CITYAM – Mar 1 – UK Cannabis firm Jacana heads towards floatation after securing $20M in private investment. Serial entrepreneur Alexandra Chong, the company's co-founder, said "all options were on the table" in terms of funding, as Jacana seeks to expand its production facility in Jamaica to meet the demand for medicinal cannabis in the UK. After making her name with the women-only dating app Lulu, which was sold to Badoo in 2016, Chong said she was focusing on her "passion project" of creating the "champagne of cannabis".
Category: Badoo
Tycoons of Love: The Men Who Run Online Dating
THINKNUM – Feb 16 – The world of dating apps is dominated by four companies – Match Group, The Meet Group, Badoo and Spark. Here are the four men behind these companies.
Match Group – Barry Diller
Born in San Fran in 1942, 77 year-old Barry Diller is Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia. Diller married fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg in 2001 and is now estimated to be worth $3.3B. He also created the Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. On top of creating his own empire in media, Diller's influence has spread to those who he mentored – colloquially called the "Killer Dillers" – which included former Disney Chairman & CEO Michael Eisner and Dawn Leslie Steel, one of the first woman to become the head of a major movie studio.
The Meet Group – Geoff Cook
Geoff isn't The Meet Group's founder. That honor goes to his younger brother and sister, Dave and Catherine Cook. Dave and Catherine created myYearbook in 2005 as a place for ex-classmates to meet up online. Geoff became the company's power player after investing $250K that he made from his EssayEdge and ResumeEdge startups he created in his Harvard dorm room.
Badoo – Andrey Andreev
Born in February 1974 in Moscow, Russia, Andreev founded Badoo, SpyLog, Begun, and Mamba. He also famously convinced ex-Tinder exec Whitney Wolfe Herd to create Bumble, of which Badoo is a 79% owner. Andreev was recently listed by Forbes as one of the world's richest people, estimated to be worth $1.5B.
Spark Networks – Jeronimo Folgueira
Before taking over Spark in 2017, Jeronimo was a Managing Director at Betfair plc (now Paddy Power plc). The Columbia Business School grad took over the reigns of all of Spark Networks SE when JDate and Christian Mingle-focused Spark merged with Affinitas GmbH.
The full article was originally published at Thinknum Media, but is no longer available.
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The Top iDate Awards Results
OPW – Feb 11 – The following awards were made at the iDate Awards:
- Best Dating Site – Badoo
- Best Mobile Dating App – Tinder
- Best Product Design – Ukraine Brides Agency
- Best Dating Software/SAAS – Dating Pro
- Best Marketing Campaign – Bumble
For the full listing of awards, go here.
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36% of Brits Would Go on a First Date to a Gym Class
MIRROR.CO.UK – Jan 17 – Badoo surveyed its users on which alcohol-free dates they'd be willing to go on. The top suggestion (92%) was a coffee date, followed by a winter walk (77%) or an expedition to the cinema (66%). 36% said they go on a first date to a gym class, while 9% would go to the spa.
Who Got the Most News Coverage in 2018?
OPW – Jan 13 – Every day we review the news and bubble up what we think are summaries of the most important intell in the most important news items. All year, every day. Then in January we like to do an annual review of the news and let you know who got the most coverage on OPW.news for the prior year. Subscribe here for daily updates.
Here's the rankings for who got the most press coverage on OPW.news in 2018.
- Tinder, 182 posts on OPW.news
- Bumble, 116 posts
- Match Group, 105 posts
- Facebook Dating, 58 posts
- Grindr, 40 posts
- Badoo, 33 posts
- eharmony, 33 posts
- Match, 29 posts
- OKCupid, 28 posts
- Hinge, 24 posts
Facebook Also Let Dating Apps Have Further Access to Graph API Back in 2015
ARS TECHNICA – Dec 6 – UK MP releases 250 pages of materials obtained as part of Six4Three debacle. The documents from Facebook show that the company allowed even more companies including dating apps Badoo, HotorNot and Bumble to access the v1.0 Graph API back in 2015. The documents, known as the "Six4Three files," were published by Damian Collins, a member of the UK Parliament. Collins is the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Committee in Parliament, which has been overseeing inquiries into Facebook's practices. "The files show evidence of Facebook taking aggressive positions against apps, with the consequence that denying them access to data led to the failure of that business," Collins concluded. Six4Three is a long-forgotten company that has for years pursued a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that it was shut out from being allowed to access the Graph API, as it was too small. Six4Three made a short-lived app called "Pikinis," which sought bikini photos on Facebook. It was only downloaded ~5,000 times. Lawyers for Six4Three have long argued what Collins concluded: once small apps were shut off, they were driven out of busines.
What Dating Apps Can Tell Us About Why We Fall in love
THEWEEK.CO.UK – Nov 21 – How and why people fall in love is still not entirely clear. Scientists are aligned in saying that opposites don't generally attract. Rather, we tend to love people who share our values and outlook on life and who are of similar age and attractiveness. Falling in love is a slow process that can take months, but recognising the potential for love can happen quickly. It takes seven seconds or less to form a first impression of somebody and know whether there is a spark. Humans make unconscious judgements using visual cues. With dating apps however, we have to rely on static photographs and written conversations. Badoo users tend to match with similarly aged people and with those of similar popularity. The attraction happens after the swiping process. But Badoo users tend to message just 50% of their matches so swiping "yes" is therefore not necessarily an indicator of attraction. When the messaging starts, it takes users around two days and 20 messages to decide whether to date someone. This is slower than in person, which is why Badoo encourages its users to go on dates early.
Lumen, the Dating App for 50+ to Launch in Ireland
MARKETING.IE – Nov 20 – Lumen founder and dating expert Charly Lester will be in Dublin this week for the launch. Lumen raised £3.5M from Andrey Andreev, the Founder of Badoo.
Badoo Finds a Dramatic Increase in Matches During ‘Cuffing Season’
Dating Apps Turn to AI to Help Users Find Love
AGENCE PRESSE-FRANCE – Nov 9 – The online dating sector is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help arrange meetings in real life and act as a dating coach. These new uses for AI – the science of programming computers to reproduce human processes like thinking and decision making – by dating apps were highlighted at Web Summit in Lisbon. eHarmony is developing an AI-enabled feature which would nudge users to suggest meeting in person after they have been chatting in the app for a while. "There is a lot of activity on dating apps but by and large there is not a lot of dates," said eHarmony CEO Grant Langston. "Guys don't know how to ask. It's astounding really how many people need help and we think we can do that in an automated way." British dating app Loveflutter plans to use AI to analyse chats between its users to determine their compatibility and suggest when they should meet. "We will ping a message saying 'You are getting along really well, why don't you go on your first date'," said Loveflutter co-founder Daigo Smith. Tinder founder Sean Rad said AI would "create better user experiences" and predicted iPhone's Siri voice assistant would in the future act as a matchmaker. An entirely voice-operated dating app called AIMM which uses AI to mirror a human matchmaking service is already being tested in Denver where it has ~1K users. Badoo is now using AI and facial recognition technology to let users find a match that looks like anyone at all, including their ex or a celebrity crush.
See full article at The National
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