Month: May 2020

OPW – May 13 – This is the 3rd IDEA Webinar. 4 leading Internet dating and online social community CXOs weighed in about the future.

Panelists
~ Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group (Meetme, Skout, Lovoo)
~ Ritesh Bhatnagar, CMO of Woo (India)
~ Todd Sowers, COO of SCRUFF & Jack’d (gay dating apps)
~ Kevin Temann, Founder of AIMM (AI dating)

Host
~ Mark Brooks, President of the Internet Dating Excellence Association, IDEA.gp and CEO of Courtland Brooks consultancy/agency

Questions
– Has user engagement increased over the last few months?
– Once the world gets out the other side of covid-19, what do you think the lasting impact?
– Will video continue to be impactful, will more daters have video calls before meeting in person?
– What do you expect the online dating industry will look like in three to give years time? What innovations will be hot?

—–

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Mark Brooks:
Welcome to the second idea webinar. Going to talk about the future of internet dating and online social communities over the next 45 minutes. I’m joined by an incredible roster of executives from the dating industry and online social community industry. I’m going to let them introduce themselves. I’ll get the ball rolling. My name is Mark Brooks and I run the Internet Dating Excellence Association. I also run the consultancy called Courtland Brooks. I’ve been in the dating industry 20 years now. Jeff if you’d like to do your intro.

Geoff Cook:
Sure. My name is Geoff Cook, I’m the CEO of the Meet group. We run five different mobile dating applications. What we’ve really been busy doing over the last three or four years is marrying live streaming of video with dating. The five apps we run are MeetMe and Skout, and a US oriented audience tags and African American audience, Growlr, a gay dating app, and Lovoo, a sizable European dating app. All together, we’re well north of four million daily active users. Significant number of those, 25% of more engage in our live streaming video solutions.

Mark Brooks:
Ritesh?

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Yeah, hi, my name is Ritesh Bhatnagar. I’m a chief marketing officer with U2opia Mobile and Woo. U2opia Mobile is a Singapore India based mobile technology company. We’ve got various businesses in gaming, dating, content. Our main focus and our main brand is Woo, which is our dating app. Today we’ve got around 10 million users in India. We’ve grown substantially for the last two years. We’ve seen a huge spike in India, Indian contacts.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
We’ve actually targeted and based the app completely, very woman centric. All our features are female oriented, and we’ve seen a huge change because India per se has a ratio of 80/20, unlike the west, which is 70/30 or maybe lesser. We see a huge potential. We are entering Europe and U.S. and Canada and Middle East as we speak. We have got quite good hopes that Woo should carry on its growth path from here on. Thank you.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Ritesh. Todd?

Todd Sowers:
I’m Todd Sowers I am the Chief Operating Officer at Perry Street Software. We currently have two brands. They are gay, bi, trans, queer apps for the GBTQ community. It is Scruff and the other is Jack’d. We have about 1.5 million daily active users on our platform right now. The majority of traffic, it just flipped for us actually. We’re now 52% of our customers that log in on a daily basis are outside of English speaking markets. We are growing at a very rapid rate internationally, which is really exciting for us.

Todd Sowers:
We have, we think a pretty good foothold for social dating in the gay, bi, trans, queer community in English speaking markets, western Europe, quite popular in Latin America. Now, with the acquisition of Jack’d, which we’ve just done recently, we are the number one queer dating app for people of color in the United States. We also picked up a pretty sizable audience in Asia, which is a very exciting market for us. We are 10 years old. We’ve been around for a long time. I personally have been in this industry for a really long time. Yeah, that’s a little bit about us.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Todd. Kevin?

Kevin Teman:
Yeah, hi. My name is Kevin Teman. I am the founder of AIM, which is the Artificially Intelligent Matchmaker. My app is a little bit outside the standard path in that it’s really technology based. It’s a new kind of interface, so instead of typing in your answers, you’re talking to a Siri-like interface most of the time. Trying to figure out where I should look here.

Kevin Teman:
Yeah, we’ve been doing well. Actually, we’re kind of a startup. Pretty new. About three years old now. Finally making some partnerships here, but our user base is, well it grew to about 1,000 or a 1,300 or so in the last year. Advertising locally in Denver.

Kevin Teman:
Then, we started some advertising in L.A. and New York and we got a few people. We have a good sizable amount of people there, but just a couple hundred. Then, we’re also [inaudible 00:05:08] some people worldwide that just naturally happening even though I’m trying to offer it only in the U.S. That’s basically a rundown for me.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Kevin. I’d like to ask you about user engagement right now. I’ve heard from some other CEOs that the dating industry has lifted quite considerably. How’s user engagement increased for you over the last few months due to the time we’re in, the pandemic? Do you expect to see an even larger increase going forward? Geoff?

Geoff Cook:
Yeah. That’s interesting, the [inaudible 00:05:45] question. I think what we’ve seen is DAU be pretty stable, which was fairly astonishing to see frankly. You wouldn’t necessarily imagine a dating app to be a hedge against a pandemic. But, we’ve seen fairly stable DAU. Then, the surprise has been, our live streaming video was already the main revenue stream with the company, time spent in live streaming went up 40% between early March to now. Of course, that makes a lot of sense, people can’t go and meet in real life, so instead of doing that, they’re having more video streams. They’re having more video streams with respect to dating on our apps too. This has been true across all of them.

Geoff Cook:
MeetMe and Skout, Lovoo, we’ve all seen more or less the same dramatic increase. It’s going through to revenue as well. It was so much so that with respect to Growlr, which is actually the only app we had in the portfolio as our most recent acquisition. We hadn’t fully rolled out our platform to it, our video platform. We fast-tracked that just because between I guess mid-March and today, we launched free one-on-one video on Growlr as well as a live streaming broadcast platform. It’s really been a video story. There has been some declines to our ad revenue, but that’s been mostly made up by games and video revenue.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Thank you Geoff. Ritesh, how’s user engagement trending for you? What do you think it’s going to look like later on?

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Over the last decade as such, the industry had evolved a lot. I think, again, it got morphed a bit. We did see a spike initially when the lockdown was called. We saw engagement on the app increase. 40% matches went up on the app. The messaging on the app went up to around 70% increase. We have a feature which is called Woo Phone, which is basically a calling feature. In which a female can only call a male. A man can only receive the phone call. It’s through the app. That went up to around 30, 40%.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Lately, post one month now of the lockdown, I think things are stabilizing a bit. They’re coming back to normal. Things I would predict will come back to what they were. There was a spike initially as I said. The engagement of course has gone up on the app, but the new users and the DAU I think is stabilizing now.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Kevin, how’s things looking for you? Sorry, Todd actually. Go to Todd.

Todd Sowers:
Originally in the first, I would say two weeks we did see a decrease in daily active users. Our monthly active users were actually up. We had an all time high record for months. For monthly active users. Obviously that, I think included a lot of pre-pandemic because I don’t think we really started going in terms of people really being freaked out. Reasonably and understandably so, until mid-March.

Todd Sowers:
We did see all time high records for March, and then we did see for April, more or less our traffic was flat. To Geoff’s point, there was a lot of volatility on daily active users. There were some days where we saw 14% decline. It might have been early on.

Todd Sowers:
It has since more or less gone back to normal. I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen moving forward. We’re looking toward growth obviously. I think that there’s a lot of unknowns. Revenue however, we’re very lucky in the sense that it’s been unchanged for us. In fact, it’s up a tick. Some of our advertising revenue is down but for the most part, things are pretty stable.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Okay. That’s good to hear. Kevin, how’s things working for you?

Kevin Teman:
Cool, so first just to base this a little bit, I’m dealing with a smaller base, so a couple thousand, and also pre-revenue, so I can’t talk to the revenue changes. However, I’ve noticed just automatically people reaching out more in the last month or so.

Kevin Teman:
What AIM is doing right now is we’re kind of building up a lot for our next version working with my partner. We are in the process of kind of internally building, but as we’re doing that, I’m noticing that people are reaching out more automatically without any form of advertisement or anything. Asking, just inquiring about things. I’ve definitely noticed an increase in activity and interest in online dating automatically in the last month or so.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Thank you Kevin. Once we get past all of what is happening right now. What do you think the lasting impact’s going to be in the online dating industry? What do you think’s going to carry over?

Geoff Cook:
Sure. I think the first question is how long will this last? I think that will help determine what it looks like on the other side. Unfortunately our best guess is this is going to last a very long time. Maybe things start to come back in certain places. Maybe in upstate New York, but not in New York City for example.

Geoff Cook:
The sense we have is countries and economies are going to open up probably too soon. There’ll be various waves of infection and concern. While things are more open than they were, they will also be perceived as more dangerous and lead a lot of people not to meet up.

Geoff Cook:
I think that we continue to be as invested in live streaming and video as possible. We’re also probably more than in past years really focused on just the core dating aspects, the chat, the profile building. We’re even working on a feature that kind of is at the nexus of live streaming and meeting in real life. Using live streaming as a filter on whom to meet in real life. We think that the more casual and maybe more gamified and shallow an app is, if you’re just swiping through profiles without an ability to engage someone deeper than that, until you meet them, those are probably the ones that are going to be impacted the most only because you’re not going to want to risk exposure to a virus from someone you haven’t even thought worthy of having a video chat with for a couple minutes.

Geoff Cook:
I think that the lasting impact will be there’s more video. I think the lasting impact will be there’s … Apps that are functioned, listening for a serious committed relationship, they’re probably going to do reasonably well. I think you’ll probably still want to meet. You’ll still risk your exposure to the virus to meet those people. In terms of when is there a return to normal is not going to bounce back fast. It’s going to take a year or two hopefully. Not more than that.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Geoff. Ritesh, how do you see things going forward once we’re past the corona virus?

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Well I agree with Geoff what he’s saying because I think people are trying to find the new normal now. The phase that their dating in [inaudible 00:14:02] especially in India, the way it was going, I think that’s changing and evolving as we’re going through these tough times. This is not going to end soon. I think people, and I was saying this earlier, people are now looking at engaging themselves more with their matches and trying to find out about them more instead of jumping to that first date. That’s gone out of the window. Now there is nothing [inaudible 00:14:26] meeting physically or going out after a couple of chats on the dating app. Or actually moving to WhatsApp and sharing a number.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Now people are spending more time chatting, engaging and looking for that meaningful relationship in the dating balance and not jumping to a physical interaction. I think that’s changed drastically. It’s going to be like this for a while. I think that little frivolous dating or that kind of dating will I think go down a bit and things will become a more into meaningful relationship and serious dating. That’s where I see the industry going to. As I said, we all try to find the new normal. I think, I can’t predict how long this is going to last, but this is going to go for a while now.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you. Todd.

Todd Sowers:
I think once this is all done, and once we’re through the pandemic, I think it’s obviously that the industry will see a lot of growth. People will be able to meet up again. I think that that will definitely be the case. I mirror what Geoff says, I think it’s going to take an awfully long time for us to really see full recovery. In terms of people being able to safely, and really wanting to meet up. Feeling really okay about it.

Todd Sowers:
In the meanwhile, we’re currently doing a live theme show on our app, which really brings in a lot of engagement. We’re just doing other things. Scruff and Jack’d really are … Unlike Grinder, which is a competitor of ours, a great app, we are a little bit more social dating. There’s a lot of ways for you to express yourself on our platform. A lot of ways for you to … You can match with people, you can look through profiles, you can share videos, you can do all sorts of different things on our app. It’s a little bit more rich in terms of the community that we’ve put together over the last 10 years. I think that people will use apps like ours and others that are a little bit more socially minded, a little bit more longer term minded to meet people.

Todd Sowers:
I like to tell our staff and our organization that a lot of supply has been taken out of the market. There are not places for people to go to socialize. With there not being a lot of supply, there’s still demand. People still want to meet up, rather socialize, I should say.

Todd Sowers:
Fundamentally all of our apps should be a great place to do that. It just depends on how you do it and how your product is put together. I think once it’s all done, I do think things will go back to a relatively normal and hopefully strong growth trajectory.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Great. Kevin.

Kevin Teman:
I think I very much agree with Geoff specifically in the terms that instant dating or just quick shallow interactions, they spiked a lot in beginning when everybody was sitting at home and this felt like a vacation, and they needed something to pass the time. Now that we’re all settling into it, I think the feeling that I get most of the time when I’m in and around people, and this could just be my experience, is that people are often afraid to get near each other and it’s the fear of just contracting the virus and spreading it.

Kevin Teman:
I think that fear is just going to continue to stop people from wanting to ultimately meet. I also believe that matchmaking where the deeper process is are very important right now. I think it’s actually one of the best times for a deep process for matchmaking because you can start to … You can vet people, you can have them get on phone calls, you can have them start to get to know each other slowly, and then they can make a more calculating decision whether they want to get together. I do know that a few matchmaking services, at least the ones that I know did really well this month. They had actually record-breaking months.

Mark Brooks:
Yeah, I mean people have more time to spend, and I think people look around the room roundabout now and realize what’s meaningful to them and where they want to spend their time. There’s probably more towards, leaning more towards finding that person who can be more meaningful for them.

Mark Brooks:
One of the ways that they’re doing that of course, through the online medium is through video. Will video continue to be impactful? Do you think people are going to really get hooked on it? And will more daters have video calls before meeting in person? Are they going to do their first dates online after all this, do you think? Geoff.

Geoff Cook:
Yeah. I mean I think, I mean clearly there’s now people having their first dates online now. We’re seeing some creativity there. People cooking the same meal. Trying to play a game while they’re having some form of one-on-one chat.

Geoff Cook:
I think on the other side of this, it’ll probably be, right now it’s used as kind of a substitute. The video’s the substitute for the real life interaction you can’t have. I think it’s probably more likely to be a filter, once you can have those real life engagements again. Video’s a rich medium, right? You get a sense of a person’s sense of humor, their speaking patterns, which could be useful.

Geoff Cook:
Obviously it isn’t really a substitute for meeting someone in real life that you still need to do this. I do think video will come into its own in the dating landscape as a result of this. I think it was already in the process of doing that, but I think it will become more important.

Geoff Cook:
One example of this, we have a product plan to launch this summer called date night. Which is basically a play on our Next Date dating game where in Next Date people can meet, people can queue up for the streamer and then they become streamers themselves in the guest box. The primary streamer can either next or date on someone.

Geoff Cook:
We’re going to launch a feature where it allows any dates who match to basically we’ll buy you a drink. We’ll give you a gift card to go to Starbucks, wherever you go to get a drink and the first drink’s on us essentially. It’s [inaudible 00:21:23] marketing dollars. Of course impossible to launch a product like this today because Starbucks closed. So is everything else. By this summer, to the extent that things are opening up, we may well launch something like that. It shows you kind of an example of how we imagine video being used. You talk to somebody, but as a way of actually meeting them in real life. Right now it just helps to hopefully in the future will be a filter.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Geoff. Ritesh?

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Well, I think everybody has seen the growth of Houseparty from nowhere. Look at TikTok. Video content, and we also have a content channel where we produce our own videos on technology. We’ve seen a huge change in the way people are consuming video today and the content per se. Houseparty as I said is one example where everybody was on House Party on the start of the lockdown. I think they’ve got around 50 million signups if I’m not mistaken on the number.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
I think video is there to stay. In fact, funnily enough, just before the lockdown, as I said, we already had a voice calling feature, we were trying to add a video chatting feature as well, which we are working on, and which we should launch very soon because we believe that virtual dating is something which is going to be there as we were speaking earlier as well. I think video is going to be an important feature to have at least for the time being til things become better.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
It’s all about keeping the consumer engaged because I think they are asking for that now. Chatting as I said has gone up, but that’s not the end of it. People are looking for new things to do while connecting with people. How you can engage them, how you can connect them, and virtual dating is the key.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha. Great. Thank you Ritesh. Todd?

Todd Sowers:
Yeah, I think that obviously video is a very, very important part of the future. I’m not exactly sure what the hair on fire solution video solves is. I think that we’re doing a lot of ethnographic and just general research on the video right now because we don’t want to spend engineering resources just trying things out to see if they work or not. We want to really be able to understand what the marketplace wants so that we can deliver or start to deliver on that.

Todd Sowers:
Right now, what we’re finding is that, yes, a lot of people do go to either FaceTime or WhatsApp for [inaudible 00:24:03] to be able to do a video after they’ve spoken a couple times to really confirm the other person isn’t just completely creepy.

Todd Sowers:
I’m not sold that, I mean for example Tinder, they’re one of the largest apps if not the largest in our world, and they’re not really doing anything all that interesting with video right now. I don’t think that it’s really obvious yet as to how customers want video integrated into their lives. That very well could be because people have not necessarily completely come out of their shell. They’re not completely comfortable with it yet. I think millennials are really helping lead that effort in terms of they are very comfortable with it.

Todd Sowers:
I think video is great. I think that there are certainly are a lot of people. I mean if you take a look at Geoff’s platform, Geoff has a ton of people doing really fun things on all of his apps, Growlr. I saw some guys doing cooking the other day. It’s really fun. I just don’t know that that is for everybody. I am wondering what the video killer execution is going forward. That’s really what we’re trying to learn right now.

Mark Brooks:
Great. Thank you so much Todd. Kevin, what’s your thoughts on this?

Kevin Teman:
Very interesting. I see video as information transfer. It’s a much higher information transfer than texting or even a single photo. Really at the core, what people want is to get the essence of a person as quickly as possible, especially in the instant gratification base. Tinder became famous because it’s real quick to quickly get as much of an essence as you could of every person.

Kevin Teman:
Video is on one hand, it’s hard for people to step into video because it takes some courage to get on a video with somebody that you haven’t met. Just like it would take to meet somebody. On the other hand, it takes you halfway to understanding what they’re like.

Kevin Teman:
Video is not the silver bullet for understanding what a person is like in their essence. There are many other ways to do that. Hearing their voice is great. I believe Geoff mentioned that. That you get a lot from hearing a person’s tone and how they speak. I think the essence is really seeing into a person. How well can you let someone see into somebody else.

Kevin Teman:
The reason that I think video is spiking now is because dating apps have become shallow in the past 10 years or so with the introduction of Tinder, in that it’s very surface level. So, video is really just a step in being able to see more of their essence. We really need to be more transparent with apps and show what people are really like to each other.

Mark Brooks:
Great. I got one comment here. I think ultimately when we consider the way we design our apps, the closer we can get to the real world, the more the world will reward us. The more human we become. Ultimately I think the safest thing that people can do is ultimately have their first date on platforms, not on Facebook, not on another platform where we don’t have that kind of safety net. Ultimately there’s a safety net, right?

Mark Brooks:
I mean if we recognize someone is on the platform and not someone that we want on the platform, then we have the opportunity to warn people ultimately. There’s that safety aspect with keeping that mode within our platforms.

Geoff Cook:
If I could comment quickly [inaudible 00:27:52]. I agree with video isn’t for everyone. I do still think that there’s a possibility for a killer app where you have a video solution that might work for great numbers, but even when you’re looking at our apps, we’re talking about across the five apps anywhere from 15 to 30% of the users per day doing it. Right? And so, that leaves 70 to 85% who aren’t.

Geoff Cook:
The thing that I think video is difficult to a lot of people because you’re just putting yourself out there. This pandemic I think has led a lot of people to get more comfortable with doing video chats. It’s a difficult thing, especially in a dating context to put yourself out there like that. Not to be able to curate yourself so carefully.

Geoff Cook:
The one thing that we have and a lot of our video solutions is we’re inspired by seeing what was happening [inaudible 00:28:56]. Let’s imagine you have, and this is where I’ll shamelessly pitch Todd, let’s imagine you have 1.5 million DAU, you can take 20% of those, monetize them at 50 cents and that’s 75 million dollars a year. I agree that video is not for everyone, but it’s for a surprisingly large subset that monetizes well. By the way we offer plug-in video solutions.

Mark Brooks:
I think one of the things that you do with your platform though is you make it okay to not do video. You come onto a platform where it’s just one-to-one and the expectation culture then becomes … You should be doing one-to-one. That culture’s not quite there yet. I think there are a lot of people that just don’t want to do one to one and not even, and quite a lot more that don’t want many, but you’re creating an environment that’s okay for everyone, the introverts, the extroverts, the people who want to do video. People are warming up to it yet. That’s the frustrating thing with this particular mode.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Sorry. No, I was just saying there are other extremes like there are a lot of Chinese apps who have got video chatting with people on forums, right? You come in a forum on a dating app and there’s already somebody like an influencer or a middle person who’s helping to have a live video chat with two people or potential people, right. Either that’s one route that they have taken and they monetize it brilliantly, and they made a lot of money out of that.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
It’s about how you’re using the video on a dating app. Like Geoff said or like you said, that there’s a percentage which is ready to do so, which is confident of coming on a video chat, and we can actually monetize it as we go forward.

Geoff Cook:
Yeah, I’ll add to that too. We failed on video a couple times before we hit on something that was working, and the nature of our failures were really by requiring everybody to be on video. We had one feature that was basically Tinder meets Vine, short swiping videos, we called it Charm. We had another which was like one-on-one video with a kind of bunch of gaming activities, but ultimately everyone was on video.

Geoff Cook:
Really, the one-on-one videos is meaningful to company, but it’s not that meaningful. What really did change our fortunes was broadcast video. The one-to many. We see that for every one broadcaster, there’s seven to 10 viewers. Now, suddenly, you can get real liquidity inside the video streams.

Kevin Teman:
I’d just like to add on that, that’s a great point. I’d say that the one-on-one video is one thing, but the video seeing somebody speak and seeing their essence can be done at any time, and could be transferred at another time where you don’t have to produce the extroverted courage to interact with them just yet. A lot of seeing somebody before you meet them or before you talk to them.

Geoff Cook:
Extroverted courage, I like that phrasing.

Mark Brooks:
Let’s talk about-

Kevin Teman:
[crosstalk 00:32:11] step of courage from the texting in the beginning to the next step, to hopefully get to a phone call, and hopefully go on a date with each one is a step of courage. I do think that jumping from texting or browsing to video is a big step. I think there needs to be holding hands for some people that aren’t willing to do that just yet.

Mark Brooks:
We talked about where we’re at, where we’re going in the near term, let’s talk about the bigger picture for us over the, in the three to five year range. What would you predict is going to happen for features and the industry three to five years out? What innovations do you think will be hot three to five years out? Geoff.

Geoff Cook:
Three to five years out. It’s a tough one. I think there is a lot … Inner Circle is doing some interesting things with events. I like to see events in real world meetups kind of come in to dating apps more. In the next two years, that’s probably harder, but I do think that obviously staying on my theme of video, I do think three to five years out it will have matured.

Geoff Cook:
May well be this killer app in video that exists that gets widespread usage and is something that can compete with the likes of Tinder. To date, that’s not how it’s worked. It’s not how we’ve viewed. We’ve kind of viewed most of the dating apps out there they make their currency on text-based chats. People say hey what’s up, or send various chats. The push notifications coming, keep people coming in. The insight that we have is look, you can turn that distribution, that dating distribution into a content business by taking 20% of the sessions and turning them into 20 minutes longer.

Geoff Cook:
That’s what video has done for us. Now, it’s been helpful in the pandemic too. It hasn’t really shown its breakout cultural residence yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone hits on that model the next three to five years. Hopefully it’s us, but it could be anybody.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Geoff. Ritesh, the future, three to five years out, what’s your crystal ball show?

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Yeah, I think we’ll be moving more towards social platform, not just restricting to dating. I think it will move more towards a platform for not just finding your match, but also as I said a content platform and things to engage with.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
It’s going to consolidate as industry, that’s what I feel. I don’t think you’ll have smaller individual players. I think as industry, it will consolidate in the next three five years, because there are enough anyway matches doing that, buying off a lot of small dating apps in particular countries and owning majority of market share.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
I think moving towards more social as platform, and having more content on platform to engage users will be rare, I predict in the next three, five years that it’ll become much bigger as an industry. Not just restricted to dating per se.

Mark Brooks:
Got you. More M and A, more social, more content. In fact, Todd, you mentioned before, you describe your apps as social dating. What do you see for the future?

Todd Sowers:
Well, I think it’s a confluence of things really. I think that it depends on the hardware. I think that most phones right now, and obviously laptops have excellent video capturing capability. That’s not globally yet. I think bandwidth issues are still, you have to really be connected to wifi unless you’re in a great LTE market. I think that those things will solve themselves. Like I said, I think the younger generations are also very comfortable with these things.

Todd Sowers:
I think that there’s no doubt in my mind that five years, 10 years from now, video and social dating will sort of be, like I said a confluence. They’ll confluence. All these things will sort of come together. We’re very much a research driven, data-driven and really research driven organization. I try to really make sure that we talk to all of our customers all over the world.

Todd Sowers:
One thing that keeps on coming up when we ask our customers what other platforms do you use besides Scruff or Jack’d, and number one is always Instagram or Facebook. That’s what they use to date. I’m always really … Facebook one, I’m like really? Instagram I understand. Those, and if you take a look at that is maybe a leader or indication as to where things are going. People like the ability to be social and to also use that as a way to date potentially.

Todd Sowers:
There’s no doubt in my mind like I said that video won’t play a tremendous role in that as people become more comfortable, as the people who are already comfortable doing it become older and their children do it, just what that exact path is to what we’re referring to as the killer solution of the killer, I don’t unfortunately know and if I did, I’d build it today. I think time and resource will tell.

Mark Brooks:
Gotcha, thank you Todd. Kevin?

Kevin Teman:
Well, Mark this is my favorite question. It should be obvious by looking at anything that I’m doing that I have a pretty clear vision of where I think the future’s going to go, and the main essence behind it is we’re not very good at advertising ourselves on dating apps. I’ve been using dating apps for 10 years since they’ve come out. I’ve been using Match since 1997 or so.

Kevin Teman:
The main problem is the self PR problem. Is that people need to write a profile to sell themselves. That whole essence is not natural in the first place. To sell yourself, to figure out what you’re supposed to be like, is leading everybody to follow the same techniques, post the same images of rock-climbing and next to Ferraris and stuff.

Kevin Teman:
AI and technology is in a very close moment to becoming a much more advanced technological singularity, is coming right around the corner, one to 10 years where we can have machines that are very intelligent in many ways. It’s obvious to me that when I look into the future I see an AI that helps you in every step of the way, just like a matchmaking service does where it would hold your hand at every step when you are trying to figure out what you’re supposed to say to your date the first time. Nobody knows.

Kevin Teman:
If you get sucked into the games of what you’re supposed to say to your first date, it’s usually a bunch of nonsense and everybody’s saying the same things. AI’s going to do all the parts that we’re not good at. The self PR, it’s going to hold our hand all the time, every step. It’s going to facilitate our dates and it’s going to share feedback across people and that is enough for somebody like me that’s always had trouble finding their partner for 10 years through dating apps. I’ve never had luck. That would actually work for me, and it pretty much did in my matchmaking service. Although I chose not to settle down, I got very, very close. That’s definitely where it’s going. More service.

Mark Brooks:
Thank you Kevin.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
That’s very interesting what Kevin is saying because I’m also a firm believer, something I missed, that AI is going to be the key as we go forward as well in terms of how you use it. Though I don’t think people are still woken up to it or what it can do for you. We also use Amazon recognition in GMUs, we’re working right now to integrate Amazon likes for the messaging. As you rightly said, that VCU that a lot of frivolous chats can be taken care of with what kind of chatting has happened between people through the help of AI. Females or males don’t feel them, or not give an unwanted text from each side and people are [inaudible 00:41:03].

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
We’ve got a feature called crush for example. That’s like a direct message. People type in their messages that most, often than not it’s a high end WhatsApp. If you have any engine behind it, people can have more interesting chats on the app as well. I also feel that Ais going to play a key role three to five years down the line.

Mark Brooks:
Fascinating. I think one of the things I’ve learned over the last couple years is that incentives drive behavior. If we think about the collective industry, I think we’re incentivized to try and get over this continuity problem of waving goodbye to our clients after we’ve done a good job for them. I think there’s going to be a natural incentive for the industry to create environments that are more social that keep providing value after the point of which people have formed those relationships.

Mark Brooks:
I think ultimately that three to five year range will be quite formative for us because we will start to do decent work with AI. We’ll get enough access to look at enough data to make sense of it. Implement forms of AI that will provide some value after the point that people meet. Gets exciting I think. Especially exciting that three to five year range.

Mark Brooks:
We’re all committed for the longterm I think. It’ll be interesting to have this conversation again in the future. Thank you so much. I look forward to doing more of these with you. This is the second ever idea webinar. Look forward to doing another one next month.

Kevin Teman:
Nice to meet you guys.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Thank you. Thank you.

Mark Brooks:
Bye.

Ritesh Bhatnagar:
Bye everyone. Nice meeting everyone.

Kevin Teman:
Nice meeting. Have a nice day.

Mark Brooks:
You too.