INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – July 18 – Forced marriage is an awful crime, and Operation Limelight – the unprecedented fightback led this week in airports by the police and border force in the peak Summer holiday period – is long overdue. According to the government's Forced Marriage Unit, one third of victims are under 18. To eliminate forced marriage, we will have to understand what really drives these parents to abuse their own children. For many of parents, forced marriage is a last resort when they fear their child won't find a spouse in the UK. It almost happened to Adeem Younis. As he grew older and remained single, his mother started to pressure him into "doing the right thing" and marrying a family friend or distant relative in Pakistan. He started a Muslim matrimonial site (SingleMuslim.com) instead and within months he met his wife online. Forced marriage is not arranged marriage. It can range from subtle social pressure, to outright coercion or, in extreme cases, kidnapping.
Month: July 2019
Justin McLeod, Founder of Hinge, Whose Life is Destined for the Screen
Tinder Still Banning Transgender People
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – July 18 – Tinder has dealt with accusations of banning transgender and non-binary users from the platform for years, with little controversy or backlash resulting among its 50M users. Transgender users have frequently spoken out about the issue, however. One woman sued Tinder last year after her account was removed shortly after including in her bio that she was a "preop trans woman." Several others said they had also been banned from the platform without any sort of recourse. Tinder released the following statement in 2017: "We stand behind our pledge to make sure no one is ever removed from Tinder simply because of their gender."
Dating App Growth Slows, but Advertisers Shouldn’t Ignore the Dating Market
Inside the Bizarre, ‘Sketchy’ World of International Dating Apps
GQ – July 16 – The popular TV show, 90 Day Fiancé, explores the lives of partners, always an American and a foreigner, who hope to marry and stay in the U.S. with the help of a K-1 visa – which, if approved, allows the noncitizen to live here for 90 days, at which point they must wed or catch the next flight home. While the series' couples meet in a nightclub in Mexico or at a Jamaican resort – the most intriguing affairs stem from long-distance digital hookups. Some dating sites bring happy stories. Viewers didn't have a lot of hope for Paul Staehle and Karine Martins on 90 Day Fiancé. The two originally met via MiCrush, a self-described free "Latino Dating App," which is inactive as of this writing. They are still together and just had their first son. ColombianCupid costs $35 a month for a subscription allowing users to message people back and forth. It's part of the Cupid Media network operating 35 "niche dating sites" including AsianDating, ChinaLoveCupid, BBWCupid, BlackCupid, and InterracialCupid. The company claims to have "helped ~30M people look for love."
Q&A With Tina Wilson, Founder of Wingman Dating App
WUSA9 – July 17 – Tina Wilson explains how she decided to create a dating app when she noticed that the apps were all created by men. She also describes how this app includes singles' friends to help them find the right matches.
MeetMe Launches One-on-One Video Chat Feature
Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger
NEW YORK TIMES – July 17 – Dozens of databases of people's faces are being compiled without their knowledge by companies and researchers, with many of the images then being shared around the world. The databases are pulled together with images from social networks, photo websites, dating sites and cameras placed in restaurants and on college quads. While there is no precise count of the data sets, privacy activists have pinpointed repositories that were built by Microsoft, Stanford University and others, with one holding ~10M images. Facebook and Google have most likely amassed the largest face data sets, which they do not distribute, according to research papers. But other companies and universities have widely shared their image troves with researchers, governments and private enterprises. Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, the A.I. start-up, said his company had built a face database with images from OkCupid. He said Clarifai had access to OkCupid's photos because some of the dating site's founders invested in his company. An OkCupid spokeswoman said Clarifai contacted the company in 2014 "about collaborating to determine if they could build unbiased A.I. and facial recognition technology" and that the dating site "did not enter into any commercial agreement then and have no relationship with them now." She did not address whether Clarifai had gained access to OkCupid's photos without its consent.
Dating News Update – Bumble, Badoo, Jack’d and Tinder
OPW – July 16 – Ten years ago I tried an experiment doing video news updates from locations like Prague and Venice. They were a lot of work, and and way too long really. I think 2-3 minutes is about all the time you have, so here’s a new experiment. Two Minute Tuesday News Updates. Please let me know your thoughts.
6 Lessons From a Failed Dating Startup in Latin America
CONTXTO – July 15 – Weeks ago, César Hoshi and his partner and CEO Pedro Neira decided to close down Mi Media Manzana (MMM). At one time, it was the largest online dating Android app made in Latin America. He is now sharing some of his personal lessons….
- If you're going to pivot, pivot your product and features, not your purpose.
We built MMM as a serious dating site. Since we lacked results, we made many decisions for changing the product. Without even noticing it, our new versions didn't respond anymore to the purpose. We weren't focusing on long-term relationships anymore. I'm not saying you should not change your purpose, but if you firmly believe in it (which we did), your product should always be consistent with it (which we didn't). - In moments of crisis, don't forget the right questions
Moments of crisis are the best moments to ask the right questions (how to add value to your users). Conversely, they are some the worst moments to ask the wrong questions (only focus on the shareholders pressure and cold metrics). - In a marketplace, you should worry about liquidity and density, not overall growth
We spent $25K on the online marketing budget for user acquisition per country, which were four in total. By the time we noticed, we had already spent $100K, and not a single country was self-sustainable. Our approach was totally wrong. We were focusing on "countries" when we should have been focusing on "cities." In the online dating industry, this is crucial since people want to go out with someone close by. - Apply known frameworks but don't try to do it alone.
"Hooked – How To Build Habit-Forming Products" is one of my favorite product books out there. I read in 2016 and was amazed by the powerful insights regarding the "Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, Investment" framework. Inspired, I tried to include some of it to our development process, but not hard enough. - Discover early on what are the inputs for your "one metric that matters"
User retention was our most important metric. We obsessed over retention but it took way too long to realize that we couldn't control that metric. Due to the nature of our dating app business, retention was an output rather than an input that we could control. The mistake with that single focus, though, is that you try to control things you can't. - Have uncomfortable discussions early on, especially when defining the problem you are trying to solve
Nothing is more certain to cause a project to fail than a misunderstanding of the problem you are solving. You should never start building something unless all of your key players have the same understanding of the problem.