TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Nov 7 – Badoo, part of the matchmaking empire controlled by Russian tycoon Andrey Andreev, is under investigation for its tax payments for the years 2013 to 2016. The news comes as Mr Andreev, 44, whose fortune has been estimated at over £1B, talks up plans to take the company public in a New York listing which could value it at several billion dollars. Badoo is structured with more than a dozen subsidiaries as well as other investments. Its parent company is listed as World Vision, a company incorporated in Bermuda, which in turn is controlled by Rimburg International, a company domiciled in the British Virgin Islands. A separate entity, Badoo Limited, also said it was under investigation. The company reported turnover of £144M for the year ending December 2017, up from £107M in the previous 12 months, for a reported loss of £5.6M. Badoo said the loss was "primarily due to the marketing focus of the business".
Category: Badoo
Why Dating Apps Are Trying To Stop Users Blanking Each Other
THE GUARDIAN – Nov 1 – Bumble and Badoo have announced plans to crack down on ghosting. Bumble has recruited an in-house 'ghosting' expert, Kate Leaver, and Badoo has introduced a series of suggested responses, such as: "Hey, I think you're great, but I don't see us as a match. Take care!" Leaver's role, building on the expertise she developed writing her book The Friendship Cure, is focused on pushing for "a revival of kindness and respect," she says. "People are ghosting everyone all over the place. I think they are too lazy, or too cowardly to have the difficult conversations," Leaver adds. "There has been some extreme psychological damage for people who are living without any explanation as to why they've been ghosted." Google, for instance, recently updated Gmail to introduce a feature called "nudges". The service prompts users to reply to emails that they "might have forgotten to respond to" and to "follow up" on emails they sent that never received a reply. While it can occasionally be useful, the feature is attempting to fight a symptom of information overload by adding more information to the pile. It's not enough to ignore an email. We now have to ignore it twice. Could nudging ghosters in the dating world simply add to the overload of the modern era? After all, as the psychologist Maya Borgueta has written in HuffPost, "ghosting is avoidance and often stems from fear of conflict. Which means that ghosting is about wanting to avoid confrontation, difficult conversations and avoid hurting someone's feelings." If that is the case, Badoo's pushy attempts to restart conversations could have the opposite effect: if you ghost because of a fear of confrontation, then it's not much help when your dating app begins confronting you.
by Alex Hern
See full article at The Guardian
Badoo To Help Solve Ghosting Problem
Bumble Owner Targets Nasdaq IPO To Become World’s Top Matchmaker
BLOOMBERG – Oct 11 – The group behind Bumble is weighing an IPO in the U.S. as part of its plan to become the world's biggest dating business, according to founder Andrey Andreev. "We're now in very deep discussions with banks," including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Andreev said. Andreev, 44, is the majority shareholder of Bumble owner Rimberg International Corp., a holding company that also controls gay-dating app Chappy and London-based Badoo. Andreev, who founded Badoo in 2006, hopes the IPO will help his firm overtake Match Group. Andreev said revenue may be as much as $400M this year, which is less than a third of Match's $1.33B last year. Bumble would be the "umbrella brand" for any IPO, which won't happen before year-end, he said. Badoo invested $10M to help Wolfe Herd start Bumble, giving Andreev's group a stake of ~75%. Today, Bumble has 41M users, more than double from a year ago. "Bumble is going crazy," Andreev said. "Bumble is already in Germany, and it's growing at 500% a month there."
by Sophie Alexander & Benjamin Stupples
See full article at Bloomberg
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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Gay Dating App Chappy Relaunches With ‘Zero Tolerance For Abuse’
GAYSTAR NEWS – Sep 11 – Gay dating and social connection app Chappy has introduced a new design. Previously, users could say whether they were seeking 'Mr Right' or 'Mr Right Now'. 'Cute' and 'Sexy' moods now respectively replace those two options. Ollie Locke (of Made in Chelsea fame), Jack Rogers and Max Cheremkhin originally founded the app. Backing comes from dating app Badoo, with advisory backing from Whitney Wolfe Herd. Last month, Chappy announced Locke and Rogers were stepping down. Succeeding them is Sam Dumas as Global Head of Brand. Chappy says it will now have, 'zero tolerance for abuse or bullying of any kind.' Users reported for violating Chappy's terms and conditions risk a permanent ban from the app.
