TECH CRUNCH – Dec 14 – Bumble, the dating app that puts women in the driver's seat, has invested in gay dating app Chappy. The details were not disclosed but Bumble is the sole investor in the round and will take an equity stake. In exchange, Bumble will be offering product development and marketing support. Chappy is a gay dating app based in the UK.
by Fitz Tepper
See full article at Tech Crunch
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BQLIVE – Dec 14 – Max Adamski and Alex Durrant raised £130k to launch their "blind" dating app JigTalk. On JigTalk, users' photos are covered by 16 jigsaw pieces. These unveil one by one as more and more messages are exchanged. Max came up with this idea after using Tinder unsuccessfully. The app launched in Beta on Valentine's Day 2016. The company is hoping to complete another investment round of £1M in July/August 2017 to take the app UK wide and into US and Europe.
by Bryce Wilcock
See full article at BQLive
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BWDISRUPT – Dec 13 – Twango is a Question-Answer based relationship platform, inspired by the famous 36 Questions that make people fall in love. It was co-founded by Sagar Dewan.
Q: Why did you decide to make Twango?
A: I found dating apps to be very superficial and focused on quantity over quality. I was not meeting people who were on the same wave length as me. So my cofounders Suraj Pratap Singh and Minnie Jain, and I started working on Twango in November 2015 and launched Twango in April 2016.
Q: What's special about Twango?
A: We were very clear from the start about not wanting to imitate Tinder. It is a question/answer relationship platform.
Q: How did you manage to fund this idea?
A: We are currently speaking to a few investors. Up to now we have put in our savings.
Q: What will be your monetization paths?
A: We have in-app currency called Twangz that we use for monetization. We are seeing a lot of traction with Twangz.
Q: How has the business grown so far?
A: We have ~3k users using our app and a decent retention rate.
Q: What marketing strategies and plans do you have?
A: We do content marketing at Facebook, Instagram and emails. We are also hosting offline events for singles in the 20-25 age group.
by Regina Mihindukulasuriya
See full article at BusinessWorld.in
WEBWIRE – Dec 13 – Brandon Wade, founder and CEO of SeekingArrangement.com, will speak at the iDate Online Dating Industry Conference at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens on January 24-26, 2017. He will be talking about the challenges he faced while taking his niche dating site mainstream.
MACWORLD – Dec 14 – Tinder has just released a tvOS app so users can swipe right and swipe left on potential dates in front of an audience. However, if they want to send messages or edit their profile, they still need to go to the Tinder app.
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Dec 13 – Matzoball, a multi-city event, is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2016. The first big event of its kind, Matzoball launched in Boston in 1987 when founder Andrew Rudnick organized a party for his Jewish friends on Christmas Eve – and since then, it's grown to ~3k people in its biggest locations, like New York and Miami. Another event is The Ball which is hosted by Let My People Go and attracts crowds of ~3k people in New York City. It also hosts parties in across the US and in Canada. It is called the 'mother of all Jewish Singles parties' by TimeOut. Jewbilee is a gay singles event. The company behind the event, Hebro, hosts other gay Jewish singles events year-round as well. Jewess Eve event is new to the Christmas Eve party scene, and also opens its doors to the Jewish trans community in New York.
TECH CIRCLE – Dec 12 – Matrimony.com has scrapped plans for an IPO this year, with just days remaining for its regulatory approval to lapse. "We have decided to postpone the IPO due to weak market conditions," said Matrimony.com's CEO. Matrimony.com was founded in 1997 and comprises three segments – matchmaking services, marriage services and related sale of products and other services, such as the mobile-only relationship app Matchify. It started offering online matchmaking services in 2001. Matrimony's net revenues more than doubled in the four years between FY11 and FY15. The company closed the year ended March 31, 2015 with net revenues of Rs 232 crore ($34M), up over 16% than the previous year. The company claims it has 647k paid subscribers. The company was looking at an IPO worth Rs 550 crore ($82M) of which ~Rs 200 crore was to go to its selling shareholders.
by Ankit Doshi
See full article at Tech Circle
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THE NY OBSERVER – Dec 12 – LuvByrd, a fitness dating app, paired up with a Colorado ski resort and hosted a speed dating events for ski lovers on Saturday. The next event will be on February 1. Last year, there were 200 singles, with closer to 400 this time around. Singles can choose to ski down the mountain with their new suitor, or they can leave them behind and try their luck on the next lift.
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Subject: Commission Junction Advertiser Date.com (X) has been deactivated
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Please be aware that Date.com, one of the advertisers you are joined to in the Commission Junction network, has been deactivated. While Date.com is deactivated, you will not receive commissions for traffic you drive via the advertiser's banners, text links, and/or other link types. Consequently, please replace these links as soon as possible with links from active advertisers. To view the links you are using that are generating traffic for Date.com but from which you are earning no revenue, go to the Invalid Links Generating Traffic Report.
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From affiliates perspective, this really sucks! Affiliates put a lot of work into getting SEO rank. The good ones (like the one who sent me the heads up on this) deserve to have more notice and more respect than 'oops, now we're not payin' ya.' I guess it comes with the territory, but still, we can surely do better by affiliates. No wonder they're running for the igaming hills.
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NY POST – Dec 11 – EliteSingles is currently the third-largest US TV dating advertiser behind Match and eHarmony, but plans to turn up the volume to ensure it nabs between 5k – 6k new customers a day. The company is currently signing 3k – 4k, it says. The company is backed by Rocket Internet and Holtzbrinck Ventures, and the US is its fastest-growing market.