Month: February 2019

Sugarbook – Malaysia’s First Sugar Dating App

Posted on February 14, 2019

Sugarbook profileENTREPRENEUR – Feb 14 – Darren Chan is the founder and CEO of Malaysia's first and only sugar dating platform Sugarbook. Before, he founded Gigfairy, Malaysia's first live music booking platform, which later got acquired by Tune Studios of the AirAsia Group. According to Chan, sugar dating is a modern kind of dating. The app claims 300K members from 60 countries, predominantly from Malaysia, the US, Singapore and the Philippines. ~70% of the members are student "Sugar Babies" from universities, single mothers and divorcees. "Sugar Daddies" range between the age of 30-55, with an average annual income of $150K to $300K. Sugarbook has recently raised a six-digit figure from an undisclosed benefactor. Chan was bootstrapping from the beginning and it took him over four months to be able to pay his first hire.

by Pooja Singh
See full article at Entrepreneur

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Niche Dating Companies Help Ivy League Graduates Find Love

Posted on February 14, 2019

Bluesmatch logoINDIA NEW ENGLAND NEWS – Feb 14 – Ryan Law is the founder of BluesMatch, a company based in London that matches Oxford, Cambridge, and Ivy League graduates. Himself an Oxford-educated geologist and managing director of a geothermal engineering firm, Law founded BluesMatch in 2001 to help himself and other Oxford or Cambridge alumni find their life partners among like-minded people. Although in the end he found his wife offline, he said companies like his meet a real need. "It's not about elitism, it's about commonality," he said. "If you speak the same language, use the same points of reference, and share a similar understanding of politics and the world, it just makes a big difference". Barbara Black Goldfarb and Nancy Gold, who run Elegant Introductions out of Miami, are matchmakers for a clientele based in Miami and Boston. Most of their clients are highly educated and professionally successful. Applicants have to show proof of an Ivy League degree.

See full article at India New England News

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Dating Site Meetpositives.com Contributes Towards Controlling the Spread of HIV

Posted on February 14, 2019

Meetpositives partial screenshot 2019DIGITAL JOURNAL – Feb 14 – Meetpositives.com, an online dating website, continues to show support for those living with HIV. HIV affects ~200K individuals in the US each year. Those infected with HIV or AIDS (among other infections) can get together on Meetpositives.com and build relationships through mutual understanding of the infection and how it affects the way they live their lives. "We are not just another dating site looking to increase our user-base," said Jack Lombardi, a spokesperson for Meetpositives. "We want to make a difference in society, and help control the spread of HIV and other STDs while simultaneously making it easier for those infected to find partners."

See full article at Digital Journal

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These Apps Are Designed to Heal Heartbreaks

Posted on February 14, 2019

Mend screenshotsBROADLY – Feb 14 – Mend and Break-Up Boss are part of a new wave of self-care apps that promise to help users get over ex. Mend CEO and founder Elle Huerta had recently moved to San Francisco and was living alone when she went through the breakup that inspired her app. Huerta wanted Mend to be like a "best friend who also has great advice" and provide comfort during those first few days that are particularly sore. It encourages prioritizing your relationship with yourself through journalling, logging daily self-care activities, or listening to audio trainings from mental health and wellness experts. In 2015, Stila Cosmetics founder Jeanine Lobell and therapist Jane Reardon came up with Rx Breakup, a "30-day, three-step program" that provides tools to help users compartmentalize their thoughts and feelings through analytical writing exercises, and aims to help them replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with positive change. There's also Break-Up Boss, created in 2017 by Australian author and relationship columnist Zoë Foster Blake, an app designed to virtually smack users hand away when they're about to cave and contact their ex.

by Laura Blackwell
See full article Broadly

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Indian Matrimony Services

Posted on February 14, 2019

Lovevivah logoTHE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS – Feb 8 – The wedding industry in India is over $15B, and the online matrimonial market is expected to reach $318million by 2020. In India, arranged marriages have been the norm since time immemorial but in the last two decades we have seen a sea change. Now youngsters want to marry a person of their choice rather than that of their parents. Gorav Aggarwal started lovevivah.com in 2012 and has a 5-point authentication program.

