FORBES – Dec 19 – As an MBA student at the University of Chicago, Paktor CEO and co-founder Joseph Phua learned the first-hand benefits of online dating. He returned to Singapore to launch an American-style mobile dating app. The Paktor team soon found that successful tactics used by US and European dating apps didn't translate to Asian societies because of their more conservative dating norms. So Paktor launched Group Chats (providing an environment to facilitate chats within a collective community). The app has now ~15M users, 5B swipes and the largest activity in the region by downloads and usage. They achieved this growth by deeply understanding their local customers and deploying Facebook's Account Kit to enable mobile phone numbers as a universal login.
Month: December 2016
Tinder Blazes A Trail For Match Growth
THE MOTLEY FOOL – Dec 19 – Match Group CEO, Gregg Blatt, described Tinder as a "rocket." Tinder is now the top grossing "lifestyle" app in 99 countries with~1.5M paid members. Match has made it clear that they are relying on Tinder. Tinder's home US market still has plenty of room to expand. At the time of Match.com's IPO it was stated that Tinder had 50M users. Currently only 3% of these users are paid members, but with paid member count growth rates of 26% in Q3 for the domestic market and 46% internationally, there is plenty of opportunity to monetize the user base. International expansion is high on the agenda for Tinder with the online dating market in Europe and China alone expected to be worth a combined $2.4B by 2021.
by Sarah Priestley
See full article at Madison.com
Building A Community, And An Empire, With A Gay Dating App In China
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OPW – Dec 18 – For 12 years the Courtland Brooks agency has been dedicated to you, serving up the daily news with Online Personals Watch, keynoting at 40+ iDate conferences, and we’ve assisted over 100 dating and matchmaking service clients to grow and prosper. For a list of our testimonials please see this link. Need some help? Please email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com. We’re here for you.
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
Gay Dating Apps Hornet And Blued Enter Global Partnership
PINK NEWS – Dec 18 – As part of the cooperation, Blued will be participating in an extension of the funding round to help expand upon the momentum and growth rates Hornet has been experiencing. Hornet raised $8M earlier this year from venture capital fund Ventech China. Hornet, founded in 2011, claims to be "the world's second largest gay social network" with 15M users, and 3M monthly active users.
by Joseph Patrick McCormick
See full article at Pink News
eHarmony’s Major Update – Long Questionnaire Is Optional
PR NEWSWIRE – Dec 15 – Starting in January, eHarmony users can now see why they're compatible with a feature called "The Two Of You Together". They will be able to see the matches who score at an advanced level of compatibility and also why. Also anyone will be able to build a basic profile by answering a few quick questions and within ten minutes or less, start receiving matches. Users can then dig deeper on their own time to complete eHarmony's in-depth personality survey but this is no longer necessary to participate.
Bryan Cranston Worked For Great Expectations!
OPW – Dec 18 – Did you know, Bryan Cranston the lead actor in Breaking Bad was a videographer for Great Expectations?!
See all posts on Great Expectations
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
MarkBrooks.TV Video Experiment
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
Ashley Madison Settles With FTC, Agreed To Pay $1.65M Fine
BLOOMBERG MARKETS – Dec 14 – AshleyMadison.com's owner agreed to pay a steeply discounted $1.65M settlement to resolve state and federal probes into a 2015 hack that exposed personal data of 37M users. The fine was reduced ~90% from $17.5M due to an "inability to pay". Company spokeswoman Debra Quinn declined to comment on why the company can't afford to pay the full settlement, despite reporting more users than it had at the time of the breach.
by Erik Larson
See full article at Bloomberg Markets
Bubby Is A New Jewish Dating App
SF CHRONICLE – Dec 14 – The app, created by Sarah Persitz, Stephanie Volftsun and Jordan Klein, was launched in February and is still in beta testing. "Bubby is not about being Jewish," said Persitz. "It's about connecting under that umbrella of Jewish values."