Andrey Andreev Has Invested £3.5M In Dating App Lumen
UKTN – Sep 7 – Andrey Andreev, the man behind Badoo, Bumble and Chappy, has invested £3.5M in Lumen, a new dating app specifically for single over 50s. Launching in the UK, Lumen was co-founded by Antoine Argouges and Charly Lester. Lumen will be free, available to download on iOS and Android. All users will be required to upload a selfie and verify their identity.
by Yessi Bello Perez
See full article at UKTN
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Andrey Andreev Is A Real Life Cupid With Five Dating Apps To His Name
CELEBRITY NET WORTH – Aug 27 – Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev is the king of dating apps. He's the man behind five successful online dating apps – Badoo, Chappy, Huggle, Mamba and Bumble. He was born Andrey Ogandzhantyants in Moscow but changed his name to his mother's maiden name because it was easier to spell. He's always been passionate about technology. He briefly attended the University of Moscow but dropped out at age 18 to move to Spain. In 1995, he founded Virus, an e-commerce site that sold computers and accessories to internet users in Russia. In 1997, he sold it for a few hundred thousand dollars. In 1999, he founded SpyLog, which was software that tracked visitors to websites. It was basically Google Analytics before that lunched in 2005. Andreev left SpyLog in December 2001. In 2002, he built Begun, a contextual ads company. Google almost bought Begun in 2008 for $140M but the deal never went through. Begun still exists, but Andreev left in early 2004. Andreev founded Badoo in Spain in 2006 and launched it in 2009. The company's headquarters are in London and there is a Moscow office. Badoo employs 300 people. Andreev will not disclose Badoo's revenue but said that Match Group is a good comparison for Badoo.
by Amy Lamare
See full article at Celebrity Net Worth
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The Most Right-swiped Universities In The UK Revealed By Badoo
BRINKWIRE – Aug 11 – University of the Arts London (UAL) and Leeds came out on top, with Durham and Southampton scraping in at the bottom. Badoo also found that UAL students send and receive the most messages out of all the universities in the UK (~6M) in the past year, with the university of Oxford coming in at 2nd place with ~4M messages and Leeds 3rd with ~3M.
The full article was originally published at Brinkwire, but is no longer available.
Why Facebook’s Dating Service Will Fail
CTECH – July 13 – Former AOL and dating service Badoo executive Amit Shafrir explains why he believes the recently announced Facebook dating service stands little chance of succeeding.
- Single app policy
Facebook has announced that it will incorporate its dating service into its flagship app. A separate app focused on dating would be the correct approach. Here is why:
– Context
Everything we do, we do within a certain context. When we browse LinkedIn we are in a work or professional context; when we browse Facebook, we are in a social context; and when we are using a dating app, we are in a fun, entertainment or optimistic context.
– Demographics
Millennials and members of Generation Z, who are the prime targets of any dating service do not generally use Facebook. They do use Instagram.
– Promotion
It would look somewhat off to have other Facebook assets promote the main Facebook app, and given the different demographics, would probably not be very effective.
– Virality
A great dating app should have a natural buzz to it. That is not Facebook. App store Users searching for dating apps on Apple's App Store or Google Play would not see Facebook among their results. - Monetization
Monetization is simply not in Facebook's DNA. - Thinking small
My sense is that Facebook is not treating this opportunity with the gravitas that its potential merits. It is limiting itself to a small subset of its vast user base of over 2B, and to a subset of potential functionality.
by Amit Shafrir
See full article at CTech
~65% Of Women Prefer To Pay For The First Date, Study Finds
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – July 7 – A new study from Badoo has revealed that 65% of women prefer to pay on a first date. Badoo asked 2K 18-30-year-old female Brits. The poll also found that 74% of British women who use the dating app are also making the first move and starting conversations with new matches.