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

CONFIRMED: Match Group Acquires The League

OPW - Match has just closed an acquisition of The League, a premium, niche dating app with a curated member base focused on matching career-oriented users looking for serious relationships. The app has an admissions-based model where potential users can apply to join by submitting their social media profiles. Users are then waitlisted until they pass a screening algorithm and review process. It can be used for free members buy a subscription, which doubles their matches.

Mark Brooks: What Should Match Group Do Next? Please join the conversation. Voice your opinion on this Swell.

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Is Match Group Acquiring The League?

OPW - A little bird told us that Match Group is about to acquire The League, a dating app that connects high-achieving individuals with one another, using a selective admissions-based model. The League was launched in 2014 by Amanda Bradford. Watch this space for updates.

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Voice - the New Secret to Online Dating Success

WALL STREET JOURNAL - Dating apps are giving users the ability to add voice recordings to their profiles. Last October, Hinge added Voice Prompts to its user profiles. "~65% of our users were saying getting to hear someone's voice earlier on in the dating journey would be really valuable," said Michelle Parsons, chief product officer at Hinge. In June 2021, Tinder gave users the ability to add video recordings - including voice - to their profiles. The League dating app did the same back in December 2019. A quarter of League users are taking advantage of the technology.

by Kathryn O'Shea-Evans
See full article at Wall Street Journal

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How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Online Dating Landscape

FORBES - Mar 8 - Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd recently became the world's youngest self-made billionaire after her dating app's wildly successful IPO. Bumble's success serves as a wake-up call for an industry that has traditionally been dominated by male leadership. Kim Kaplan, who was also part of the founding team of Plenty of Fish, launched Snack, a dating app that blends video with communication features popularized by Tinder and Bumble. Wolfe Herd and Kaplan are not the only women founders and executives changing the dating app game for the better. Based in San Francisco, the three Kang sisters - Arum, Dawoon and Soo - cofounded the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel. Another female founder, Amanda Bradford saw the need for ambitious, working professionals. She launched The League, a dating app that draws member information from LinkedIn.

by Serenity Gibbons
See full article at Forbes

See the top news on Bumble                         See the top news on The League
See the top news on Coffee Meets Bagel       See the top news on Snack             

CEO of The League: "We'll Find More Connection Online"

QUARTZ - June 30 - To envision a future altered by coronavirus, Quartz asked dozens of experts for their best predictions on how the world will be different in five years. Below is an answer from Amanda Bradford, Founder & CEO of online dating site The League. Covid-19 has certainly changed the way we interact and connect. In times of crisis, people are clearly looking for contact and support, and they're finding it on dating apps like The League. "We've updated our app to include a live video function. We've added an extra session of our video speed dating event, League Live, each week, giving users double the chance of connecting with a new face over video. Since March we've seen a huge increase in our League Live sessions and a 41% increase in video chat usage."

See full article at Quartz

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Dating Apps Pivot to Video

WALL STREET JOURNAL - July 1 - With social distancing recommendations and laws in effect across the country, meeting people online and developing relationships virtually has never been more popular. Georgia Wells, WSJ's technology reporter and Mark Brooks, CEO of the Courtland Brooks consultancy-agency explore what this shift means for the future of online dating.

See full article at Wall Street Journal

The League Officially Launched in South Africa

ITWEB - May 22 - Founded in 2015, The League was created by Amanda Bradford, who also serves as CEO, and is modelled after private members-only clubs like Soho House. The members-only swiping app, aimed at professionals, uses data and social graphs from both Facebook and LinkedIn to fuel its proprietary algorithm. In South Africa, it joins other popular apps like Tinder, EliteSingles, Predict Dating App and SouthAfricanCupid, to name a few.

by Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
See full article at ITWeb

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The League App Rolls out Nationwide

PR NEWSWIRE - Mar 4 - The League is opening its doors to the rest of the U.S.' metro areas including Baton Rouge, LA, Knoxville, TN, Columbia, SC, Charlottesville, VA, and Roanoke, VA. Launched in 2015 and modeled after private members­-only clubs like Soho House, The League is known for its selective admissions-based model and high­-achieving community of users.

