Month: February 2018

Seeking Arrangement Targets Young Female University Students

Posted on February 23, 2018

Seekingarrangement logo 2017NEWS.COM.AU – Feb 22 – A Sydney student is funding her studies by having sex with two different men three times a week – and says she's not the only one doing it. There is no cash exchanged directly. Both men preferring to "mentor" her by paying for her living expenses and university costs. She is one of 125K Australian university students signed up to the "Sugar Baby" website Seeking Arrangement, which connects young women with wealthy, time-poor men. The website directly targets university students, offering "relief" to those with large uni debts or HECS payments. Seeking Arrangement spokeswoman Kimberly De La Cruz told news.com.au that a third of the website's "sugar babies" are students.

by Rebecca Sullivan
See full article at News.com.au

See all posts on SeekingArrangement

Summarized by the IDEA team

General Atlantic Buys 25% Of ProSieben’s €1.8B Digital Business

Posted on February 23, 2018

Parship elitepartner logosPRIVATE EQUITY NEWS – Feb 22 – U.S. private-equity firm General Atlantic has bought a 25% stake in NuCom Group, the digital business of German media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE. The deal valued NuCom at €1.8B, including debt, ProSieben said in a statement. The unit consists of 10 businesses, including online dating site Parship Elite Group and energy price-comparison business Verivox, and generated ~€650M of revenue in 2017. As part of the deal, ProSieben and General Atlantic have bought the minority stakes in Verivox and Parship held by Oakley Capital. The London buyout firm retained minority stakes in both businesses when it sold them to ProSieben in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Parship delivered an nearly five-times return on Oakley's invested capital, while the Verivox investment returned two and a half times its money.

by William Louch
See full article at Private Equity News

See all posts on Parship
See all posts on ElitePartner

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the IDEA team

Tinder Vulnerability Let Hackers Take Over Accounts With Just A Phone Number

Posted on February 22, 2018

Tinder tinder gold screenshotTHE VERGE – Feb 21 – A newly published attack let researchers take over Tinder accounts with just a user's phone number, according to a new report by Appsecure. Tinder has changed its login system to protect against the attack and there's no evidence it was exploited before the patch. Still, it's a reminder of how fragile many login systems still are, and how powerful even basic vulnerabilities can be when chained together.

by Russell Brandom
See full article at The Verge

See all posts on Tinder

Summarized by the IDEA team

Axon Invests In Latam Dating Site Mi Media Manzana

Posted on February 22, 2018

Mimediamanzana logo Feb 2018PRESS RELEASE – Feb 22 – Axon Partners Group is investing in Mi Media Manzana, the leading online dating platform in Peru. Mi Media Manzana will use the funds to accelerate its growth and strengthen its operations in Latin America. Mi Media Manzana has a dominant position in Peru, Colombia, Chile and Mexico. Its users are single and professional 35+ who are looking for a long-term relationship.

The full article was originally published at Axon Partners website, but is no longer available.

See all posts on Mi Media Manzana

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the IDEA team

Tinder New User Growth Could Be Cut In Half, JP Morgan Says

Posted on February 22, 2018

Tinder logo jan 17CNBC – Feb 22 – Tinder could see new user growth cut in half by the end of June unless it gets more kindling, J.P. Morgan said. J.P. Morgan's Doug Anmuth downgraded shares to neutral from overweight. "Tinder's highly successful Gold launch in late August/early Sept 2017 accelerated subscriber growth but we believe Tinder's peak Gold surge is now behind," he wrote. Thanks to Gold offerings, Tinder's user growth skyrocketed, jumping to 476K in Q3 and 544K in Q4. But Anmuth cautioned investors that people aren't likely to continue to join Tinder at that rate; he now expects the app to add 350K users in Q1 and 230K in Q2. Anmuth did note, however, that the company expects a big Tinder product later in the year.

by Thomas Franck
See full article at CNBC

See all posts on Tinder

Summarized by the IDEA team

LemonSwan: Arne Kahlke Gets People Together Again

Posted on February 22, 2018

Lemonswan arne kahlke feb 2018DETUSCHE STARTUPS – Feb 22 – Arne Kahlke is the founder of ElitePartner. His latest venture is called LemonSwan. The young startup, which Kahlke leads with Oliver Czok, Lars Jankowfsky and Paul Uhlig, is aimed at singles of all ages 18 and older looking for long-term relationship.

