Month: February 2016

Changing Trends In India

Posted on February 14, 2016

Dating in india picHINDUSTANTIMES – Feb 14 – 2M people are on TrulyMadly, hoping to find a partner. There are many who are on the lookout for a casual relationship, a one-night-stand, or maybe to date for a few months. Less than a decade ago, this was unheard of and people usually met in a social environment or at the workplace. Dating apps like TM, Woo and Tinder are bringing about a tech-revolution of sorts in the world of dating. "We are not promising or helping find love, we are making people meet. Close to 80% of the singles on our app is in the age group of 18-26," said Sachin Bhatia, co-founder and CEO of TM. India has 250M singles according to recent census data. Since 2001, the number of unmarried women between the age of 20 and 29 years has gone up by 60%. Marriage is not the priority anymore, and the millennial generation wants to be with someone they know or are in love with and with people that share their interests, hobbies and profession. "Youngsters are not so much driven by the social fabric; they don't want to outsource their relation to parents," Sumesh Menon, co-founder and CEO of Woo, which too boasts of 2M users. Both Woo and TM claim to be for serious relationships and for singles.

by Sunny Sen
See full article at HindustanTimes

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

81-Year-Old eHarmony Founder On Gay Marriage And Tinder

Posted on February 13, 2016

Eharmony-neil-warren-780x439CNN.COM – Feb 12 – After 16 years in the business, Dr. Neil Clark Warren is still committed to helping people find love. Warren is the 81-year-old co-founder and current CEO of eHarmony. In 2005, the company was sued for discrimination of same-sex couples. To settle a lawsuit, eHarmony launched Compatible Partners, a site for gay and lesbian singles. 350K of its members fled eHarmony out of principle. The company originally started as a Christian dating site. "We didn't want to pretend to be experts on gay and lesbian couples," said Warren. "We're not anti-gay at all… It's a different match." "We've had quite a number of same-sex marriages," he said. Warren doesn't see dating apps as threats to his business. "We don't discourage people from Tinder," he said, adding that apps like Tinder are primarily used for dating and hooking up – not marriage.

by Sara Ashley O'Brien
See full article at CNN.com

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Raya – The Secret Dating App For The A-List

Posted on February 13, 2016

Raya logoLOOK.CO.UK – Feb 12 – Dating app Raya is where all the celebs are, including Kelly Osbourne, Matthew Perry, Courtney Love and Lily Allen who are all said to on there. The app is "an exclusive dating platform for people in creative industries". People have to apply to join; acceptance depends on how popular they are.

by Catriona Innes
See full article at Look.co.uk

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Bernie App Is A New Virtual Online Dating Assistant

Posted on February 13, 2016

Bernie app screenshotCTV – Feb 12 – An app, called Bernie, uses facial recognition software that learns to match users criteria. Once a potential date is found based on the preferences of the user, Bernie engages in a chat, asking questions and determining if the responses are positive or negative to weed out candidates. A list of potential romantic candidates is then deposited into users' inbox. That's where they take over.

by Ross McLaughlin & Lisa Green
See full article at CTV Vancouver

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

College Students Are Tindering For ‘Friends’

Posted on February 13, 2016

Tinder-appCNN MONEY – Feb 12 – College students say they're using dating apps for friendship. 58% of students said that they've never gone on a date using the app, in a survey by college jobs startup WayUp. 53% say they're using dating apps to find friends, 27% are looking for a significant other, and 20% were looking for a hookup. According to Jason Helfstein, Internet analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., it doesn't really matter why students are using the app, there's still "value" in it for Tinder. Dating industry analyst Mark Brooks agrees. "It helps people connect with the concept of Internet dating," he said, that as people start to look for more serious relationships "they'll generally drift toward other services".

by Allison Croghan
See full article at Fox13

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Why Are People Unhappy With Online Dating

Posted on February 13, 2016

Online dating55FT.COM – Feb 12 – Michael Norton, a psychologist at Harvard Business School conducted a survey with two other behavioural scientists, Jeana Frost and Dan Ariely. It revealed that people were unhappy with their online dating experience in three ways:

  1. The "online" bit of the dating was not fun
  2. It took forever
  3. People tend to have high expectations before the dates and feel disenchanted afterwards

Jeana Frost had an alternative approach to online dating. She created a virtual image gallery in which people had a virtual date, represented by simple geometric avatars with speech bubbles. People enjoyed these virtual dates and, when they later met in person, the virtual date seems to have worked well as an icebreaker.

Virtual dating has not taken off commercially, says Norton, in part because companies have tried too hard to make it realistic.

by Tim Harford
See full article at Financial Times

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Tinder And Badoo Dominate The Dating App Market

Posted on February 13, 2016

Most downloaded dating apps worldwideBBC.CO.UK – Feb 12 – Looking at 50 of the world's biggest app markets, two names dominated in 2015: Badoo and Tinder (AppAnnie). Badoo is the top dating app in 21 countries. Tinder was the most downloaded app in 18 countries. The dominance of Tinder and Badoo does not extend to East Asia. In China, for example, Momo is #1. In Africa, people use social networks to meet partners.

by Simon Maybin, Emily Maguire, Henry Clarke Price, John Walton & Punit Shah
See full article at BBC

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Young Adults Swipe Right On Tinder

Posted on February 13, 2016

Tinder young people profilesASSOCIATED PRESS – Feb 12 – Young adults, ages 18 to 24, traditionally haven't been big online daters. Tinder and rivals such as Hinge are changing the dynamics. In 2013, only 10% in that age group used online dating. That rose to 27% in the latest Pew study. Tinder says half of its users are ages 18 to 24, while 85% are 18 to 34.

by Tali Arbel
See full article at Chicago Tribune

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Dating App Paktor Is Taking On Tinder In Southeast Asia

Posted on February 13, 2016

Paktor logo new jan 16INC – Feb 12 – With 6M users across Asian markets, Paktor is the biggest dating app in the region. It raised $7.1M in its Series B funding round this year. Paktor works like Tinder but the premium features allow users to also filter by occupation and education. Paktor says their research shows this is what matters to their users. Users are spending ~13 hours a month on the app, returning six times daily on average.

by Kirsten Han
The full article was originally published at INC, but is no longer available.

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team