PR NEWSWIRE – Match has partnered with Candace Bushnell, international best-selling author and the OG Carrie Bradshaw, to help Match members find love during dating's peak season. Starting January 2, known as 'Dating Sunday', Candace will be overseeing Match's new Expert Picks feature. With Expert Picks, members will take a quiz to opt-in to receiving hand-picked matches from the Match Experts team, and Candace herself will be personally dropping in to deliver matches.
Category: Match.com
Match.com Brings Back the Human Touch
WALL STREET JOURNAL – From online dating to social media, algorithms are getting more assistance from humans. Since February, Match Group has been testing a human matchmaking layer to its namesake Match app and will provide two handpicked matches for users willing to pay $4.99 a week. The pilot involves a 50-member team who have been trained as dating coaches by the company. Match said ~30% of its members have already opted in for the feature. Users of the feature were eight times more likely to match – or mutually like one another – with an expert pick versus without the service, Match said.
Match Introduces Human Matchmaking
WALL STREET JOURNAL – For $4.99 a week Match dating experts will go through a user's answers to four questions and pair them. A 50-member team, trained as dating coaches, will select two profiles for participating members each week, drawing from the same algorithm-generated pool Match provides. Questions include, what a person would change about their dating life, and what sort of person a user gravitates toward. "The company created the feature because, for some singles, the pandemic has added a degree of urgency to finding a long-term relationship," said Amarnath Thombre, CEO of Match Group Americas. "People have had enough time to reflect," "Traditional matchmaking services are costly, starting in the thousands of dollars for just a few months. But these services are worth it to customers who don't have the time to sort through candidates on apps," said Tammy Shaklee, founder/matchmaker of H4M, an LGBTQ matchmaking service.
by Ann-Marie Alcántara
See full article at Wall Street Journal
Mark Brooks (owner of matchmaker.com): Fascinating stuff, but I think calling this matchmaking is an offense to the matchmaking industry. $5 a week may well be a scalable price-point, but I don't think this service does justice to the humanity of the service matchmakers provide. The whole point of (quality) matchmaking is to get deep into the person, council and coach them, and provide custom advice to the individuals, with occasional appropriately sugar-coated but tough feedback. Match's service appears to be a commitment vehicle. I don't quite see how this service quite passes muster as matchmaking, even as a minimum effective dose. Let's see. Looks like the opposite end of the spectrum to the matchmaking service eHarmony introduced and experimented with years ago.
Tinder and Match Asking Users to Urge Senators to Pass Violence Against Women Act
THE HILL – Match, Tinder, OkCupid, BLK, Chispa and Plenty of Fish, all of which are part of Match Group, have prompted their users to send an email to their senators "with one click," urging them to support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The Violence Against Women Act, originally enacted in 1994, lapsed in 2019 and has not been reauthorized since. The bill would provide grants to state and local governments for programs addressing domestic abuse, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking, in addition to further narrowing the so-called boyfriend loophole to prohibit dating partners convicted of domestic violence or abuse from buying or owning guns. Current law only restricts gun purchases for spouses or formerly married partners who were convicted of abuse or are under a restraining order.
Match.com Study: Singles Are Reevaluating Dating and Sex During the Pandemic
USA TODAY – According to Match's 11th annual Singles in America study, a survey of ~5K individuals in the U.S., singles are focused on intentional dating instead of casual relationships. Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and chief science advisor at Match, said that it's a "historic time" for a "dating reset." "(Singles) really want emotional maturity," Fisher said. 11% of singles say they "want to date casually," compared to 62% who said that they "seek more meaningful, committed relationships." Meanwhile, 65% said they want a relationship within the next year.
Podcast: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
WID – In celebration of Global Diversity Awareness month, Women In Dating sponsored a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion podcast featuring Dayo Akinrinade (Africlick), Ana Kirova (Feeld) and Alexis Luerssen (Match) to discuss the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion within, and how their companies are offering equal opportunities to everyone.
Match Releases Vaccination Data on the U.S. Single Population
PR NEWSWIRE – Match has released initial findings from two key themes of its forthcoming 11th annual Singles in America study. The data reveals that vaccination status has become of paramount importance to a vast majority of singles today, with 58% reporting it's the most important issue when it comes to dating a potential partner, more so even than traditional deal breakers like political affiliation (53%) or religion (43%). 73% of singles report they are vaccinated (compared to 64% of the general U.S. population) and 2 in 3 singles say they want their dating partners to be vaxxed.
Meet the Former Match.com Director Turned Old-School Setup Evangelist
VANITY FAIR – Aug 20 – On her podcast, Paired by the People, Lakshmi Rengarajan reframes the setup as the more intentional analogue to dating apps. Having released six episodes since its inception in September, Paired is like a social-experiment capsule collection where Rengarajan takes her seven years of experience in the dating industry to set people up. Lakshmi was Match.com's director of event design for two years, and then worked on Match, ourtime.com, blackpeoplemeet.com, and helped launch the app BLK. She had always been interested very specifically in the art of the setup. Not matchmaking. "The matchmaking industry is a whole other beast and actually quite predatory. I was very interested in people who set people up without any kind of monetary incentive," she says. Each episode of Paired starts by introducing the listener to an existing couple, and they're the ones who go through candidate profiles and discuss who to set up.
Match Repositions to Focus on Adults – Unveils New Brand Platform ‘Adults Date Better’
Match Beta Test Targets Dating App Complaints
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 10 – Today Match introduces features addressing user complaints like how much time it takes to find a relevant match and ghosting. An anti-ghosting feature will push users to either continue a conversation or unmatch the recipient instead of leaving them hanging.
"Matched by Us," is a new recommendation system that presents one, free match a week. Users see each other and don't wait for a "like" back to engage in a conversation. Match has been internally testing adding human curation to suggestions, an actual match-making service. "Right now, human curation is one area that we're really excited about and want to crack," CPO Dushyant Saraph said. The new features are rolling out to Match's U.S. userbase in beta, as the company kicks off a new brand campaign targeting adult daters.
Match Group have 15m paying customers across its brands, up from 13m YOY. Quarterly revenue was $708m, with net income of $141m. Match Group plans to add audio and video chat, including live video, to its dating brand portfolio. Match's dating app is among those that will benefit from Hyperconnect integrations as Match explores "building out live experiences."
by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch
Mark Brooks: Putting the people back into personals. The future of dating apps is 'live'. Match experimented with matchmakers under CEO Jim Safka, bought a 20% stake in Chinese hybrid matchmaking service Zhenai in 2011, and flirted with Three Day Rule in 2014. eHarmony also experimented with a brand extension into live high-end matchmaking in 2013.
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