TECH CRUNCH - Oct 11 - In the Q3 of 2019, consumer revenue grew 22.9% YOY from $17.9B to reach ~$21.9B across both the App Store and Google Play worldwide, according to new data from Sensor Tower. The App Store continues to account for the large majority of this revenue, making up 65% of total spending compared with just 35% on Google Play. App Store users spent $14.2B, up 22.3% from $11.6B in Q3 2018. Google Play generated $7.7B in revenue, up 24% from $6.2B in Q3 2018. Despite the overall growth, one big app market - China - saw a slight decline. Its installs dropped 6% YOY to 2.2B. But its revenue grew by 26.9% to $4.1B. This could be attributed to the nine-month game license freeze in China which, though now lifted, had slowed momentum. The top money-making (non-game) app in the quarter was again Tinder, which generated $233M in consumer spending, up 7% over the prior quarter. Netflix was No. 2 and YouTube clocked in at No. 3, at $164M in Q3.
813 posts categorized "Tinder"
App Revenue Climbs 23% YOY to $21.9B in Q3
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Rad's Lawyers File to Dismiss Defamation Lawsuit
TECH CRUNCH - Oct 9 - Last week, former Tinder CEO Greg Blatt filed a defamation lawsuit against Sean Rad and Rosette Pambakian, who are part of a group of Tinder founders and former executives who accused Blatt of sexual harassment and assault as part of a broader suit. Now Rad and Pambakian's attorneys have filed their own motion to dismiss the suit, arguing that it "seeks to chill protected speech through costly litigation" - in other words, that it's the kind of lawsuit prohibited under California's anti-SLAPP law.
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The Legal Battles Between Former Tinder Executives Keep Getting Messier
CNN - Oct 7 - Former Tinder and Match Group CEO Greg Blatt has filed a lawsuit, accusing Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and former VP of marketing and communications Rosette Pambakian of defaming him. Blatt says they made public accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against him last year. Rad, Pambakian and eight other early employees of Tinder kicked off a whirlwind of legal battles when they sued Match Group and IAC for $2B in August 2018 alleging that the company manipulated the valuation of Tinder to deny them billions of dollars they were owed. Included in that suit was Pambakian's claim that she was allegedly groped and sexually harassed by Blatt at a 2016 holiday party. In his suit, Blatt alleges that Rad, internally, made a false accusation of the alleged sexual assault incident without Pambakian's support, and she was ultimately convinced by Rad to join his valuation suit and bring her claims against Blatt. Blatt is seeking a minimum of $50M in damages in his defamation suit.
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Top Dating Apps Worldwide for September
REPUBLIC WORLD - Oct 6 - Tinder was the most downloaded app in the online dating category during September 2019, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Tinder had close to 5.5M installs in September, resulting in a total of 4% increase from the same period last year. Badoo was the second most installed dating app worldwide. Tantan, MeetMe, and Happn rounded out the top five most installed dating apps worldwide for the month. Here is the full list of top 10 dating apps.
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Former Tinder CEO Greg Blatt Is Suing Rosette Pambakian for Defamation
LOS ANGELES TIMES - Oct 3 - In August, Rosette Pambakian, a former VP at Tinder, filed a lawsuit alleging that Greg Blatt, the onetime CEO of Tinder and its parent companies Match Group and IAC, sexually harassed and assaulted her at a company Christmas party in 2016. On Thursday, Blatt filed a defamation suit against her, and against Tinder's co-founder and former CEO Sean Rad, alleging that the sexual battery accusations are part of a smear campaign designed to give Rad and Pambakian leverage in a separate multibillion-dollar legal battle over the value of Tinder stock. A spokeswoman for Match Group said neither the company nor its parent is a party to Blatt's suit.
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Tinder Reveals Trailer for Its First Scripted Series
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY - Oct 2 - The interactive series Swipe Night is considered a first-of-its-kind effort by a dating app to use scripted entertainment to help singles find better matches. The "micro series" is an end-of-the-world scenario where users have to make choices about how they'd spend the last few hours of their lives.