See full article at The New Indian Express

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Online Dating Is Literally Changing Humanity

Posted on February 14, 2019

Dating apps1MASHABLE – Feb 13 – For millennia, humans were most likely to marry and/or raise kids with members of their own tribe. That changed a little when we started to sail and settle around the world. In pre-World War II, we were most likely to meet our significant others through family. In the 1950s came the rise of meeting "friends of friends," and that method stayed dominant through the rest of the century. By 2000, 10% of opposite-sex couples and 20% of same-sex couples met via the internet. By 2010, those numbers had reached ~20% and 70%respectively. The Tinder era has supercharged this trend. A Stanford study looked at data in relationship surveys that goes up to 2017, and found that 29% of heterosexual and 65% of gay couples had now met online. There are ~1M Tinder dates every week around the world. Online dating is creating mixed-race couples at a faster rate than our increasingly diverse society would. During the 2000s, the percentage of new marriages that are interracial rose from 10.68% to 15.54%, a huge increase … the proportion of new interracial marriage jumps again in 2014 to 17.24%, remaining above 17% in 2015 too.

by Chris Taylor
See full article at Mashable

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Lumen – The New App for Over 50s

Posted on February 14, 2019

Lumen logoDAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Feb 13 – Dating second time round can be both daunting and bewildering for many. Launched in September, dating app Lumen hit the headlines immediately. ~250K singles have signed up, making it the most popular app for over-50s in the UK. "The over-50s have been neglected by dating sites for years," says expert and founder of Lumen – Charly Lester. So, given 7.5M over 50s in Britain are single, divorced or widowed, Charly decided to invent the first over-50s app. For their ads, they used a photo of a real-life model, Paul Orchard (age 58), to show mature daters can be sexy and have a sense of fun. Most dating services aimed at fiftysomethings started as websites used on a home computer (eharmony and Our Time) or matchmaking agencies. The feeling was that 'mature daters' wouldn't find apps easy to navigate. But now 73% of those aged 50 to 59 own a smartphone, Charly thinks they're ready to embrace the technology. Lumen is clearly designed and simple to operate.

by Sara Davidson, Lizz Hoggard & Cosmo Landesman
See full article at DailyMail.co.uk

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Using AI to Foil Online Dating Scams

Posted on February 14, 2019

Matchcom fake profilePHYS.ORG – Feb 12 – Dating apps and sites could soon use computing algorithms that 'think' like humans to pinpoint fake profiles. Algorithms with this capability have been developed as part of wide-ranging research into combating online fraud led by the University of Warwick and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The new algorithms have been designed specifically to understand what fake dating profiles look like. When tested, the algorithms produced a very low false-positive rate (the number of genuine profiles mistakenly flagged up as fake) of ~1%.

See full article at Phys.org

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Jaumo, the 40M Users Dating App, Operates as a Lean, Bootstrapped Company

Posted on February 13, 2019

Jaumo logoGRUENDERSZENE – Feb 13 – Almost every third German over 16 has ever used a dating service, according to a survey by Bitkom. Jens Kammerer and Benjamin Roth founded a social network (Kwick) 20 years ago. Now they run Jaumo, a dating app with 40M users – without VC-money and office. The app, which was launched in 2011, generated annual profit of ~1M Eur in 2017, and claims ~40M users in 180 countries, including ~2.7M in Germany. The app sees 130K – 170K new registrations a day. The company now employs 24 people but still doesn't have an office. "Every Friday we have a video call and discuss how the week went. In addition, we have a virtual coffee talk twice a month where we talk about private things. Once a year, we organize a meetup. Last time we were in Dubrovnik," says Jens Kammerer.

by Elisabeth Neuhaus
See full article at GruenderSzene

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Does Bumble Need to IPO to Keep Up With Match Group?

Posted on February 13, 2019

Bumble logo whiteCHEDDAR – Feb 13 – Ray Wang, Principal Analyst & Founder, Constellation Research, shared his outlook for the digital dating space and discussed whether Bumble is headed for an IPO. "Online dating is going to be $15B market by 2022, and completely AI driven" says Ray. Watch the video here.

See full article at Cheddar

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