BUSINESS INSIDER – May 18 - Happn is a new app that shows users other users with whom they've physically crossed paths with throughout the day. Happn's founder and CEO says it's all about replicating the serendipity of real life. Happn got its start in Paris, but has since expanded to 3M registered users in London and New York City. The app has raised ~$8M, and expects to reach 10M members by the end of this year.
Month: May 2015
Data Are Hackable On Tinder And Grindr According To Security Expert
NEW SCIENTIST – May 18 – A new study by Raymond Choo, an information security expert at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, shows that it is easy to hack into Tinder and Grindr. On Tinder his team was able to pull up images of all of the profiles that the person had viewed, and records of whether or not they had matched. They also found the user's Facebook token that could let them access that person's account. On Grindr, the team managed to access data about people that the users had checked out in the app, including their date of birth, their distance from the user on last viewing, and a database of sent and received chat messages.
by Aviva Rutkin
See full article at New Scientist
Dating Sites Face Tougher Regulations In China
WOMENOFCHINA – May 18 – China's Internet watchdog (CAC) has shut down 128 dating sites in the past three months. The sites lacked legal registration, were illegally leaking user info, allowed fraud and obscene content, or were connected with prostitution. ~20 dating sites were required to make changes or be suspended. The CAC launched its campaign in early February. Most of the tips it acted on came from the public.
by Su Zhou
See full article at WomenOfChina
15winks Does 15 Second Videos: Interview With CEO Sam Mendez
OPW INTERVIEW – May 19 – Video will have its day, and Sam Mendez has an interesting spin with his 15winks app. – Mark Brooks
Post by Mark Brooks @
How A Battered Zoosk Kept Employees Engaged
CIO.COM – May 18 – When Carol Mahoney met with Zoosk's founders Shayan Zadeh and Alex Mehr in 2014, she believed it was to finalize a post-IPO talent strategy. Zoosk was founded in 2007. It is #1 dating app in the world with 33M users. The company was set for an IPO but Zadeh and Mehr had other plans. They handed over executive control to former CFO Kelly Steckelberg, and scuttled plans for the IPO. A new strategy had to be implemented. "We were so focused on revenue growth because of this IPO that no one ever thought about the customers," said Mahoney. By January 8, Zoosk had reduced its workforce by ~15%. "We knew we needed four things:
- To serve customers better
- To boost engagement of the employees we'd kept on
- Set out our mission
- To achieve sustainable growth
We realized we had to over-communicate with employees about everything that was happening. We use Slack, an enterprise collaboration platform. Another area where employees demanded transparency was in compensation. In a tight talent market like San Fran, Zoosk had to focus on their differentiators. The company allows dogs in their office. There are weekly happy hours with beer on tap, parties and an extensive emphasis on volunteering in the community. Zoosk also promote the company's Hack Days, which are three-day hackathons to develop new ideas.
Snap Interactive Q1 2015: Revenue Down, Net Loss $1.2M
MARKETWIRED – May 15 – Q1 revenues decreased 3.2% YOY to $3.2M. Net loss was ~$1.2M compared with net loss of ~$900K in Q1 2014. Snap reported increased active subscriber count to ~103K from ~101K in Dec 2014. Snap‘s newly launched dating app “The Grade” exceeded 8M swipes.
See full article at Digital Journal
Insights On The Japanese Internet Dating Market
OPW – May 15 – Hiroshi Tsumoto is the CEO of Japan's no.1 iOS dating app YYC. iDate Beijing is coming up, so I asked him to give us an overview of his company and the Japanese market. Here's our 2nd ever op-ed. – Mark Brooks
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Diverse, Inc was originally one of the departments of LINE Corporation, the company that provides the popular messaging app LINE. In December 2013, Diverse became a subsidiary company of Mixi, providing the same online dating service. We have two online dating services: "YYC" and "youbride". YYC is for people who want to have a casual dating experience and youbride is for people who want to find a future spouse. Users can access YYC from iOS/Android apps, PC/mobile browser, and from feature phones. YYC is no. 2 in the social networking category and no. 44 in sales for all apps on the App Store.