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Match Group Subpoenaed by DOJ
FOX BUSINESS - Sep 27 - The FTC alleged Tinder, OKCupid, and Plenty of Fish relied on "fake accounts created by fraudsters" to entice new users between 2013 and the middle of 2018. Match also "exposed consumers to the risk of fraud by providing recent subscribers access to communications that Defendant knew were likely to have been sent by persons engaging in fraud." In Nov '18, the FTC offered to resolve its potential claims via a consent judgment mandating certain changes in the company's business practices, as well as a payment in the amount of $60 million. No resolution was reached. The FTC referred the matter to the DOJ. The DOJ opted not to pursue the civil case and referred it back to the FTC who then filed a lawsuit "making completely meritless allegations supported by consciously misleading figures."
by Jason Schott
See full article at Fox Business
Mark Brooks: Scammers are sometimes tough to identify. Their activity can lead to increases in conversions. Good for short term profits. Terrible in the long term for both impacted users and the dating brand. Once a scammer has been identified at a reasonable level of confidence, the best practice is to notify users that they've been in contact with a scammer and to block the scammers device and ideally communicate their device id to other dating apps so they can be proactive in quarantining that device from gaining access to users again. Seems to me the FTC is putting a solid heal down on anything that alludes to us not being anything less than super aggressive against scammers. Will legislation follow? The DOJ kicked this back, so perhaps not...quite yet. iovation, Scamalytics, Spectrum, Threatmetrix, Kount, 41st Parameter. There's a raft of scammer id tools available for dating apps. The best dating apps make good use of automated tools and review/abuse teams to maintain the highest possible quality of real communications from real people. It's a shocker that Match is embroiled in this offense from the FTC, but important that we all take the hint and get our best game on when it comes to kicking scammers asses. (Full disclosure, iovation, Kount and Scamalytics are prior clients of Courtland Brooks)
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Top Grossing Dating Apps Worldwide for August 2019
SENSORTOWER - Sep 24 - The top grossing dating app worldwide for August 2019 was Tinder with $79.9M in user spending, which represented 7% growth from August 2018, according to Sensor Tower. 43% of Tinder's revenue was from the US, followed by 7% from UK and 6% from Brazil. Bumble was the second highest earning dating app worldwide in August 2019 with ~$20M in gross revenue, which represented 55% YOY growth. ~80% of Bumble's revenue was from the U.S., followed by 7% from UK.
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Tinder Japan's Latest Ad Says the App Is a Good Way to Learn English
TIMEOUT - Sep 23 - Earlier this month, Tinder released a video ad for its Japanese market, which shows a young woman wearily studying English over a pile of books late at night. Tired of her notebooks, she opens the Tinder app on her phone and swipes right on a friendly looking female westerner. The subsequent scene reveals the two singing karaoke together, presumably picking up some language skills as they sing a variety of different songs. The video's tagline translates to 'I want to know the world more'.
by Emma Steen
See full article at TimeOut
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IAC Claims Former Tinder CEO Paid Employees to Bolster Lawsuit
BLOOMBERG - Sep 20 - IAC claims Tinder co-founder Sean Rad paid former employees to back his allegations in a $2B lawsuit that he was shortchanged because IAC unfairly valued Tinder. IAC believes Rad promised "millions of dollars" to two then-current Tinder employees in exchange for testimony supporting his claims, and also says the employees are bitter because they cashed out too early. New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla denied IAC's request to dismiss the lawsuit, although she threw out some claims, including unjust enrichment and a merger-related breach of contract claim. She allowed claims of breach of contract and tortious interference, to go ahead.
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Facebook Dating Is a Threat to Match, But Not to Tinder
SEEKING ALPHA - Sep 20 - Facebook Dating isn't likely to kill Tinder, but investors seem to be forgetting that Match also owns other dating properties that may be under threat from Facebook. Facebook Dating focuses on long-term relationships and skews towards older people, which puts it in direct competition with apps like Hinge or OurTime. Match's current valuation is also far higher than when Facebook Dating launched.
