IAC – July 31 – The Match Group revenue increased 8% as Dating paid subscribers grew 10% to 3.5M globally. Adjusted EBITDA increased 2% due to higher revenue, partially offset by higher marketing expense at Dating and DailyBurn. Operating income increased 15%.
Month: July 2014
Tinder Can Make $75M A Year, IAC Says
BLOOMBERG – July 30 – IAC plans to start making money from Tinder this year. Tinder could generate as much as $75M a year. Monthly active users on the app have increased 140% this year. IAC is considering three options – subscription, advertising or freemium.
by Alex Barinka
The full article was originally published at Bloomberg, but is no longer available.
Jess, Meet Ken Prepares To Seek Funding
BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL – July 31 – Ken Deckinger, co-founder and CEO of dating site Jess, Meet Ken, said his site has grown to "many thousands" of users since the launch in February. Jess, Meet Ken allows women to create profiles of single men they know but are not romantically interested in, who could be good matches for other women. The startup aims to launch a formal fundraising round in the fall — mostly targeting angel investors. Deckinger previously co-founded speed dating and online dating service HurryDate, that was acquired in 2007 by Spark Networks.
by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal
FriendsDateNetwork.com Seeking Strategic Partnership
OPW – July 31 – FriendsDateNetwork.com, a network of 60+ niche dating sites operated by Ron Lee under white label dating platforms, is currently looking to partner with a dating company to be able to build a database they own from their own source code. FriendsDateNetwork.com is offering the following in exchange for a confidential copy of a dating site source code:
- Incoming leads via API for a set amount of time
- Reasonable cash payment – Reasonable percentage of revenues for a set time frame
- Small ownership percentage in FriendsDateNetwork.com
- Referrals to you Private or White Label Business Model
Contact RonnyJasonLee@gmail.com for more details.
Company Profile – Tinder
Website: www.gotinder.com
Owned by: IAC is a majority shareholder
CEO: Sean Rad (since Aug 2015)
Past CEOs: Chris Payne (Mar – Aug 2015 – IAC was looking for a new CEO since Nov 2014)
Sean Rad (2012 – Nov 2014)
Business Address
Privacy Officer
Tinder, Inc.
8300 Douglas Avenue
Dallax, TX, 75225
Headquarters
8800 W. Sunset Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Phone/email: tinderprivacy@match.com
Number of employees: 35 (Crunchbase July 2014)
Blog: http://www.gotinder.com/blog
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinder_(application)
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tinder
LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/LinkedIn
Date started: September 1, 2012
Founders: Christopher Gulczynski, Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, Jonathan Badeen
Category: mobile dating
Affiliate program: no
History:
- August 2015 – Forbes Partners With Tinder To Build Business Networking App
- July 2015 – Tinder Debuts Verified Profiles For Celebrities
- May 2015 – launched app for Apple Watch
- May 2015 – Tinder has released an upgradeable feature called “passport”
- April 2015 – 250K Users Paid For Tinder Plus, Generating $3M In Q1
- March 2015 – Tinder Begun Offering Tinder Plus
Traffic: 464 901 (Compete, June ’15, web only)
10M active daily users (Wired, Apr ’14)
Tinder news on OnlinePersonalsWatch
Courtland Brooks clients can access the top 20 company profiles.
OKCupid Admits To Purposely Giving Users Bad Matches In Site ‘Experiment’
BUSINESS INSIDER – July 29 – Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, wrote an enticing blog post called "We Experiment On Human Beings!" to lay out three different experiments the dating site ran on its users without asking for permission. In the most controversial experiment, OKCupid lied to users. The site took pairs of users with low match ratings of ~30% (the ideal match is 100%) and told them they were a 90% match. They also did the opposite, giving highly-compatible pairs of users low match ratings. OKCupid found, somewhat unsurprisingly, that more people sent messages to matches they perceived to be compatible with. But users also sent more messages to people they were actually compatible with, regardless of the match score shown to them, proving the efficacy of its matching algorithm, but also the role of suggestion in matchmaking.
Thread Needs To Attract Users Quickly, Expert Says
AUSTIN BUSINESS JOURNAL – July 28 – ThreadDating.com, the app that Michael Dell’s son Zachary plans to launch later this year isn’t the first dating tool known as Thread. In 2009, a group of San Fran entrepreneurs raised $1M to launch Thread, a dating site that integrated with Facebook to make matches based on mutual friends. By early 2011, it had closed. It’s unclear what type of business model Zachary's Thread plans to use. "It takes ~5,000 log-ins per day for a dating site to be successful. And the amount of activity is more important than the number of members," said Mark Brooks. "Advertising revenue is negligible because users are too distracted to pay much attention to ads," he said.
by Christopher Calnan
See full article at Austin Business Journal
Women Are Not Sexually Interested In Responsive Men
LIVE SCIENCE – July 25 – Men are sexually attracted to women who show an interest in them or who are responsive during a date, according to a new study from Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya in Israel. Women are not sexually interested in the responsive men they meet for the first time, the research also discovered. Women are typically more cautious daters than men are, and may be skeptical of a responsive man. They may think the men are trying too hard to win their affection and get them into bed.
Mark Brooks To Provide 3 Hour Session Prior To iDate Cologne
WEBWIRE – July 29 – Mark Brooks will provide a special 3 hour session "Introduction to the Online Dating Business." It is scheduled for September 7, 2014 and is prior to the iDate in Cologne, Germany. The session will cover an overview of the online dating industry with a special focus on the European market.
The Future Of Internet Dating
OPW – July 28 – I was interviewed for the French magazine, NEON, and the article is now in print. In 10 years, dating sites won't exist. We will move to mobile and wearables. iDating becomes wDating. We'll be able to access more observable and measurable behaviors. Coaches will be able to provide real time feedback and advice. i.e. "Don't go into that restaurant, she doesn't like Thai." I started wearable.ai to learn and help bridge the iDating industry into the new medium of wearable computing so they won't miss the boat. Here's the full interview I had with the reporter.