SHRM.ORG – Mar 10 – Starting March 30, eHarmony hopes to do for careers what it has done for dating: help people make the perfect match. eHarmony has been working on the career-matching site for more than two years now. Elevated Careers will pair applicants and jobs based not just on skills and qualifications but also cultural fit and the personality traits.
by Aliah D. Wright
See full article at SHRM.org
OPW – Mar 11 - The new Internet dating jobs listing is live on the Internet Dating Jobs blog.
Below see a couple of this month's most interesting offers:
Affinitas
Director Finance and Accounting
Dil Mil
VP of Growth
eHarmony
Vice President, Product Management
Global Personals USA (Webdate, WealthyMen, Crush.com)
Customer Service Agent
Grindr / Blendr
Director of Dev Ops
Lovoo
Creative Director
Match.com, Chemistry.com, People Media
VP, Marketplace
To see more open positions go here.
Do you have an idating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to petra@courtlandbrooks.com and we will add it to the list.
NYTIMES – Mar 9 – The boring conversations on dating apps tend to be started by men. OkCupid said women who take the initiative to reach out to men are rewarded with higher response rates and more desirable men. The company studied 70K users. Women who sent the first message were 2.5 times more likely to receive a response than men who did the same. And the men the women contacted were more "attractive". ~12% of first messages men send turn into a date, while 30% of women's first messages end up in a date.
GLAMOUR MAGAZINE – Mar 9 – Bumble is the feminist version of Tinder. Only women can make the first move, which means no smutty messages. The app is now valued at $750M. Bumble has recently added a new feature, BFF, to find new friends.
OCTA FINANCE – Mar 8 – An investor who purchased Match Group shares filed a lawsuit in Texas against the company over alleged Securities Laws violations in connection with the IPO. Last November Match Group conducted its IPO, selling ~33M shares at $12/share. The shares reached as high as $15 on Nov 20, 2015. On Feb 2, 2016, Match disclosed that its Q4 net income declined from $48.27M in Q4 2014 to $35.59M in Q4 2015. Shares declined to as low as $8.75/share on Feb 4, 2016.
FT – Mar 8 – Maireed Malloy, Berkeley introductions, which charges £18K per year, recorded a 48% rise in the number of Londoners she has set up with New Yorkers in the last 10 months. New York-based Agape Match, which charges $15K for six introductions, showed a similar spike. Maria Avgitidis, said the "stupid rules" of New York's singles scene – with men waiting 3 days to call after a date, or dating multiple women simultaneously – meant women were more inclined to look elsewhere for romance.
by Emma Jacobs
See full article at Financial Times
See all posts on AgapeMatch
See all posts on Berkeley International
TECHINASIA – Mar 8 – Paktor, Southeast Asia's version of Tinder, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from one of Indonesia's biggest conglomerates, MNC Media. The funding is part of a larger investment round the app is about to close. Prior to this round, Paktor had raised $12M in funding.
by Judith Balea
See full article at TechInAsia
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 8 – Elena's Models is unusual in the Premium International Dating (PID) space because it charges a flat monthly membership. Most PID sites charge per communication. As the world gets smaller, I believe there will be more of a call for PID services, and so this is an interesting space for us to review from time to time. Elena Petrova is the CEO/Founder of Elena's Models. Here's her story, and overview. – Mark Brooks
What is Elena's Models founding story?
After I moved overseas to join my husband in 1998, I came across a lot of websites talking about Russian women. I found their opinions surprising. This is why I started my first website womenrussia.com. In 1999 I wrote a book called "101 Tips How To Marry a Foreigner", talking about international relationships. Russian Cosmopolitan picked my book and included it in their review, and I started to receive enormous amounts of requests from Russian and Ukrainian women who wanted to try international dating. This is how Elena's Models came to life. I already had profiles of my friends on womenrussia.com and men kept asking me if the women were real or models. So I renamed womenrussia.com to Elena's Models.
How is Elena's Models different from other companies in the Premium International Dating segment?
Elenasmodels.com works very much the same as any dating site for people seeking partners locally. We encourage direct communication and exchange of contact details between members. Most other sites within our market segment moved to pay-per-letter model.
Also we try to bridge cultural gaps the best we can. We offer a lot of facts about current daily life in Russia and Ukraine on our blog for men.
How do you charge members?
We charge a one-off membership fee.
What's next for Elena's Models?
We have some exciting plans in the pipeline. A new niche dating app is under way, under different branding and pricing structure. When the test site for the new App is completed, we will be seeking a funding to support its ongoing development. We believe our 17 years of online dating expertise and successful monetization make us a solid partner for those interested in investing in our new venture.
MARKETWIRED – Mar 7 – Snap Interactive has rebranded AYI, the company's flagship dating platform and one of the first dating apps to integrate with Facebook. FirstMet's apps are both newly rebuilt from the ground up with a more streamlined back-end infrastructure. FirstMet App targets singles over 35.
See full article at Marketwired
See all posts on Snap Interactive
See all posts on FirstMet (formerly AYI)
CNET – Mar 5 – Tinder has unveiled a new feature that allows members to play Cupid by sharing profiles of potential matches with their friends. When users see someone in the app they think a friend might like, they tap the "share" button and the app will fire off a link to their friends.