Mixi was not a dating site from the start. It is a SNS for users to enjoy communication with friends. As online dating services that use "Facebook Connect" have began to emerge, the online dating market in Japan grew gradually. However, online dating services are still not familiar in Japan. In general, Japanese people still hesitate to meet people via the Internet. Some people still consider that finding friends on the Internet is unhealthy. This is my personal thought, but Japanese mass media frequently report crimes in which young people (under eighteen years old) are involved. Thus, more demerits are highlighted than merits to meet people on the Internet.
Users refer to dating services as either "casual dating services" or "websites for marriage partners". The former is for casual meetups, like Tinder, and the later is more focused on marriage, like eHarmony. There's no middle term between casual dating and marriage partners sites. It's still not common to "just date" in Asian cultures. Many consider that dating is one of the steps to have a formal relationship.
After online dating services started using "Facebook Connect" 3 years ago the number of users has grown gradually. Around 1 in 10 Japanese are now meeting online now. Less than 10% of YYC users are from PC now and the rest are from mobile. Considering our numbers and the fact that the diffusion of mobile is more than 50% in Japan, the mobile ratio of online dating is very high. According to "Japan App Annie Index for apps" published by App Annie, our "YYC" is the top dating app. In addition, it is ranked no.6 in the domestic sales among all the categories.
To begin with, in Japan only 10% of all dating comes from online dating (including mobile and Internet). Because of that, we think there's a possibility for the market to grow. Moreover, there is an urgent need to prevent the number of children from decreasing. Under such circumstances, its important to increase encounters between men and women in Japan and we think that only way to solve the problem is through the Internet.
However, the reputation towards online dating will not get better soon. So we expect that the services which pair up online dating with Japanese original encounters such as marriage hunting party and Machikon (a type of matchmaking party with bar-hopping and restaurant-hopping) will play an important role and our company is currently moving in that direction. We want to achieve top sales in Japan on other devices such as Android and on mobile browser, as well as iOS.
– by Hiroshi Tsumoto
Hinge Profile Will Now Include Facebook Relationship Status
MASHABLE – May 15 - Hinge has released an update that immediately makes public users' relationship statuses. "Married, engaged or in a relationship on Facebook? Version 3.5 of Hinge will publish that info to your profile," says Hinge. Hinge says the decision was in response to a recent poll by GlobalWebIndex, which found that 42% of Tinder users are already in relationships.
Why Founders Of Dating Ring Walked Away From $50,000
BUSINESS INSIDER – May 14 – Emma Tessler and Lauren Kay pitched their startup, The Dating Ring, to a crowded room full of venture capitalists at Y Combinator's Demo Day in 2014. Tessler, the company's co-founder and COO, approached an investor who put his arm around her. His one-handed hug had landed his hand on the side of her breast – right as he offered $50K to invest in Dating Ring. She turned down the money. After Demo Day, Kay took on the majority of fundraising work as CEO and started lining up calls with investors. The company raised $455K in March and May 2014, and haven't raised any money since. "I had 40 fundraising meetings, I sent ~300 emails requesting meetings, and tried to get in touch with another 500 investors," Kay wrote in her blog post called "Fundraising While Female". While she didn't want to blame any of it on her gender but she knew it had played a role.
Chinese Face Recognition Startup Face++ Raised $25M
TECHINASIA – May 14 – Face++, a face recognition tech startup from Beijing, raised an additional $25M as part of its series B round. This brings the company’s series B to $47M. Face++ makes a cloud-based API and an SDK so developers can incorporate face recognition into their own apps. The technology is being used by ~30K developers and several large firms including Jiayuan. Users could upload a photo of someone they thought was beautiful, and Jiayuan would use Face++ to find a match on the site with a similar face.
by Paul Bischoff
The full article was originally published at TechInAsia, but is no longer available.