DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Feb 22 – Eight bartenders said they can always tell when a Tinder couples come in. Customers sometimes bring in multiple dates in the same night. Bartenders must break news if someone leaves while date is in bathroom.
by Christopher Brennan
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk
IBTIMES.CO.UK – Feb 26 – Nimbuzz, a popular messaging app with 150M users in 200 countries worldwide, has launched Masque, a new anonymous dating app. The app matches users based on their age, gender and location, and users can flirt anonymously with new matches through messaging. "I'd much rather be anonymous on a dating site. You have a chance to reveal your identity later once you've found out more about that person," said Nimbuzz CEO Vikas Saxena. Nimbuzz's biggest markets are currently in India, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. According to Unicef, arranged marriages still make up 90% of all marriages in India, and many people are nervous about posting public profiles in case their friends and families disapprove.
BUSINESS INSIDER – Feb 26 - The League is a new dating app that uses its own algorithm to judge whether members are cool and ambitious enough to join. Right now it's in beta stage, so not everyone can get into it. Current members have all been carefully selected by creator Amanda Bradford's team using the code. It's predominantly populated by doctors, lawyers, and tech execs. What sets The League apart from its counterparts is its reliance on LinkedIn to determine user credentials. The League just raised $2.1M in funding. It's soon to expand to New York and there are plans to move to London too.
GLOBALNEWS – Feb 26 – 30-year-old CEO Justin McLeod said Hinge is more like meeting people at a “friend’s house party” than the random matching that goes on in many other apps in the marketplace. Hinge shows a list of about 20 potential dates once a day that’s curated from friends of friends. Toronto is the first Canadian city where Hinge launched on today.
FORTUNE – Feb 26 – Robyn Exton wanted to help a gay girlfriend who had gone through a break-up get back on the market. She created Her, a free app for women looking to date other women. The idea is to create a community for lesbians looking to make friends, chat, and date. Dating apps specifically for gay women are limited. The most prominent is Brenda, an app similar to Grindr that was created by a man. Exton herself is gay, and says her San Francisco-based team is made up of four queer women and two straight guys. Exton originally named the service Dattch, a blend of the words “date” and “catch.”
ACCC.GOV – Feb 25 – The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has joined an international initiative to protect consumers by sweeping dating sites for misleading offers, unclear pricing policies or consumer contracts with unfair terms. The ACCC also looked at what measures dating sites have in place to protect consumers against scammers. Here is the latest Online dating industry report.
Key findings:
SF GATE – Feb 17 – GlutenfreeSingles.com is a fairly new niche dating site that was created in July 2013. It now has ~25K users, ~6K of them are active on a weekly basis. “Niche sites are like traditional dating on steroids,” said Eli Finkel, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies relationships. "The idea is to meet someone who is especially compatible." Niche sites help cut down some of the noise of dating online. Sam Yagan, head of Match Group, is skeptical that sites catering to smaller niches will really take off. “For one, the marketing is very hard,” he said. “How do you even reach a gluten-free single? It’s just crazy.”
PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 25 – The number of registered users across Jiayuan's platforms including Jiayuan.com, iZhenxin.com and qiuai.com surpassed the 140M milestone, including 126.5M accounts from Jiayuan.com. According to statistics compiled by iResearch, Jiayuan.com is China's undisputed leader in online dating, ranking first in terms of daily visitors, time spent by users, pages viewed and number of visits in 2014.
BLOOMBERG – Feb 25 – “All eyes are on Tinder right now,” said Mark Brooks, a dating-website analyst and consultant. “They’ll set the tone for monetization.” Tinder has been testing Tinder Plus, which also lets people swipe for matches around the world, at different prices up to $20 a month, depending on the features. Sam Yagan, CEO of IAC’s personals division, said it’s fine even if there isn’t widespread adoption of Tinder Plus. “The vast majority of people will decide not to use it,” Yagan said. “We’re in the first inning on monetization. We’re trying to figure out which features users care about.” Tinder could bring in $45M in revenue in 2015, Oppenheimer & Co. estimates.
by Annie Massa
See full article at Bloomberg (under subscription)
BOSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL – Feb 24 – Wigo, a Boston-based app that lets college students find parties and meet new people, has raised $1.5M in venture funding, bringing its total valuation to $14M. The company now has $2M in funding.
by Sara Castellanos
See full article at Boston Business Journal
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