YAHOO FINANCE – Nov 9 – eHarmony is hoping to launch a chatbot to stop people from ghosting, or cutting off communication with potential matches. The would-be feature, which eharmony has yet to start development on, would pop up in the user interface after an online conversation with another user drops off after several days or weeks. The dating bot feature could be introduced within the next 18 months.
Category: eHarmony
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
See all posts on eHarmony See all posts on Tinder
See all posts on Loveflutter See all posts on Badoo
Wake-up Call, eHarmony Sold For A Song
OPW – Oct 30 – ProSiebenSat.1 bought eHarmony for $85 million. A real deal. They'll run on a common platform in the future. eHarmony will do roughly $90m revenues, and $0 profit in 2018. Customer lifetime value for eHarmony is $200, whereas Parship is at $570. More info here. Brand recognition for eHarmony stands above Tinder and on par with the likes of Instagram and American Airlines.
See full article at the Courtland Brooks blog.
See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on Parship
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Post by Mark Brooks, CEO IDEA
eHarmony’s CEO Discusses Artifical Intelligence
OPW – Oct 30 – eHarmony's CEO Grant Langston was just on a webinar today, entitled 'Leveraging A.I. to boost customer acquisition, engagement, and retention,' which is available here.
Speakers were:
- Grant Langston, CEO, eHarmony
- Dave Gerhardt, VP Marketing, Drift
- Brian Witlin, CEO, Yummly
- Moira Dorsey, Founder, Dorsey Experience
As part of the scene setting they stated that Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, was quoted in the past as saying "A.I. is one of the most important things humanity is working on. Its more profound than electricity or fire."
Grant Langston kicked the webinar off and in his intro he mentioned that he started as a copywriter, no less, at eHarmony and has been with the company 18 years now. "I Feel a real attachment to the business and the mission."
Grant also stated that at eHarmony "A.I. is at the heart of everything we do. Integral to the whole company. We probably know more about our customers than any company in the world."
"When you join eHarmony and take 150 questions… We put you in a 'bucket'… Then as you make choices about the matches that we present, the machine is learning about you as an individual… The more you use the product, the more we learn about you."
When asked about if eHarmony reveals much about the A.I., Grant said, "People don't generally want to know about the algorithms and how we match. But it's there if they want to dig in and review it."
The group was asked about where a good place to start with A.I. was and Grant said that many companies may not need to integrate A.I. into the hearts of their products but, "a good place to start with AI is using it in marketing."
Finally, Grant mentioned that A.I. and the eHarmony experience was consistent across mobile and desktop. "We strive to provide the same experience across all of the platforms, for the 5 countries we're in."
Post by Mark Brooks, CEO IDEA
How Much Was eHarmony Sold For?
FINANCIAL TIMES – Oct 30 – ProSiebenSat.1, one of Germany's largest media groups, has agreed to buy US dating site eHarmony as part of its drive to create the world's biggest online matchmaker. ProSieben already owns stake in Parship Elite, a successful German dating business. ProSieben, which will merge eHarmony with Parship Elite did not disclose financial terms of the deal. But one person briefed on the acquisition said it valued eharmony at $85M – making it a surprisingly cheap date compared with rival Match, which has a market value of $13.7B. eHarmony, which raised ~$100M during just one fundraising round 15 years ago, has spent ~$1B on marketing in recent years, according to the person.
by Matthew Garrahan
See full article at Financial Times
Mark Brooks: eHarmony was sold for more than $85 million, that's for sure. Its brand value alone is worth double that. I'd put them at North of $300 million valuation.
UPDATE: Turns out FT's source was right on. eHarmony was indeed sold for $85m, so I need to eat my proverbial hat. Additional commentary on the Courtland Brooks blog.
See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on Parship
See all posts on ElitePartner
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 Media (Parship) Acquires eHarmony
REUTERS – Oct 29 – Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 Media has bought eHarmony, in the first significant deal since it carved out a new e-commerce joint venture with General Atlantic. eHarmony expects 2.8 million new users this year, and complements ProSieben's own Parship dating franchise which is the market leader in Germany. Terms were not disclosed. Parship and sister brand Elite Partner, count 2 million registrations a year. eHarmony has brand awareness of nearly 90% and a very big user base that can be served better from a common platform. ProSieben is pushing to diversify away from its core commercial TV franchise, where ad revenues are flat and the sector is being disrupted by streaming platforms like Netflix. The Munich-based broadcaster bought eharmony via its newly created Nucom division, in which investor General Atlantic took a 24.9% stake in February. Nucom owns 94% of Parship. eharmony raised $113 million in two funding rounds. Most recently in 2004, Tuputele Ventures, TCV, Sequoia Capital and Fayez Sarofim & Co. eHarmony CEO Grant Langston will continue to run the business while representatives of Parship will join its board.
by Douglas Busvine & Joern Poltz
See full article at Reuters
See all posts on eHarmony
See all posts on Parship
See all posts on ElitePartner
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
AI Webinar With eHarmony CEO
BRIGHT TALK – Oct 24 – With AI, every time a customer engages with your brand, you're making that moment really count. Register for this free webinar to learn:
- How AI levels up personalization and customer engagement
- How to use AI-fueled data analytics to create tactical marketing plans.
- How to create personalized moments without being creepy
- How to increase real and effective relevance to customers across channels
Speakers:
- Grant Langston, CEO, eHarmony
- Dave Gerhardt, VP Marketing, Drift
- Brian Witlin, CEO, Yummly
- Joanna O'Connell, VP Principal Analyst, Forrester
Date: Oct 30, 2018
The Counterintuitive Evolution Of Online Courtship Behavior
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW – Oct 2 – One of the curious features of human courtship is the asymmetry between the roles that men and women play. In recent years, researchers have begun to study this phenomenon in more detail, thanks to the rise of online dating. These show that in general, men tend to initiate contact, and women, often flooded with contacts, are more selective with their responses. Rachel Dinh and colleagues at the University of Oxford in the UK measured the change in online dating behavior on eHarmony's UK site over a 10-year period. They found out that the asymmetry has become more pronounced. "While early on, people might have hoped online dating would create a more equal playing field for women to initiate courtship, it has become clear that online dating has not only reflected but exacerbated male-dominated initiation," say Dinh and co.
Gender Roles Still Dominate The World Of Online Dating
Reasons Why L.A. Is The Perfect Market For Dating App Launches
