BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK – July 11 – BeehiveID was a company that identified fake online dating accounts created for fraudulent use. "We were using all of the same data that Cambridge Analytica was using. Our timing was terrible!", says Mary Haskett, now CEO of identity tech company Blink Identity. "We had a million Facebook profiles with complete data. And that's wrong. In Facebook's defence, they figured that out and changed their access, which killed my company – but I wasn't bitter because it was the right thing to do", she added. Haskett and long-time collaborator Dr. Alex Kilpatrick then developed ID technology for the US military capable of identifying people at walking speed using a mixture of facial recognition, iris scanning and fingerprints. She and Dr. Kilpatrick co-founded privacy-first company Blink Identity, which is based in Austin, Texas, to use the tech to improve the experience at music gigs and sports events. The firm raised a seed round of $1.5M with participation from Live Nation, parent company of Ticketmaster. It has since begun to run pilot programmes at music venues.
Month: July 2019
The “Marriage Pact” – Dating Algorithm That Gives College Students One Match
VOX – July 11 – In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper wrote a paper on the paradox of choice – the concept that having too many options can lead to decision paralysis. Seventeen years later, two Stanford classmates, Sophia Sterling-Angus and Liam McGregor, landed on a similar concept while taking an economics class on market design. "Tinder's huge innovation was that they eliminated rejection, but they introduced massive search costs," McGregor explained. "People increase their bar because there's this artificial belief of endless options." Sterling-Angus and McGregor had an idea: What if, rather than presenting people with a limitless array of attractive photos, they radically shrank the dating pool? What if they gave people one match based on core values (based on complex compatibility questions), rather than attraction? Their study called "Marriage Pact" focused on matching people with their perfect "backup plan" – the person they could marry later on if they didn't meet anyone else. It quickly became a viral phenomenon on campus. They've run the experiment two years in a row, and last year, 7,600 students participated: 4,600 at Stanford and 3,000 at Oxford. Next year the study will be in its third year, and McGregor and Sterling-Angus tentatively plan to launch it at a few more schools including Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Southern California. But it's unclear if the project can scale beyond the bubble of elite college campuses.
The Meet Group Updates Its Flagship App With Industry-First Safety Practices
BUSINESSWIRE – July 11 – "Today we unveiled a number of safety-related features on MeetMe," said CEO Geoff Cook, "including the Report Abuse button we have seen in any major livestreaming app. When a user taps this button, a screengrab will be sent to our 200+ person moderation team for rapid review of both the screengrab and the active livestream."
Dating App Once Lets Users See Their Attractiveness Score
NEON – July 11 – Jean Meyer is the CEO and founder of a slow dating app Once that sends users only one match per day. The app has launched a new feature that lets users see their attractiveness score.
Q: Don't you think this score could destroy a person's self-esteem?
Jean Meyer: Every dating app has an attractiveness score. People with high scores are matched with other people with high scores. We wanted to be a little smarter and stay transparent. We believe it is important to be transparent about how we do things.
Q: You use this transparency to lure people back into the app. How does it work?
A: We do not email people with: "Hey, come back and use the app". We want to give them relevant information. It works because people are curious and want to know their score.
Q: What is your score?
A: Not very good – 2.58. The score just tells me that my pictures are not good enough. That's a good feedback.
Q: Don't you think it has something to do with being a man?
A: That as well…. the average score for women is 4, for men it is 2.
Q: Who decides who is matched with whom?
A: In the beginning we had human matchmakers. We asked them to just rely on their gut feeling. We did that for a year and a half, until we had enough data to write an algorithm.
Q: Are interests and hobbies also being considered?
A: The picture is 95%.
Q: So if I rate many blonde men well, will I be matched with blonde men?
A: It's not that easy. We are doing a cluster analysis based primarily on people whose opinions are very divided. Imagine two different women. They both have the average score of 2.5 out of five. But one of them got plenty of twos and threes and the other got a lot of ones and fives. Then one of them is the average and the other is polarized. The people we care about are the ones who split the opinion. Because they probably belong to a certain type. Either you love them or you hate them.
Blued Launches LGTBQ Anti Cyber Bullying Campaign in India
Tinder Lite to Launch in Vietnam
THE VERGE – July 10 – Tinder Lite app is 25 times smaller than the main app, and while it maintains the core functionality, like swiping, it nixes more data-heavy ones, like the Feed. The idea is that Tinder Lite is faster, requires less battery life, and reduces data usage. For now, Tinder Lite users can't upgrade to a Tinder Plus or Gold subscription within the app, but the company says it plans to do so over time. The app will be available through Google Play in Vietnam in the "coming weeks" and will subsequently come to other areas in Southeast Asia and South America.
Facebook Dating to Allow Users to See if Their Friends Have a Crush on Them
VOGUE INDIA – July 9 – Following the launch of Facebook Dating in Colombia, Thailand, Argentina and Mexico, the app is slowly expanding to more countries including: Singapore, Malaysia, Brazil, Vietnam and the Philippines. It is also set to debut in the US in late 2019, and Australia shouldn't be too far behind either. The inbuilt app has eliminated the Tinder-style swipe right, swipe left mechanism and has a unique algorithm that matches users with potential love interests instead. One important feature of this algorithm is called "Secret Crush", where users can find out whether or not their real life friends might have a crush on them. Users can add up to nine friends on the list and Facebook notifies these friends that they have a secret admirer. The admirer won't be revealed unless there is a mutual secret crash.
Scruff Acquires Jack’d for an Undisclosed Sum
SYS-CON – July 10 – Perry Street Software, a New York-based gay mobile software developer and the parent company of Scruff, has acquired gay dating app Jack'd. Jack'd will continue to operate as a stand-alone app. Since its launch in 2010, Jack'd has grown to ~5M members worldwide. Perry Street will invest significant resources to upgrade the technology and reliability of the Jack'd app. In the coming months, Jack'd members can expect to see the removal of all programmatic advertising, enhanced controls over privacy and security, and new features such as improved messaging, redesigned Match, richer search, and the ability to include video as part of member private albums or in chat.
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Bumble Owner Launches Independent Investigation Into Its Workplace Culture
BUSINESS INSIDER – July 10 – Badoo founder, Andrey Andreev, is launching an independent investigation into his workplace culture after an explosive report by Forbes. Forbes spoke to 13 former employees who described naked cocaine-fueled parties, software updates named after porn stars, and inappropriate remarks made by Andreev. Andreev said he has was "shocked and saddened" by the allegations and has brought in HR firm Peninsula Group to conduct an investigation.
by Isobel Asher Hamilton
See full article at Business Insider
Bumble CEO Responds to Reports of Misconduct at Parent Company
TECH CRUNCH – July 10 – Following an extensive report in Forbes about Bumble's parent company and its billionaire founder Andrey Andreev, the female-first dating app's founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has issued a statement. She says she was "mortified by the allegations" and "saddened and sickened to hear that anyone, of any gender, would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace." The allegations went beyond portraying a sexist work environment and detailed racist attitudes of the Badoo founder.