refused to add any advertising to the platform.

by Fitz Tepper
See full article at Tech Crunch

Mark Brooks: Mobile dating apps will follow the same trajectory as Internet dating in its 1995-2005 genesis. I think we'll see a gradual shifting upwards of the mobile dating app paywalls. The mobile dating industry is getting to grips with its metrics now, and what it can afford for new member acquisition and expect for longer term ARPU. It will only get more expensive to acquire, so monetization will need to shift upwards as well.

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Introduces BumbleBizz

TECH CRUNCH - July 7 - Bumble is launching a feature to help users advance their career. BumbleBizz will be swipe-based, and let users create a new professional profile (which will exist separate from their dating profile) that holds information like what industry they work in, what their current job is, their education and more. The company will then use this information combined with geographical data to have an algorithm match users whose professional lives may benefit from being connected.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Is Partnering With Spotify

TECH CRUNCH - June 15 - Bumble users will have the option of connecting their dating profile to their Spotify account so it can include the top artists they listen to the most. While some may think music preferences aren't a big deal, Bumble is betting that they can be significant enough to influence whether or not you decide to swipe left or right on someone.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Monetization, Churn And How To Stand Out In The Mobile Dating Space

TECH CRUNCH - May 11 - At TechCrunch Disrupt NY Robyn Exton of Her, Dawoon Kang of Coffee Meets Bagel and Whitney Wolfe of Bumble discuss the latest trends in the mobile dating space. When asked about generating revenue, Dawoon Kang described a new feature that lets daters pay for an A/B test to figure out what photo they should use on their profiles. Wolfe noted that Bumble may soon introduce additional paid features, but will never charge for the safety functionality.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Launches BFF, A Feature To Find New Friends

TECH CRUNCH - Mar 5 - Bumble, the dating app where girls make the first move, has released an update with a new feature, called BFF. It lets users use the same swiping and matching algorithms for friendship instead of dating. Users have not only been requesting the feature, but have already been using the platform for that purpose, the company explained.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Dating App For Android Is Out Now

TECH CRUNCH - Dec 9 - Bumble, the dating app where girls have to make the first move, has finally launched its Android version. According to Whitney Wolfe, cofounder and CEO of Bumble, Bumble saw a 65% month-over-month growth, and ~80M matches were made by users.

by Fitz Tepper
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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Introduces New Verification Feature

TECH CRUNCH - Aug 10 - Bumble, the dating app where only women can initiate the conversations, is introducing a new verification feature - VIBee. The verification is based on users' positive contributions to Bumble. Verified users get a sticker on their profile and will be able to turn on a mode where they’re presented only with other VIBee users. The verification process is driven by an algorithm that takes into account behavior like what % of a user’s conversations are two-way, if a user has ever been reported for spam or abuse, or how likely a user is to follow up on conversations.

by Fitz Tepper
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Bumble Dating App Tops 1 Million Unique Conversations

TECH CRUNCH - June 12 - Bumble, the dating app founded by ex-Tinder employees, said its female users have started ~1M conversations on the platform. Bumble works like Tinder but once a match is established, only females can initiate conversations. ~60% of matches result in a conversation, according to cofounder Whitney Wolfe. Monthly active users grew by 65% during May. 55% of users are male and 45% female.

by Fitz Tepper
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