See full article at Seeking Alpha
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More Details About Tinder's SwipeNight Series
NEW YORK TIMES - Sep 20 - Tinder has created a scripted choose-your-own adventure series that it hopes will supply its young users with raw material for conversations. The project, called SwipeNight, consists of four episodes. One will air each week on the Tinder app. In each episode, users will be ushered through an apocalyptic scenario and prompted to make a series of choices. The show features a cast of young diverse actors and, like a video game, gives the user a first-person perspective on the action. Participants will then show up in each other's lists of potential matches. Episodes of SwipeNight will be available on Tinder on Sundays in October from 6PM to midnight in a user's time zone. For now, the show will be available only to Americans. It is reported that SwipeNight production had a budget of ~$5M. A Tinder spokeswoman said that figure was inaccurate, but would not say whether that meant it was low or high.
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Tinder Serves Wild Trademark Infringement Notice Over Flame Icon Use
PR NEWSWIRE - Sep 20 - Tinder targets rival dating app, Wild, claiming that any use of the flame symbol is in direct violation of trademark owned by the dating app giant. Wild has owned the trademark of the "Flame Outline" logo since its launch over four years ago. "The sudden interest in our logo is a bit perplexing," says Catherine Malone, the marketing director of Wild. "Out of respect for Tinder's request, however, we did modify our flame icon and published the modified version to the App Store and Google Play. But Match Group is requesting removal of the flame symbol from Wild brand.
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Children Victims of Sex Crimes Linked to Dating Apps
SKY NEWS - Sep 17 - Children as young as six years old have been sexually groomed or assaulted after contact with adults on 18+ dating sites. Dating companies must do more to keep children off their sites. It is really easy for children and young people to be able to download sites like Tinder or Grindr onto their smartphones. Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk police and national lead on child protection, said current verification systems were simply not robust enough. Tinder said it takes its duty of care seriously. "Tinder is for users 18+, and we use a network of industry-leading moderation tools - and spend millions of dollars annually - to prevent and remove minors from our app," said the app's spokesperson. The UK government's £30M boost to tackle online child exploitation will include more resources for the UK's Child Abuse Image Database (CAID), a resource that provides law enforcement agencies with tools to search seized devices for indecent images of children.
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Dating App Tinder Is Building out a Safety and Moderating Team in Dublin
FORA - Sep 17 - Tinder is assembling a trust and safety compliance team in Dublin that will moderate the dating app to investigate abuse, reports from users and other violations of the terms and conditions. The company has similar teams based at its other offices globally.
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Why Tinder Beats Bumble
E27 - Sep 17 - Bumble launch was a powerful social statement globally, where it sent off a strong message about women empowerment, encouraging women to make bolder choices in not just dating, but in business and life. A lot of celebrities has been supporting the app, including support of the app, including Kris Jenner, Priyanka Chopra and Karlie Kloss. So why did Tinder still manage to retain itself as the crowd favourite? Tinder is much easier and quicker to sign up and get going. Bumble asks users to answer a series of questions and build a more detailed profile, which can sometimes feel like a matrimonial page. The sexist nature of the app, which only allows women to pick who they want to speak with can potentially carve down the entire niche of the market, making it more attractive to women. Male users can sometimes feel alienated by this system.
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Tinder to Launch Its First Scripted Video Series
REUTERS - Sep 17 - Tinder has wrapped filming on its first television series. Making new shows is part of a larger strategy that will be revealed in the near future. The multi-episode series centers on an "apocalyptic" storyline and includes a relationship sub plot. It was filmed in Mexico City in late August. Offering original content is an increasingly popular strategy for the technology and retail industries. The strategy seeks to engage users on a deeper level even when they are not using the service.
by David Alire Garcia & Angela Moon
See full article at Reuters
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