Month: October 2019
Top Dating News for Oct 15th – Match, Pambakian, The Meet Group, Tinder
OPW – Oct 15 – News about Match breakway, Pambakian update, The Meet Group new features, and Tinder's fabulous growth.
Here's the top dating news in ~2 minutes. Subscribe to the Two Minute Tuesdays (TMT) podcast on Breaker, Google podcasts, Spotify, Anchor or Stitcher.
Match Stock Faces Huge Debt Load as IAC Agrees to Spinoff
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY – Oct 12 – Match Group will carry a much bigger debt load as parent IAC is spinning off the dating app company. Match stock fell while IAC stock climbed. IAC will transfer ~$1.67B in debt to Match as part of the spinoff, according to SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Youseff Squali. He said Match also plans to issue new debt to pay IAC and other shareholders a special dividend prior to the formal spinoff. Match paid out a $560M special dividend in 2018. IAC said it would not spin off ANGI Homeservices. IAC shareholders will receive shares of both the new Match company and IAC entities. In addition, the transaction would be tax-free.
by Reinhardt Krause
See full article at Investor's Business Daily
China’s Momo to Collaborate on Beijing-set Drama
SCREEN DAILY – Oct 14 – Momo is moving into film production with Beijing-set drama, The Best Is Yet To Come, to be executive produced by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke. The film revolves around a group of young people who move to Beijing in the early 2000s, just as the city's economic development was starting to take flight. Momo started out as a dating app, similar to Tinder, before moving into the live streaming space as it started to boom in China. Momo also moved into reality TV production last year, as competition for talent that can attract eyeballs to the country's growing number of live streaming platforms heats up.
Lumen Is the Dating App Solution for the Over-50 Crowd
FORBES – Oct 14 – Lumen is a Tinder-like dating app aimed at the over-50 demographic. Lumen users are able to start a limited number of conversations every day, in order to cut down on spammy behavior. Messages also disappear after 72 hours if there is no reply. This puts the focus on quality conversation. Every user must have at least one image of themselves and upon sign-up every user is photo-verified. The minimum icebreaker message must be at least 50 characters. The average user age is 56. The gender ratio is ~50/50. There is also a premium version that allows for more conversations per day and seeing which members have saved the user as a favorite and enhanced search.
Dating Companies With the Best Customer Service
NEWSWEEK – Oct 14 – Dating site Christian Cafe has the best customer service, according to Newsweek rankings, followed by Elite Singles and Bumble. For the second year in a row, Newsweek worked with Statista, the respected global research firm, to collect and analyze data across 160 retail categories.
See all posts on ChristianCafe.com
See all posts on EliteSingles
See all posts on Bumble
The Meet Group Grows Impressively
SEEKING ALPHA – Oct 13 – The Meet Group is performing quite well with rampant video revenue growth and good cash flow generation. Some investors who are familiar with Chinese live streaming companies like YY and Momo might not be aware that there is a market in the US as well. The Meet Group business model is quite similar to Momo, with streaming and dating as its core business. Revenue streams come from ads, subscriptions and video gifting. The growth is coming from new users, live video, new products, acquisition and increased usage. The new products are: One-to-one video, Dating game (expected to be launched on MeetMe this month) and Video platform as a service. The upcoming dating game allows users to be the star in their own dating show. It contains one-on-one video, and it is monetized through gift giving. The management expects a 20% increase in vDAU in the first few months after launching, and it expects that it will go viral at least to some extent.
Positive Singles Recently Announced New Swipe Feature
NEWSWIRE – Oct 13 – PositiveSingles' iOS app will now come with the swipe left/right feature. Launched in 2001, Positive Singles is the world's largest STD dating site with ~1M users.
IAC Outlines Its Plans for a Match Group Spinoff
Man Admits Mailing Powder and Blood in Threats to OkCupid CEO
NBC BOSTON – Oct 11 – Liam MacLeod sent nine letters to the CEO of OkCupid.com in 2017, each of which contained threatening communications or suspicious substances. Two of the letters contained substances that MacLeod described as anthrax or AIDS-infected blood. He was sentenced to probation last week after pleading guilty to two counts of mailing threatening communications and two counts of conveying false information concerning purported biological weapons.