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

Spark Networks to Acquire Zoosk

PR NEWSWIRE - Mar 22 - Spark Networks today announced its entry into a definitive agreement to acquire Zoosk. With the addition of Zoosk, Spark will more than double in size and the combined business will be considerably more valuable than the two stand-alone entities. In 2020, Spark expects Adjusted EBITDA to exceed $50M. Approximately two-thirds of the combined company's revenue will be generated in North America. Spark will acquire 100% of Zoosk's shares with a combination of cash and stock valuing the company at ~$255M based on the closing price of Spark Networks stock on March 20, 2019. The transaction is expected to close early in Q3 2019.

See full article at PR Newswire

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com

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3 Things You Can Learn From Gen Z About Online Dating

MONEYISH - Sep 30 - Dating app Zoosk recently analyzed ~5.7M profiles and surveyed 4K daters on the site, only to reveal that the youngest generation of daters, Gen Zers (those currently between the ages of about 8 and 22), might have a few lessons to teach the rest of us.

• We should be open to meeting people even if they don't check all our boxes. Indeed, Gen Zers are the least picky daters and swipe or say yes to 33% of the potential matches they're presented, which is 15% more than millennials and 20% more than Gen Xers and baby boomers.
• Anyone can make the first move. The majority, 59% of Gen Zers are indifferent about whether a man or woman makes the first move online, which is 2% more than millennials, 8% more than Gen Xers and 7% more than Baby Boomers.
• Approach dating casually like Gen Z does, so you don't put so much pressure on yourself to make the date perfect. Gen Zers are more likely than other generations to opt for simple coffee dates instead of drinks or dinner, the survey found.

by Alisa Wolfson
See full article at Moneyish

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Online Daters Consume More Alcohol, Zoosk Study Finds

ASKMEN - July 19 - Zoosk surveyed 9k of its members and analyzed 133k dating messages to figure out the relationship between alcohol and dating. It found that 72% of the daters on its site consume alcohol compared to 64.8% of the general adult U.S. population, indicating that singles really do drink more than everybody else. It could be due to how common going out for a drink is when you're dating someone. Nearly three in four daters said going out for a drink is a good dating idea. And according to 32% of non-drinkers, dating is tougher when you're sober.

by Joel Balsam
See full article at AskMen

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Zoosk To Protect Military Members, Preventing Romance Scams

WARISBORING - May 16 - In 2016, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received ~15k reports of romance scams. According to Zoosk, ~1/4 of profiles that get blocked on suspicion of fraud are attempts at impersonating members of the US Armed Forces so the site is launching a military verification feature, called Insignia, to verify whether or not a user is a member of the US Armed Forces. Zoosk partnered with SheerID, a long-trusted verification company, to provide active duty military and reservists the opportunity to verify that they are legitimate service members.

See full article at WarIsBoring

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Zoosk Survey: Littering Is The Biggest Turnoff

MONEYISH - Apr 19 - Zoosk site polled 5,100 men and women to see how protecting the planet factors into someone's attractiveness, and 78% of people said they want to date someone who cares about the environment. So tossing garbage onto the ground is a deal-breaker for 74% of them, followed by unnecessarily wasting food (32%), leaving the lights on (17%) and not recycling (17%). 92% of Americans are worried about the future of our planet, according to a recent Harris Poll.

by Nicole Lyn Pesce
See full article at Moneyish

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Internet Dating Analysis: Who's Growing And Who's Firing

OPW - Apr 5 - According to Linkedin Match.com is showing no growth over the last two years, with 598 employees. Tinder is the big growth story with 320 employees and 116% growth over the last 2 years. PlentyofFish is also broken out from Match, and is up 15% over the last 2 years with 94 employees. Meanwhile, OKCupid are have been quite stable at 64 employees.

Badoo is stable at 560 employees. Over the last 2 years they've grown their personnel count 22% to 560 people!

Zoosk is stable at 170 employees. They dipped to 158 employees but actually show 1% employee growth over the past 2 years.

eHarmony has leveled off to 239 employees in the last 6 months but is down 27% over the last 2 years.

Meanwhile Venntro Media in the UK, which runs White Label Dating, shows a 43% decline to 66 people, and just lost their CTO of ten years.

See full article at IDEA blog.

Post by Mark Brooks, CEO IDEA

Zoosk Introduces Its Own "HQ Trivia" With Lively

ADWEEK - Mar 12 - The company behind dating site and app Zoosk is putting its own spin on the HQ Trivia imitation trend with the restarting of its Lively app. Zoosk Labs debuted Lively in July 2016 as a dating app that enabled users to search for potential matches by browsing story collages made up of their videos and photos; it evolved into a group video-chatting app geared toward millennials. However, the developer said there was one missing element: Users didn't know how to initiate conversations with other users. So they incorporated several of the features that made HQ Trivia soar in popularity. In the revamped app, there are two half-hour sessions at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET. Players can join at any time during the session, and they will automatically be placed into teams of two through four players who compete as a team. Players can also add Snapchat-like face filters. Games last 12 questions, and teams learn their overall ranking when they're finished competing. Players can continue chatting after the game ends and will be prompted to add each other as friends.

by David Cohen
See full article at AdWeek

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Online Personals Watch PR Rankings - The Sites That Got The Most Press In 2017

OPW - Feb 20 - Every year we take a look at who scored the most press summaries on Online Personals Watch. We look for top tier news and summarize what we think is most interesting to you, our audience of Internet dating industry leaders, app designers and marketers.

