LINKEDIN – Breeze is a new dating app based in the Netherlands. The app, which encourages offline dates, has recently raised €1.3M. Breeze's users cannot chat but can immediately plan a date with their matches via the app.
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LAW360 – An Illinois federal court will hear a proposed class action against Match Group and Tinder that alleges that the online dating companies violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by illegally storing biometric facial scans of Tinder app users without their consent. Tinder allows users to earn a "blue checkmark" on their profile, meaning Tinder has "verified" their profiles under its Liveness Check and 3d Face Authentication process. The lawsuit accuses Tinder of failing to first secure written consent from Illinois users and provide certain notices to those people concerning how the facial scans will be used, stored, shared and ultimately destroyed, as allegedly required by the Illinois BIPA law.
SEEKING ALPHA – Grindr's shares opened at $8 on Nov 18, reaching a high of $9 in early trading before falling to a new 52-week low of $6.52 in late afternoon. Grindr went public following the merger with SPAC Tiga Acquisition through a deal that valued the combined company at ~$2.1B.
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BUSINESS INSIDER – Investors include Chris Kaufman, the co-founder of the sneaker marketplace StockX, and Kevin Edwards, the CEO of the Canadian food-delivery service SkipTheDishes, along with several angel investors. The app, expected to launch early next year, aims to cater to Gen Z, with the possibility for users to video chat, play games, and send each other virtual gifts. The app has brought on the Internet star Cameron Dallas, who rose to fame in the early 2010s on the short-form video app Vine and now has ~25M Instagram followers. He previously co-founded a subscription platform called Fanfix. SuperOrdinary, a beauty accelerator, acquired Fanfix in July in an eight-figure deal.
by Marta Biino
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MASHABLE - In an in-app survey among Tinder users aged 18-24 in the UK, U.S., and Australia last month, 1 in 10 respondents said they prefer situationships as "a way to develop a relationship with less pressure." The app saw a 49% jump in members adding "situationship" to their profiles from January to October this year.
NBC NEWS – Joel Simkhai helped launch Grindr in 2009. Grindr piloted geolocation to show users' distance from one another, fundamentally changing queer culture. It brought millions of people together in ways that gay bars – the longtime focal points of LGBTQ social scenes – simply couldn't. But some say it worsened the physical and racial discrimination that has long plagued the gay community. Now, more than a decade later, he wants a do-over in the hope of "course-correct" and avoiding the pitfalls of existing apps. Simkhai launched a queer dating and hookup app this month in New York City called Motto, which he says has innovative features to help prevent toxicity and discrimination. Motto requires users to have face pictures instead of "headless torsos" and limits time spent on the app by serving users ten profiles a day. The app also requires a verification process for every user.
THE SUN – AI will transform the way people around the world find their matches online, according to Christopher Gulczynski, one of five Tinder's founders and the CEO of the social media platform Niche. "People are hungry for more quality interactions rather than quantity," he said, adding that Tinder and Bumble are more focused on the latter. People could soon carry their online profiles in a chip that would work like a digital wallet. AI could then be used to match people based on factors such as the networks they are in or the hobbies they enjoy.
CBS NEWS – Heather Meador and Anna Herber-Downey are both public health nurses employed by Linn County Public Health in eastern Iowa. They've learned that dating apps are the most efficient way to inform users that people they previously met on the sites may have exposed them to sexually transmitted infections. They got approval from their bosses at the local level to build profiles on dating apps, through which they can contact the sex partners of infected people.