See full article at PR Newswire

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The League to Launch in Singapore

E27.CO - Jan 30 - San Francisco-based dating app, The League, is set for an official launch in Singapore on February 2. Prior to this launch, The League has already been available in 59 cities in the US. Founded in 2014, the dating app was created to connect high-achieving individuals with one another, using a selective admissions-based model.

by Shagun Karki
See full article at E27.co

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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.

Elite Dating App The League Brings Back Speed Dating

INSIDEHOOK - Dec 16 - League Live is a new video speed-dating feature from The League, the elite dating app. Interested users can opt in to League Live once a week on Sunday nights, and The League will select three matches based on each user's preferences and past behavior on the app. The goal is to spare users the time and energy wasted on bad first dates by replicating that in-person experience in a micro-speed date that doesn't require users to leave their apartment.

by Kayla Kibbe
See full article at InsideHook

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Swiping Meant Dating This Decade, and It's Time for a Change

THE VERGE - Dec 11 - As we close out the decade, it might be time to retire the swipe we once knew. The swipe was born only seven years ago, and in that time, it's conquered online dating and made it mainstream. Dating apps are expected to top 25M users in the US this year, and as of 2017, 39% of heterosexual couples in the US said they met online, up from 22% in 2009, according to a recent study. Tinder lowered the barriers to online dating and gamified it. As we enter 2020, the apps seem to be finding out that the swipe alone is no longer cutting it. They're differentiating themselves by creating slower experiences that result in real dates with real people, presumably picking up on daters' wants. Even Tinder is experimenting with ways to augment the swipe and give people more context than just a yes or no. It launched Swipe Night, an interactive video feature, this year that gives daters the option to swipe on people who made similar decisions to them during the experience. The League is using automated, two-minute video calls to help daters filter through matches. New dating app Bounce concentrate on the real-life part of dating by giving people no room to talk and instead focus on the meetup. The app is only live at specific times.

by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge

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Dating Apps Are Turning to Message-free Meetups

INSIDER - Dec 2 - Dating app creators are experimenting with old-school dating methods. Video "speed dating" features, text-only profiles, and apps that ban in-app messaging have emerged recently. The League, which launched in 2014, recently announced League Live, a feature where users can go on two-minute video "speed dates" with potential matches. People who use League Live are four times more likely to match with someone than people who use the non-"speed dating" version of The League, according to an emailed statement from the League. The new app Bounce also emphasizes face-to-face meetups. It allows users to "check-in" at specific locations as a way to say they're interested in going on a date around that geographic area. Lex, a new dating app for the queer community, takes another old-school approach by allowing people to scroll through a feed of personal ad-style call-outs. People who use Lex can't post photos, so the connections have to go beyond physical appearances.

by Julia Naftulin
See full article at Insider

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Dating App The League Will Pair up Users for Two-minute Live Video Dates

THE VERGE - Nov 19 - The League, a dating app that requires LinkedIn verification to join, is launching its version of speed dating next month: two-minute video dates that take place within the app. It's called League Live, and the company will allow people to opt in to the video dates, which take place at 9PM local time on Sundays starting on December 1st. CEO Amanda Bradford says that, in initial beta testing, users between the ages of 35 and 40 liked the feature most, likely because their time is at more of a premium. Although the feature is available to both paying and free users, Bradford says only users who have a high "League Score" will have access. The League Score is measured by factors like how often they log on, whether they’ve been reported by other users, and how complete their profile is.

by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge

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San Francisco Event: Modern Love

OPW - Oct 2 - HBS Alumni of Northern California are hosting an interesting evening event which includes Amanda Bradford, CEO of The League on October 16th. Amanda is an interesting speaker, and this looks like a good panel. See link.