#1 Tinder (123 posts published on OPW last year)
#2 Bumble (48 posts)
#3 eHarmony (42)
#4 Match Group (41)
#5 Match (37)
#6 OKCupid (37)
#7 Grindr (34)
#8 Happn (22)
#9 The League (21)
#10 Matrimony.com (17)

Other companies that did well and got a solid press coverage last year were Hinge, The Meet Group, Zoosk, Hater, Matchpoool and Chappy.

See full article at IDEA blog

Post by the IDEA team

Zoosk To Fight Military Romance Scams

ZOOSK - Feb 8 - Zoosk has launched a new US military verification, called Insignia. It utilizes a third-party service to review and verify a member's U.S. military service in order to help reduce military romance scams. Verified user gets "Insignia" badge that lets other members know that he/she is a member of the U.S. Military Personnel or Reservists. Zoosk is partnering with SheerID, but this service depends on a variety of third-party sources of information. "We cannot guarantee the identity or service record of any member", Zoosk added.

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Summarized by the IDEA team

Zoosk Survey: The State Of Romance In 2018

ASKMEN - Feb 2 - A new survey from Zoosk found that people prefer 'old-fashioned romance' over 'modern romance.' Three-quarters of those surveyed say 'snuggling in front of the fireplace' is the most romantic date, followed by 'candlelight dinners' (58%) and a 'picnic in the park' (45%). Nearly everyone (95%) think that 'holding a door open' on a date is romantic, 93% say 'public displays of affection' brings the heat and 82% still think 'paying for your date' is romantic.

by Joel Balsam
See full article at AskMen

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Summarized by the IDEA team

List Of Dating Sites That Use Fake Profiles

VERBRAUCHERZENTRALE.DE - Jan 14 - Many online dating services create profiles that are managed by its staff. 187 online dating services has been found by the German watchdog team of the Bavarian consumer center (see the list), which according to their terms and conditions, use fake profiles. Here are some of the phrases we can find in their "Terms and conditions":

• "A male profile can be run by a female presenter, a female profile by a male presenter."
• "these profiles are solely for your entertainment and to promote your use of our service."
• "The CUser are designed exclusively for the expression of virtual and erotic fantasies and there are no real meetings possible ...."

See full article at VerbraucherZentrale.de

Summarized by the IDEA team

Now Is The Hottest Time Of The Year For Online Dating

MARKETWATCH - Jan 6 - In the New Year, the online dating industry sees a surge in users. Zoosk typically sees a 20% jump in users in the first two weeks of the year and eHarmony sees a similar increase. Grindr and other gay apps usually experiences a 30% to 50% increase in users. Match.com sees a 60% surge in new members between Christmas Day and Valentine's Day. "Many singles sit around the family dinner table during the holidays and think, 'Maybe it would be better to have a partner'," said Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch. "That's when they start hitting dating sites in droves and go on dates before the indigestion sets in." It may also be more polite to arrange dates in the New Year rather than during the holidays, especially with family around. "They're going to be around for you long after your relationships," he says. With the constant stream of happy holiday photographs over social-networking sites, experts say the pressure to be in a romance this time of year has never been so intense. "There's an onslaught of images of family and togetherness," says Pepper Schwartz, author of "Dating After 50 for Dummies" and a love and relationship ambassador for AARP.

by Quentin Fottrell
See full article at Marketwatch

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

What Makes People Click

NPR.ORG - Jan 8 - Megan Murray, a senior content strategist for Zoosk, taught an undergraduate course at the University of British Columbia called What Makes Us Click, about online dating. "I found that people don't approach people as much when they go to bars," Murray says. Apps have made online dating more accessible; from 2013 to 2015, the number of American adults that have used a dating app has tripled. "Dating has always been hard," Murray says, "but the dynamics have changed." For example, how long should you wait before returning a message? 48 hours to respond to messages does not apply. Men who waited two days to reply to their Zoosk matches got responses 45% of the time, while men who replied same day and got responses 63% of the time. "Relationshopping is problematic because people give up so quickly now. People may choose to not go on a second date with someone simply because they don't like their hair.

by Alyssa Edes & Ashley Brown
See full article at NPR

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

The Biggest Dating Trends Of 2017 By Zoosk

ASKMEN - Dec 20 - With 2018 just around the corner, dating site Zoosk decided to compile and analyze data from their ~40M+ members to identify the biggest dating trends of 2017.

• Men who use words like "thoughtful", "listener", and "polite" in their profiles are up to 66% more likely to get messages than the average joe.
• It turns out that people who use search filters get 11% fewer responses than those who don't.
• Compared to 2016, people are 9% more likely to engage with someone who's either 10 years older or younger than they are.
• Education is sexy. Folks who have a bachelor's degree or higher are considered more attractive and get up to 17% more replies to their messages.
• People who mention guacamole in their dating profile are likely to get 144% more incoming messages than someone who doesn't.
• Folks who mention vegan in their profile get 62% more incoming messages than the average

by MJ Kelly
See full article at AskMen

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

1.4 Billion Leaked Passwords Found On The Dark Web

FORBES - Dec 12 - Security researchers at 4iQ spend their days monitoring various Dark Web sites, hacker forums, and online black markets for leaked and stolen data. Their most recent find: a 41-gigabyte file that contains 1.4B username and password combinations. Anyone who wants to can simply open it up, do a quick search, and start trying to log into other people's accounts. The data is not from a single incident. The usernames and passwords have been collected from a number of different sources - Netflix, Last.FM, LinkedIn, MySpace, Zoosk, and others.

by Lee Matthews
See full article at Forbes

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team