OPW – Jan 7 – Online dating peak season, Facebook Dating survey, Match Group spin-off.
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FORTUNE – Dec 19 – Shares of IAC finished the day up 7%, trading at $237.54. Match Group shares also spiked 7%, closing at $76.76. IAC owns an 80.4% stake in Match, according to a June regulatory filing. Ivan Feinseth, chief investment officer and director of research at Tigress Financial Partners, says Match had simply outgrown the relationship.
PR NEWSWIRE – Dec 19 – IAC and Match Group have entered into a definitive agreement providing for the full separation of Match Group from the remaining businesses of IAC. The agreement has been approved by the Board of Directors of each of IAC and Match Group. The transaction is expected to close in the Q2 of 2020 and it will give IAC shareholders direct ownership of Match Group.
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK – Dec 5 – Levin was a junior investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston when Barry Diller brought him over to IAC/Interactive Corp. in 2003; 12 years later, he succeeded him as CEO. IAC is spinning off the Match Group so the market can more easily value smaller IAC businesses, such as video platform Vimeo. In July, Levin invested $250M in Turo, which lets people rent out their cars when they're not driving them.
Q: What's the secret to competing with Big Tech, as you do with Facebook in dating?
A: They'll always have distribution and cost advantages. We can have a better product. We've got a group of people who eat, breathe, sleep, and live dating. Their product is free. Some of our products are not free. That's a signal of a commitment.
Q: Why spin off businesses like Match Group? Why not become an Internet conglomerate?
A: We're not empire builders. If we're going to keep building new businesses, we've got to focus. Eliminating the thing that starts to make life easy and focusing on the hard things is how you build them up.
Q: What's the one thing you learned from Diller that continues to shape IAC?
A: Thinking bigger. "Why aim for $20M in revenue? Why not $200M? Why not $2B?"
MASHABLE – Dec 3 – Hinge, which at one point called itself "the relationship app," is one of the many apps now owned by the Match Group but still strives to set itself apart. Its founder, Justin McLeod, set out to make an app less shallow than Tinder – but with a younger demographic than eHarmony and Match. Hinge ditched swiping in 2016 and charged seven dollars for the app to weed out non-serious users. By 2017, the mandated membership fee was gone, but they did not go back to the swipe model. After being acquired by Match Group, Hinge went through another rebrand that included a design makeover and a new tag line, "Designed to be deleted." Hinge has been fine-tuning their algorithm and figuring out what leads to better matches. Using data to help users get into relationships is partially the inspiration behind Hinge Lab, the app's new data department. Hinge Lab is like personal trainers at the gym.
by Hillary Flynn, Keith Cousins & Elizabeth Naismith Picciani
See full article at ProPublica
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USA TODAY – Nov 21 – Swiping to find a date came into the cultural lexicon when Tinder launched in 2012 and revolutionized the online dating scene. "It's a game, it's fire and it's fun," said online dating consultant Mark Brooks about Tinder. Brooks said the app can skew toward audiences looking for a "casual" encounter, whereas other apps, like Hinge, tend to build more "meaningful" relationships. "Since Match Group bought Hinge, they positioned Hinge as 'long-term' and Tinder as 'casual'," Brooks says. "I always regret going on a date from Tinder," said 28-year-old Justyna Kedra, a frequent user of Hinge, Bumble and, sometimes, Tinder. "I feel that people are very transactional. There's no depth." Hinge's approach tends to focus more on getting to know someone based on their politics and religion. According to Hinge's global head of communications Jean-Marie McGrath, 99% of the app's users are college-educated. The app gained recognition when 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg publicly said that he met his partner on Hinge.
by Coral Murphy
See full article at USA Today
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FORBES INDIA – Nov 18 – Barry Diller, the former Hollywood mogul has ground his way to a $4.2B technology fortune. At IAC he has built and spun off ten publicly traded companies, including Ticketmaster, travel giant Expedia and Match Group, Tinder's parent company, worth a combined $70B. "Spinning off Match is a process of renewal in that IAC gets to start inventing again. We are shrinking in order to grow again… shrinking with $5B of cash," he says. Former Diller lieutenant Dara Khosrowshahi, now the CEO of Uber Technologies, says, "Barry's like a shark. If he stops swimming, he dies. So he just keeps going." Diller's current hand looks challenging. Match shares were falling after Facebook said it would redouble its online dating efforts. There are also lawsuits. The co-founders of Tinder, Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, claim they were deprived of billions when the app was consolidated by Match. Diller responds sharply: "Sean Rad is a blowhard and a bad actor." Facebook, Diller adds, has yet to register as a threat to Match. "I'm not overly worried," he quips, then brings up the possibility of regulation. "I think that there are real issues," he says, turning his attention to Google. "It's okay to take our money as advertisers. It's not fine, in my opinion, to then try and get our customers."
OPW – Nov 12 – Match Results, Magic Lab Acquisition, The Meet Group, Facebook & Tinder whitelisting.
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