THE FASHION LAW – Oct 3 – Imagine that during your therapy session you tell your therapist about a new dating app that you have in the works. Despite asking Joanne Richards, the therapist, not to tell anyone about the idea, she does. She tells her friend, Lori Cheek, who launches Cheekd. This is what Alfred Pirri claims happened to him. He filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit in federal court in New York last month against Lori Cheek for fraud, trade secret misappropriation, unjust enrichment, and conversion. As Pirri alleges, Richards informed him that she had told a friend about his idea for an app, but she assured him that Cheek was "not going to do anything with the idea". In addition to suing Cheek, Pirri names Richards in his suit, alleging that she breached her fiduciary duty. Pirri has asked the court to invalidate Cheek's patent, and to order the defendants to discontinue use of the Cheekd site and app. Pirri has also asked to disgorge all of the defendants' profits resulting from their use of his idea and to pay $1M in damages.
Month: October 2017
Spark Networks To Hold Meeting Of Stockholders To Approve Merger With EliteSingles
ACCESSWIRE – Oct 2 – The special stockholder meeting is scheduled for Nov 2, 2017 at Spark's offices. Spark and EliteSingles have entered into a definitive agreement under which Spark and Elite Singles will combine in a stock-for-stock transaction that is expected to result in EliteSingles stockholders owning ~75% of New Spark and Spark stockholders owning ~25%. The merger is subject to approval by Spark stockholders and is expected to close in the Q4 of 2017.
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Match Group – Market Leader Of World’s Most Enduring Industry
SEEKING ALPHA – Oct 2 – MTCH stock is a lot like love: it arouses feelings of excitement in some, while evoking fear in others. The industry has very low barriers to entry and established players must always consider the threat of incoming competition. However, once established, the top brands usually retain their position. Match's market share is estimated to be 25.7%, with eHarmony coming in at 12%. Match Group is to online dating almost what Facebook is to social media. Some investors look at Match Group's steadily declining average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) as an indication that customers are less willing to pay. However, management noted in its Q1 '17 conference call that each of its top six brands had either flat or higher ARPPU YOY, an indication of stable pricing. The declines are related to product mix shifts toward lower-cost Tinder services and toward international customers which also have lower ARPPU. Match's business, pairing up people looking for a romantic connection..is as timeless as any business around. Fast forward 5, 10, or 15 years and online dating stigma may be a thing of the past, particularly given the up-and-coming generation growing up on Tinder.
FlirtAR – A New App That Uses AR To Help People Find Dates
MASHABLE – Oct 3 – FlirtAR, pronounced "flirter," is launching for iOS. (It'll be available for Android at the end of this month.) It uses AR to help users find potential matches who are nearby. It uses geolocation to find people close by. Another feature lets users move themselves on the map to a different location and view potential matches there, though people can see that they're not actually there and are just scoping out the scene. The app is planning to introduce a premium tier of services in the coming months.
Egypt Escalates LGBTI Crackdown With Fresh Wave Of Arrests
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – Oct 2 – The Egyptian authorities have arrested 22 people over the past three days, stepping up a campaign of persecution against LGBTI people in the country which began after a rainbow flag was displayed at a Mashrou' Leila concert in Cairo provoking a public outcry, Amnesty International said today. The scale of the latest arrests highlights how dangerously entrenched homophobia is within the country.
Bumble Is Launching Bumble Bizz
AyoPoligami Is A New Tinder-style Dating App For Polygamists
MIRROR.CO.UK – Oct 2 – AyoPoligami is an Indonesian dating app that helps married men find another wife. Polygamy is legal in Indonesia, where a man is allowed to be married to up to four women at a time. The app's developer Lindu Pranayama, who met his first – and currently only – wife on the app, started his company in 2016 after realizing regular dating sites weren't catering to married men looking for a second, third or fourth wife. Women's rights activists are calling it "upsetting and shocking". In order to enter a polygamous marriage, men in Indonesia are required to gain their first wife's consent and pass a religious court investigation, which will look to confirm that she is incapable of fulfilling her duties as a wife.
Match.com Leaves The Visually Impaired In The Dark: Suit
NY POST – Oct 1 – Match.com is blind to the needs of the visually impaired lovelorn, says a Virginia man in a Manhattan federal lawsuit. Blind users can't even create a profile for themselves. The company is looking into the matter, a Match.com spokeswoman said.
All The Stuff That Tinder Knows About Its Users
FORBES – Oct 1 – In an article published on the Guardian UK, Judith Duportail made use of the European Union's data protection laws to request Tinder that they release all the data that they have available on her. She received eight hundred pages. Tinder managed to secure a staggering amount of data on her personal life, even her most intimate moments. Tinder makes it very clear from the get-go that information shared with the app is not certain to remain private. There should be laws to enforce this, but there really aren't any. A dating app, in the eyes of law, is just like any other app. Based on the information disclosed on its terms of usage, it has every right to use your information however it sees fit.
Hinge’s CEO Says A Good Dating App Doesn’t Rely On Algorithms
WASHINGTON POST – Sep 30 – In 2012, Justin McLeod founded Hinge. Initially, the app was very similar to Tinder except that it aimed to pair users with friends of Facebook friends. In 2015, after Nancy Jo Sales's story in Vanity Fair about how Tinder had created a "dating apocalypse" went viral, Hinge nixed its Tinder-like swiping interface and relaunched, calling itself "the relationship app." Part of Hinge's re-branding involved adding profile questions that would allow users to highlight their more authentic selves. "We found that most people don't think some super-special algorithms would be able to find their right person. I don't think we're there yet", he said.