NBC LA – People who receive unwelcome sexually graphic material could sue senders under a bill sent to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk.The Pew Research Center found that 33% of women under 35 had been sexually harassed online, three times as often as men. In a 2017 report, the center said more than half of women age 18-29 had been sent unsolicited explicit images, as had 37% of men in the same age range. The bill would allow recipients to recover at least $1,500 and as much as $30K from senders of obscene material who are older than age 18, as well as punitive damages and attorney's fees. They could also seek court orders blocking such behavior in the future.
Month: August 2022
9count, Maker of Wink and Dating App Summer, Raises $27.5M
TECH CRUNCH – Alex Hofmann once served as Musical.ly's president, overseeing the North and South American markets for the TikTok precursor, then leaving shortly after the app exited to Chinese tech giant ByteDance in 2017. He launched 9count, the maker of the popular friend-finder Wink, mobile dating app Summer (previously Spark), and others. 9count is raising $27.5M in new funding which is an extension of 9count's earlier Series A and includes only its existing investors. 9count's backers were impressed with the metrics coming out of Summer, which launched as Spark back in May but later rebranded. The dating app targets a younger demographic, ages 18 and up. But unlike traditional swipe-based dating apps, Summer shows many users at once – an experience meant to more closely mimic the way it feels to walk into a crowded space in real life. Summer has ~300K monthly active users and 500K downloads. Hofmann claims it's the fastest-growing dating app to hit the market since Bumble arrived in 2014. The video chat app Wink has 2M monthly active users, remaining 9count's largest app to date. In total, 9count's app portfolio now reaches ~10M users.
Dating News Headlines: Summer, Wink
Quick links to today's dating news headlines
TikTok Creators Narrate Hinge Ad Aimed at Gen Z Daters
THE DRUM – Hinge is bringing back its furry mascot 'Hingie' for the 3rd installment of its 'Designed to be Deleted' campaign. The ad highlights nine different scenarios showing the more creative side of getting to know someone, be that attending a pottery class, going hiking, or spending an evening stargazing. In the background of each activity, Hingie is happily sacrificing himself. The app and agency Red Antler tapped TikTok creators to voice the campaign, providing reactions and commentary to the dates on screen. The campaign will be rolled out globally with TV spots on Hulu, out-of-home (OOH) activations, plus digital and social media posts.
Founder of Blued Steps Down
SCMP – Ma Baoli is vacating his roles as CEO and chairman. He announced the change with a post to his personal WeChat account. "We have turned ideals into reality and made something impossible possible," Ma wrote, hinting at the difficulties of running a business catering to the LGBTQ community in a country where gay marriage is not legal and the government has taken an increasingly stringent stance against content depicting same-sex relationships. BlueCity grew revenue to reach $107.2M in 2019, the year before going public on the Nasdaq in July 2020, reaching a valuation of ~$800M. However, profitability has proven elusive as the space for LGBTQ groups online in China has shrunk in recent years. BlueCity has not announced a successor for Ma, but a company representative said it would "fulfill its obligation to disclose the information in a timely manner".
Garbo Offers Free Background Checks on Match Group Apps
YAHOO FINANCE – Online daters using one of Match Group's apps can now use Garbo's online background check service to screen potential dates. Garbo searches typically cost $3.25 each, but the web-based app is providing complimentary background checks to Match Group's free and premium subscribers. Garbo focuses on flagging subjects for dating violence convictions, registries on sexual offense databases, and fraud offenses.
Tinder Is Losing Some Momentum and Gen Z Could Be Why
MASHABLE – Financial Times reported that Tinder downloads dropped 5% in 2021. Tinder CEO Gary Swidler said that new user sign-ups "have not returned to pre-pandemic levels." FT's reporting suggested that Gen Z's falling interest in Tinder could be to blame for the app's slow fall from grace.
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Filteroff Flooded Its Dating App With Bots to Scam Scammers
MEDIUM.COM – Brian Weinreich and his co-founder Zach recently started Filteroff, a video dating app, and as user numbers grew, so did the number of scammers harassing people for money. When a user signs up, Filteroff's Scammer Detection System kicks into full gear. When a scammer is detected, the app snags them from the Normal Dating Pool and places them in a separate Dark Dating Pool full of other scammers and bots. They built a bot army full of profiles with fake photos and GPT-3 (a tech that lets computers talk like humans) to chat with the scammers.
by Brian Weinreich
See full article at Medium
Looking for Love in the Metaverse
NEW YORK TIMES – Nevermet is one of a growing number of virtual reality (VR) dating services that allow users to match with other VR enthusiasts and then arrange a meetup somewhere in the metaverse. There's also Flirtual or Second Life’s Lonely Hearts Dating Agency. Nevermet launched on Valentine's Day of this year, and its goal was to completely reconfigure human nature. "We intend to change the dating market, where physical attraction will become one of several factors rather than the primary way people connect," said Cam Mullen, Nevermet's CEO. Nevermet's interface is similar to those of other dating apps like Tinder or Bumble, only instead of photos, users' profiles show their metaverse avatars. Some suggest VR is a way for people to bury their heads in the sand instead of engaging with the often uncomfortable work of being a human who's looking for love in the world. But for a lot of VR users, having access to a flourishing dating life online isn't a way to avoid the wider world; it's a way to access it. VR can also be a space for users to safely experiment with their sexual identity and/or gender expression.