Q: What problem do you want to solve with LemonSwan?
A: 18 years of Parship and 14 years of ElitePartner – but the single numbers are as high as never before. There are ~23M singles in Germany, including 2.7M single parents. There is a huge market potential.

Q: Isn't online dating market already totally saturated?
A: Women who are serious have very little choice with Parship and ElitePartner. But single parents can not afford a costly membership – they simply do not have a suitable alternative yet. The dating market is by no means saturated. With LemonSwan we close the gap in the market and hopefully will soon reverse the single trend.

Q: Who are your competitors?
A: We are 100% free for single parents, students and trainees. So we are very unique.

by Alexander Hüsing
See full article at Deutsche Startups

See all posts on LemonSwan

Summarized by the IDEA team

A Collection Of Behavioral Valentines

Posted on February 22, 2018

BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST – Feb 13 – A group of behavioral science Casanovas have banded together to produce poetry aimed at wooing system 1 and winning over system 2 in 140 characters or less: #behavioralvalentines.

Behavioral_valentine_optout

See full article at Behavioral Scientist

Summarized by the IDEA team

The Top Internet Dating Reporters In 2017

Posted on February 22, 2018

Reporters post 2017OPW – Feb 22 – Each year we take a look at which reporters have received the most coverage on Online Personals Watch. Who's made the cut, the most? Who's been most prolific in writing quality articles about the dating industry. Here's our annual rankings.

#1 – Cassie Murdoch (see story summaries), Mashable
#2 – Sarah Perez (see story summaries), Tech Crunch
#3 – Fitz Tepper (see story summaries), Tech Crunch
#4/5/6 – Jordan Crook (see story summaries), Tech Crunch
#4/5/6 – Rachel Thompson (see story summaries), Mashable
#4/5/6 – Shana Lebowitz (see story summaries), Business Insider
#7 – Nathan McAlone (see story summaries), Business Insider
#8/9/10 – Megan Farokhmanesh (see story summaries), The Verge
#8/9/10 – Anthony Ha (see story summaries), Tech Crunch
#8/9/10 – Kari Paul (see story summaries), Marketwatch

We hope you find this a useful list for getting an idea who is writing the most quality articles on dating.

See full post at IDEA Blog.

See the 2016 and 2015 rankings.

Post by the IDEA team

Superdate To ICO

Posted on February 22, 2018

Superdate iconMARKETWIRED – Feb 21 – Superdate Networks, creator of an activity-focused dating app, is planning to launch an Initial Coin Offering with the introduction of SuperdateCoin. Superdate has released its ICO Whitepaper Teaser at http://superdatecoin.io. On SuperdateCoin users will have to pay to communicate with others. With "cost assigning" a user is "signaling" that he/she did not send bulk messages.

See full article at Marketwired

See all posts on Superdate

Summarized by the IDEA team

The ELO Score & What It Means

Posted on February 22, 2018

Elo scoreTHE VECTOR – Feb 21 – Tinder uses a rating system based on the ELO score that determines whose profile is shown to who, and in what order. When a Tinder account is first created, it has no rating. Users are allowed to swipe on a wide selection of profiles. Based on whom a user matches with and swipes on over the course of the first few days, a score is determined. Many analysts explain the ELO score as a 1-10 scale. If a user is a 5, they will be shown profiles that are 4-6 and rarely anyone else. If the user swipes and matches with more 4s than 6s, they will then become a 4. There are also some users who swipe right on every profile in order to dig for as many matches as possible. A new Tinder update recognizes users who abuse the swipe right feature as bots. These users are flagged and given a very low score, making them mostly invisible to non-bot users.

by Prasanna Tati
See full article at The Vector

See all posts on Tinder

Summarized by the IDEA team