FORBES – Mar 9 – Match users setting up their dating profiles can now choose from one of nine "political view" options. They can pick anything from "apolitical" or "independent" to "moderate" or "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" – with the standard polarized camps of "progressive" or "conservative" also standing ready.
Month: March 2020
Internet Dating Jobs Listing Update – March 2020
OPW – Mar 11 – The new Internet dating jobs listing is live on the Internet Dating Jobs blog.
Below see a couple of this month's most interesting offers:
Bumble
France Country Lead
CoffeeMeetsBagel
VP of Product
Match Group
Head of Business Development / Singapore
POF
Director of Live Straming Content
The League
Director or VP of Operations & Finance (COO fxn)
Tinder
Director Product, International
To see more open positions go here.
Do you have an idating industry job offer which is not included? Please, send it to tips@onlinepersonalswatch.com and we will add it to the list.
Senior Dating App Stitch Offers More Than Love
FOX BUSINESS – Mar 8 – Stitch, an online community for singles over the age of 50, was launched in 2014 and is headquartered in Sydney. The site offers three types of memberships: basic, community and community+. The basic membership is free, the community membership costs $60 per year and the community+ type, which allows additional profile browsing, starts at $15 per month. Currently, the app has 1K members. "Lonely people over the age of 60 can see the same health effects as smoking 15 cigarettes a day," said Andrew Dowling, the founder and CEO of Stitch.
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Beijing Kunlun to Sell Grindr for $608.5M
REUTERS – Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech has agreed to sell Grindr for ~$608.5M to San Vicente Acquisition. San Vincente Acquisition comprises a group of entrepreneurs and investors in the technology, media and telecommunications industries. One of the investors in the group is Chinese-born U.S. citizen James Lu, a former executive at Chinese search engine giant Baidu.
by Echo Wang & Chibuike Oguh
See full article at Reuters
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.com
How CEO Geoff Cook Set The Meet Group up for Sale
PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS JOURNAL – Mar 6 – CEO Geoff Cook said the $500M deal likely wouldn't have come together without its pivot toward livestreaming. He saw the success Asian dating apps had integrating livestreaming into their products and thought it could be recreated in Western countries. He plans on staying with The Meet Group, alongside with his team. As part of the all-cash deal, ProSiebenSat.1's e-commerce arm NuCom, which owns eHarmony, is slated to merge with The Meet Group. The deal values The Meet Group's shares at $6.30, a 30% premium over its average price in the past month.
by Michelle Caffrey
See full article at Philadelphia Business Journal
Tinder Is Launching a Mode for Students in the UK
The Meet Group Executives to Speak at IDEA Summit and GDI Conference in New York
BUSINESSWIRE – Mar 6 – The Meet Group, a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions, will be taking part in two upcoming dating industry events. On Friday, March 6, 2020, the IDEA Summit and WOW (World Officers Weekend) will bring together some of the most influential CEOs in the dating industry, including The Meet Group's CEO, Geoff Cook, who will be discussing the company's plan to enhance authenticity through its upcoming AI-powered verification badge. The event, which is hosted by the Internet Dating Excellence Association, is sponsored by The Meet Group and will take place at Harvard Club New York. The Meet Group's Senior VP of Corporate Development, Blake Kuhre, will be speaking about live video and Video Platform as a Service during his presentation at Global Dating Insights' inaugural New York Conference.
40% of People Have Swiped Right on Dating App to Meet Someone’s Dog
PEOPLE – Mar 6 – In a new survey of 2K Americans who have used a dating app in the past, over a third (39%) admitted to swiping right on a profile that featured someone's dog because they wanted to meet the pup "more than they wanted to meet the person." The survey was conducted by OnePoll and commissioned by pet food brand "I and love and you". Additionally, 39% of participants revealed that they even borrowed a friend's dog to use in their profile because they felt it would help them get more attention.
How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet
NEW YORK TIMES – Mar 5 – Blued, one of the biggest gay dating apps in the world, has succeeded because it plays by the ever-shifting rules for L.G.B.T.Q. China – bringing together a minority community without activism. China is home to an LGBTQ population larger than all of France, ~70M people. But according to a United Nations estimate, less than 5% of gay Chinese choose to come out. Blued has a reported in-country user base of some 24M. Homosexuality was formally considered a mental illness in China until 2001. But in recent years, the government has neither expressed explicit support for the LGBTQ community nor sought to crush it. Whereas Russia has adopted a position "that LGBT rights is a Western conspiracy designed to weaken the nation," says Darius Longarino, a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. China's one-child policy further increased pressure on some gay Chinese to stay in the closet and enter heterosexual relationships, because parents pinned all their hopes on one child to provide genetic, legally recognized grandchildren to continue the family line. Blued app launched in 2012. The company, once kept alive by 50-to-500-yuan donations, received its first angel investment of $480K in 2013. It then raised a Series A round investment of $1.6M led by the VC firm Crystal Stream and in 2014 raised an additional $30M from another VC firm, DCM. In the last few years, having monopolized the gay-dating app market in China, Blued has expanded to Mexico, Brazil and India.