VOICE ONLINE – Sep 30 – A research from dating app TrueView finds that people are 66% more likely to receive a response if their message uses polite language. The app has introduced a word detection system on their app. If one of their members tries to use a 'naughty' word when compiling a message to a potential date, their system flags-up the word and encourages the user to write something else instead.
The full article was originally published at Voice Online, but is no longer available.
ENTREPRENEUR – Sep 29 – "I want to be the company that fixes dating in the same way Google fixed search," said Amanda Bradford. She studied information systems at Carnegie Mellon and got her business degree from Stanford. Before launching The League in 2015, she worked in technical roles at Salesforce and Google. Today, her company has raised ~$2.3M in funding and operates in 20 cities, 12 of which launched this year.
Q: What's a book that changed your mind and why?
A: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Reading such a legendary, iconic book over 55 years later made me appreciate just how far women have come in such a short time in gaining equality in the workplace.
Q: What's a book you always recommend?
A: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
Q: What's a strategy to keep focused?
A: I put white noise on and turn off Slack and only check email once an hour.
Q: What did you learn from the worst boss you ever had?
A: The worst boss I had was never around nor gave me feedback, so I learned how to self-manage and self-grade my own work.
Q: Who has influenced you most when it comes to how you approach your work?
A: My mom. I've never once heard her say, "I don't know how to do that."
Q: What inspires you?
A: Fixing the problem.
Q: What's the best advice you ever took?
A: Raise more money than you think you need. You will spend it, I promise.
Q: What's the worst piece of advice you ever got?
A: Worrying about getting advisors.
Q: What are you learning now?
A: My biggest new learning has been in recruiting.
ABS CBN NEWS – Sep 29 – Valenice Balace quit her job in a telecommunications company to build a dating app for conservative Filipinas. Peekawoo allows users to strike up conversations within the app on a variety of topics, unlike Tinder, which matches users based solely on whether or not they like each other. The company has earned $100K and grew its workforce to 50 from 4 in 5 years, Balace said.
WEBWIRE – Sep 28 – Edouard Clep, automation implementation manager from Besedo, will speak on a panel that discusses fraud detection and automation. Every year Besedo review and moderate ~570M pieces of content, respond to ~1M user support inquiries and block ~40M fraud and scam attempts. The iDate (Internet dating conference), being held this week in London (Oct 3 – 4), is the largest event and trade show covering the online dating business.
THE NEXT WEB – Sep 28 – Tinder Social got in trouble for outing its users to their Facebook friends. It turns out that, in addition to this, Social had another privacy issue that made it possible for Tinder users to track their Facebook friends – and see their exact location. Tinder made Social an opt-in feature to further protect the privacy of its users, but it clarified that anybody who activates Social will be vulnerable to this loophole. Since then, it has killed off Social altogether.
BUSINESS INSIDER – Sep 28 – Psychologist Eli Finkel says the only real advantage to online dating is that it introduces you to tons of potential dates. There's no evidence that matching algorithms work, Finkel says. That's why Finkel thinks apps like Tinder and Bumble are the best option for single people today. Finkel is a psychologist at Northwestern University and a professor at the Kellogg School of Management; he's also the author of "The All-or-Nothing Marriage." Finkel and his colleagues have been studying online dating for years."
by Shana Lebowitz
See full article at Business Insider