FOX13 – Nov 28 – Scott Valdez, the founder and CEO of VIDA, a virtual dating assistant company. Dozens of remote consultants – from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriters, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
Month: November 2019
Dil Mil, a Dating App for the Indian Diaspora, Is Redefining “Arranged” Marriage
QUARTZ INDIA – Nov 28 – Only ~10% of Indian marriages are for love, the rest are arranged or semi-arranged by families. Generally, parents facilitate talks and perhaps even take decisions. This traditional system seems to work given that divorce rates in India are among the lowest in the world, albeit some argue it is problematic. But the concept of arranged marriage is changing. Last week, Dating.com Group acquired the San Francisco-based dating app for expats from India and other south Asian countries. Dil Mil has ~1M users in the US, the UK, and Canada. Already, Dil Mil has led to ~20M matches and averages one marriage per day. "Over 80% of south Asians marry other south Asians, but south Asian expats are geographically dispersed across the world, making it hard for them to meet each other," said KJ Dhaliwal, founder and CEO of Dil Mil. "Historically, most of them have met offline through their local social circles." Dil Mil allows Indian women to join but only non-resident Indian (NRI) men can join.
Study: 50% of Tinder Users Have Only Been on ONE Face-to-face Date
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK – Nov 28 – Trond Viggo Grøntvedt at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and his colleagues surveyed 269 students in Norway who were all members of Tinder – 60% of participants were women. Men, on average, reported having matched with 111 Tinder users and women with 124, however only half of the participants reported having meet ups with matches, and on average, men met with 1.9 partners, women with 2.2 partners. Only ~25% of study participants said they had used the app to meet someone interested in a long-term relationship.
Online Dating Innovator Takes on Data Privacy
SLICE OF MIT – Nov 28 – Maxwell Krohn helped revolutionize internet dating in the early 2000s with a site he cofounded with college buddies: OkCupid. They sold the site in 2011, and Krohn began to have second thoughts about all the sensitive personal information that people were launching into the cloud. His latest venture, Keybase, tackles that problem head-on, harnessing studies in cryptography he began at MIT to create a simple but powerful platform for securing user data. Keybase, which Krohn cofounded with OkCupid veteran Chris Coyne, employs what's known as end-to-end encryption to keep user data totally secret – even from the apps through which users might share their data – so no third party can hijack it along the way. Sending information on Keybase requires both sender and recipient to have their own pair of public and private keys. Senders use recipients' public keys to encrypt the data. To ensure recipients are who they say they are, Keybase links the ownership of public keys with multiple email, Twitter, Reddit, and other social-media accounts.
Dating App Happn to Donate 5% of Money Generated on World Aids Day Next Month
CHARITY DIGITAL NEWS – Nov 28 – Happn is teaming up with a global Aids prevention organisation for a fundraising campaign next month. On the day Happn will donate 5% of its proceeds, including in-app sales, to Red. The partnership will continue during December when app users will be invited to take part in Red's 'Shopathon' campaign.
OPW Podcast – The Top Dating Industry News for Nov 26th
OPW – Nov 27 – Bumble: No more nudes please, Instagram dating!, Dating.com Buys Dil Mil, Qingliao, The Meet Group: fast growth.
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Gay Dating Apps Still Leaking Location Data
DENTON DAILY – Nov 27 – Some of the most popular gay dating apps, including Grindr, Romeo and Recon, have been exposing the exact location of their users, according to cyber-security researchers who were able to generate a map of users across London, revealing their precise locations. This problem and the associated risks have been known about for years but some of the biggest apps have still not fixed the issue. After the researchers shared their findings with the apps involved, Recon made changes – but Grindr and Romeo did not.
See full article at Denton Daily
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By 2037, Most Children Will Be Born to Parents Who Met Online
YAHOO NEWS UK – Nov 27 – By 2037, more babies will be born to parents who met online than offline, according to a research by eHarmony and the Imperial College Business School. Even within the next decade, 40% of babies born will be so-called "e-babies", born to parents who met on the Internet. The data highlights the shifting habits of those looking to meet a partner: around a third (32%) of relationships started between 2015 and 2019 started online, compared to only 19% between 2005 and 2014. By 2030, the UK will reach the "tipping point" that more than 50% of relationships will begin online.
Grindr Still Wants to Go Public
WELLSTON JOURNAL – Nov 27 – Kunlun Tech, the Chinese company behind gay dating app says it will revive IPO plan after a U.S. national security panel dropped its opposition to the plan. Kunlun's efforts to sell Grindr outright were continuing even as the IPO preparations were relaunched. The IPO process becomes official when a company files a form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register their securities with the agency. At this point, the company has already secured a banker, such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, to underwrite their IPO.
Momo Announces Q3 2019 Financial Results
PR NEWSWIRE – Nov 26 – Momo's net revenue increased by 22% YOY to $622.8M. Net income attributable to Momo is $125.1M. Monthly Active Users on Momo app were 114M in Sep 2019, compared to 110M in Sep 2018. Total paying users were 13.4M. Live video service revenues were up 18% to $458M. Value-added service revenues mainly include virtual gift revenues and membership subscription revenues. Total value-added service revenues were $148.9M, up 86% YOY. Mobile marketing revenues increased 30% $11.5M.