THE ZOE REPORT – Sep 30 – "We found that 40% of online daters don't feel that there's a dating app, site, or platform that meets their needs," said Charmaine Hung, the Facebook Dating project manager. "Facebook Dating makes it easier to find love through what you like," she explains. So, what do online dating experts think of this venture? Mark Brooks, consultant to internet dating CEOs at CourtlandBrooks.com, says he's all for the digital dating platform. "It's vastly superior to the average startup dating app because Facebook is instantly at critical mass," he notes. When it comes to features, he says he's particularly a fan of Secret Crush. "The 'double like' features in HotOrNot, Badoo, Tinder, and POF always made sense," he says, praising FB for offering a similar option. Plus, "putting a cap on crushes by allowing nine is brilliant. It's just enough to quickly identify the very topmost mutual crushes, which should really be thrilling for many." All in all, Brooks has high hopes for the dating platform. "Facebook knows when they've been successful. Over time they should be able to see their patterns of success that will allow them to improve their algorithms over time," he concludes. Fellow online dating consultant Steve Dean, founder of Dateworking and host of the Modern Connection Podcast, has been using the platform himself for a couple of weeks – and so far, he's not impressed. "It currently feels as though Facebook has done nothing whatsoever with its matching algorithms, leaving users with a lineup of truly terrible matches," he says. "Worse, the structure of the app essentially forces users into 'Tinder-ized' dopamine loops where they're simply liking or rejecting users based on photos. He compares its user experience to Tinder and its profile setup to Hinge, giving it an overall vibe that's "disingenuous and very uncreative." But despite his criticisms, Dean admits that Facebook has a unique vantage point when it comes to data, something that could benefit its matching structure in the future.
by Karen Tietjen
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BUSINESS WIRE – Sep 30 – We have closed our largest acquisition (Zoosk) to date which has accelerated our expansion in North America. Shares of Spark have lost more than a third of their value thus far in 2019 and over 50% since the deal closed on July 1, 2019. The losses are largely the result of concentrated share sales by a minority of our shareholder base and not the result of financial or operational under-performance. Since the close of the Zoosk transaction, ~5M Spark shares have traded, representing 20% of our total shares outstanding. Spark Networks is active in the market of serious relationships. Through the acquisitions of Jdate, JSwipe, and Christian Mingle, Attractive World in France, and Zoosk, the company has quadrupled its revenue from €60M in 2015 to €250M on a pro forma basis in 2018.
