Month: August 2015

Grindr’s Revenue Expected To Reach $38M

Posted on August 28, 2015

Grindr management presentationBUSINESS INSIDER – Aug 27 – This month, hackers of AshleyMadison.com began to leak internal company data online, which also includes sensitive documents and the emails of CEO Noel Biderman. Included within Biderman's email correspondence is a "Management Presentation" for Grindr, created in June 2015. Accoring to the presentation, Grindr is expected to generate $38.1M this year. By the end of 2018, it predicts annual revenues ~$77M. Grindr claims that the average daily time its users spend on the app is 54 minutes daily, compared to Facebook's 42.1 minutes.

by Rob Price
See full article at Business Insider

See all posts on Grindr

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Match Must Use Size To Overcome Challenges Facing Public Dating Services

Posted on August 26, 2015

Match group logosDEAL REPORTER – Aug 24 – OPW – Aug 24 – As The Match Group moves toward an IPO, it must use its size advantage to overcome the difficulties that have plagued other dating companies that have gone public. FriendFinder traded on NASDAQ and was delisted in 2013 for failing to trade above the USD 1 level. Zoosk filed for an IPO in 2014, intending to raise more than USD 100m, but withdrew the application citing unfavorable market conditions. In the past 2 years, shares of Snap Interactive have not been above the USD 1 mark with stock plunging 85%, and Spark Networks has seen its stock decline 60%, to USD 3.11. Chinese dating firm Jiayuan International has seen its US-listed stock rise 22% in the last year, however, their success is partly a by-product of China's booming economy. "Match's size will be an advantage over other publicly traded dating entities," said Mark Brooks, an industry consultant with Courtland Brooks. Its scale and brand awareness means it probably pays much less to acquire new users. “This is very clearly a game of size,” Brooks asserted, adding that Match.com does not have to pay search giant Google for every new member because it has built a brand through time, helped by TV and radio advertising.

by David B. Wilkerson & Marina Temkin & Louise Bleakley
 Read the full article

See all posts on Match              See all posts on FriendFinder
See all posts on Jiayuan.com    See all posts on Snap Interactive
See all posts on Zoosk              See all posts on Spark Networks

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

ChristianMingle Breaks Up With TV Land

Posted on August 26, 2015

Christianmingle logoONENEWS NOW – Aug 26 – The dating site has announced it will no longer advertise on the show "Impastor" which is airing on TV Land. That decision comes after OneMillionMoms.com, a division of the American Family Association, launched a campaign urging the dating site to withdraw their financial support.

by Bill Bumpas
See full article at One News Now

See all posts on ChristianMingle

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

AshleyMadison.com’s Male Users Were Paying For A Fantasy

Posted on August 26, 2015

1403242054398170542GIZMODO – Aug 26 – According to AshleyMadison data released by the hacker group, there were 31M men for 5.5M women. Most of those women had never talked to men on the site, or even used the site at all after creating a profile. Many of the profiles are fake. There were ~10K accounts with ashleymadison.com email addresses which makes it look like they’d been generated by a bot.

by Annalee Newitz
See full article at Gizmondo

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

AM Members Seek Over $1B In Lawsuits Across U.S. And Canada

Posted on August 26, 2015

Lawsuit moneyWASHINGTON TIMES – Aug 25 – In U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys say in a 27-page complaint that Avid failed its obligations to abide by best practices and industry standards concerning digital security. In the Central District of California, attorneys filed a similar suit and asked the court to grant class-action status so other members impacted by the "nightmare" brought on by hackers can see relief. Avid Life Media has until Sept. 14 to answer accusations that it failed to safeguard sensitive user data that was dumped online last week. Two Canadian firms said last week that they were bringing a class-action suit against Avid seeking upwards of $760M in damages. Even if Avid agreed to award $100 each to half of Ashley Madison's roughly 37M customers, the company would still stand to lose nearly $2B. Avid earned around $115M in revenue during 2014, according to court filings.

by Andrew Blake
See full article at The Washington Times

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Friendsy Raised $500k

Posted on August 25, 2015

Friendsy logoTECH CRUNCH – Aug 25 – The 6 month old app is now reporting nearly 100,000 users across the U.S., who have racked up some 750,000 matches within the app thus far, up from 450,000 mutual matches back in March. The Friendsy team has now pulled in a seed funding round coming from Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Slow Ventures. The new financing expands the $200,000+ they had already raised from the same investors, as well as from Princeton University. The seed financing will be used to prep for a big back to school push this fall. Friendsy has built up a network of 100 campus representatives at this stage, to help spread the word about the app.

by Natasha Lomas
See full article at TechCrunch

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Lost And Found App, Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” With A Facelift

Posted on August 25, 2015

Lost and found screenshotDNA INFO – Aug 25 – Lost and Found riffs off the Craigslist dating page without the creepiness or the blue hyperlinked text. The app lets users post missed connections and comment and like other people’s posts. Posts are anonymous. If users message someone saying “It’s me,” then their picture and profile become available to them. If they respond, they get to see their picture and profile.

by Gwynne Hogan
See full article at DNA Info

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Tinder Is Now A Serious Product Used By All Ages

Posted on August 25, 2015

Tinder-appTELEGRAPH – Aug 25 – Despite the app's original reputation for wanton hookups, Tinder continues to get bigger and more diverse. Speaking last year, Tinder's former CMO Justin Mateen said "Early on, over 90% of our user base was aged between 18 and 24. Today, that number is about 51%. 13-17 year-olds are now over 7%, 25-32 year-olds are about 32%, 35-44 is about 6.5% and the remainder are older than 45.” Even those small percentages represent huge communities – with an estimated 50 million users, that 3.5% over 45 segment is still nearly 2 million.

by Willard Foxton
See full article at Telegraph

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Jewish Dating App ‘Tribe’ Seeks To Upstage J-Date

Posted on August 25, 2015

Tribe logo biggerDNA INFO – Aug 25 – Founder Ari Ackerman is here to help asserts that the app will aid in ensuring the continuity of Jewish identity in generations to come. Unlike popular dating apps such as Tinder, he insists that Tribe is "specifically not a hook up app; it's about making real connections." It's also different from predecessor JDate in that it's free and has an 'Ask Out' option. Like other dating apps, Tribe allows users to swipe left or right to indicate their interest in another user. What makes Tribe unique is that if two users express interest in one another, they can not only message each other but set up a first date as well, providing restaurant, bar and coffee house suggestions located close to where the user's match lives.

by Savannah Cox
See full article at DNA Info

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

FTC Can Slap Companies For Getting Hacked

Posted on August 25, 2015

Lawsuit1WIRED – Aug 24 – For companies like Ashley Madison or health insurer Anthem, financial loss, customer anger and professional embarrassment aren't the only consequences of getting massively gutted by hackers. A U.S. appellate court ruled that the FTC has the authority to sue Wyndham Hotels for allowing hackers to steal more than 600K customers' data from its computer systems in 2008 and 2009, leading to more than $10 million in fraudulent charges. The ruling more widely cements the agency's power to regulate and fine firms that lose consumer data to hackers, if the companies engaged in what the FTC deems "unfair" or "deceptive" business practices.

by Andy Greenberg
See full article at Wired

Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting