QNEWS – July 2 – A TV ad campaign for dating site eHarmony featuring a lesbian couple making dinner has made Australia's list of the most complained-about ads of the last 12 months. One person said: "The advertisements are too graphic with the promotion of sex. eHarmony can advertise the product without the explicit scenes." Watchdog Ad Standards threw out complaints about the ads.
by Jordan Hirst
See full article at QNews
LTR – July 5 – Jon Birger, author of Make Your Move and Date-onomics, believes that online dating falls short of its lofty initial promises. He suggests that modern daters have lost the foundations of traditional courtship and relationship building in the algorithm-driven digital dating ecosystem. In his books, Birger cites research from multiple sources that demonstrates the increased efficacy of dating people within one’s work and social circles. The persistent issues with online dating, such as dishonest profiles and safety risks, contribute to an unsatisfactory experience for users. This is particularly true for female users. Jon Birger believes that online dating services can learn from the past to guide the future. He shares his insights and several inspiring stories in the latest video in the LTR Conference series.
LTR stands for Love, Technology, Relationships and the online conference covers the Internet dating and Online Social Communities space. It is for members of IDEA and OSCA.
The May LTR was kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by The Meet Group, Real Gifts & Courtland Brooks.
LIVEMINT – July 3 – Betterhalf.ai operates on a subscription-based matrimony-focused platform. The app uses AI to help users find relevant matches. Betterhalf.ai is currently used by ~50K users between the age group of 25 to 35 years on a daily basis. The app has a total of 700K users with 6 to 7 times/day app visits by a single user. In addition, the user monthly activity on the app has grown from 20K MAU to 150K MAU and growth in revenue from $10K to $75K.
OPW – July 4 – TOPIC: Gamification
Yu-kai Chou is an expert on Gamification and Behavioral Design and creator of the Octalysis Framework. He authored "Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards" and is Chief Creation Officer of The Octalysis Group and Head of Digital Commerce for HTC/Vive.
Yu-kai has spoken at Google, Stanford University, LEGO, Tesla, BCG, Turkish Airlines, Huawei, the governments of UK, Singapore, S.Korea, and Bahrain. Yu-kai started in Gamification in 2003. In 2015, Yu-kai was rated #1 in "Gamification Gurus Power 100" by RISE, and awarded the "Gamification Guru of the Year" in 2014, 2015 and 2017 by the World Gamification Congress. He's helped LEGO, Uber, Volkswagen/Porsche, eBay, Fidelity Investments, AIG Japan, Verizon and his work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, The World Journal, PBS, and NBC.
LTR Edition 9 is on Wed 7th July starting 11:30am EST (New York). If you hold a full time leadership role at an Internet dating company then you are welcome to join IDEA for free, and welcome to join LTR events for free. See the LTR Edition 9 overview, speakers and invite page here. Email mark@courtlandbrooks.com to RSVP for LTR. There are 80 places only.
LTR is kindly sponsored by RealMe, vPaaS by Meet Group, Real Gifts, and Courtland Brooks
SEEKING ALPHA – July 2 – Bumble caters to ~40M monthly users and 2.8M paying users across the globe. Competing with Tinder, which still leads the way, Bumble is the 2nd highest-grossing app in the world when it comes to online dating. While the company reported strong Q1 earnings, Bumble stock fell sharply after reporting the numbers, pushing the stock price below the Initial public offering price of $43. After surging by over 70% on debut in February, Bumble stock hit a low of $38.91 on May 24 as analysts weighed on the company's first-quarter performance. Bumble reported revenue of $171M. Bumble's paid user count grew 44% YoY to 1.35M, while Badoo also saw 19% YoY paid user growth to 1.45M. In an important announcement, the company confirmed that it is planning to expand its horizons by emerging as a full-scale social media company, not just a company focused on providing online dating solutions. In terms of international expansion, Bumble has been seeing strong growth in Germany with Monthly Average Users growing at ~160 % YoY. Bumble's premium app is expected to be rolled out globally by the end of the year.
OKCUPID BLOG – July 2 – Thousands of daters on OkCupid in the U.S. recently said it's important to them that their date celebrates Juneteenth, with support highest among Gen Z and Millennial women. Users who answered yes are getting 20% more matches and 50% more likes on average. 43% of OkCupid respondents said they celebrated Juneteenth by educating themselves on Black culture and history while 23% said they attended a related event, 20% supported Black-owned businesses and 14% listened to Black artists and watched Black movies.
TECH ACUTE – July 2 – In the wake of lockdowns, Kaspersky participated in the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2021 event held in Barcelona on June 29 to talk about love in the digital age. Kaspersky's Senior Malware Analyst, Tatyana Shishkova, presented the highlights of a study they conducted in 2017 on nine dating apps, including Tinder. Shishkova pointed out the risks involved in using the studied dating apps and provided suggestions to the companies and the users to stay safe online. The main issue was sharing users' location. Apart from location, people might gain access to another person's private information such as photos, full name, political beliefs, employment, and so on, putting them at risk of doxing. Doxing is revealing someone's private information without their consent.
by Emma Hughes
See full article at Wired
Mark Brooks: The science of compatibility profiling and matchmaking is entirely, still, a virgin science. Until we open up our databases to academics and data scientists to do proper experimentation, we will continue to clutch at straws when it comes to really provide more than marginal improvements to long term matchmaking. However, there's a LOT of value in just getting showstopper questions out of the way right upfront. i.e. sexuality preferences, marriage status, marriage-minded?, want kids?, got kids? etc.
See full article at PR Newswire
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