Category: Match Group

Tinder Vs. Bumble

Posted on August 3, 2018

Tinder vs bumbleDMAGAZINE – Aug 1 – Tinder and Bumble filed dueling lawsuits recently accusing each other of being copycats, among many other things. Tinder claims the fight is just business. But for Whitney Wolfe-Herd, the founder and CEO of Bumble, it's a story of deceit, betrayal, mad lust, and more generally the plight of women in business as victims of aggressive male domination. The similarities are what Match Group and Tinder are complaining about in the patent and trademark infringement suit filed by Match Group on March 16, 2018. Match Group has a 2014 registered trademark on the word "swipe" as used in "software for social introduction and dating services," as well as a utility patent for a "method for profile matching," and a design patent covering a flashcard-type graphical user interface for mobile devices. On March 28, 2018 – only 12 days after Match Group filed its suit – Bumble filed a separate lawsuit against Match Group with allegations that make the dispute sound personal. Bumble alleges that Match Group tried to buy Bumble for $450M in June 2017, which Bumble rejected as "unappealing." When Wolfe-Herd graced the cover of Forbes' "30 Under 30" issue in Dec 2017, Forbes said Match Group had made another proposal that fall which valued Bumble at $1B – again rejected. In its lawsuit, Bumble alleges that Match Group was asking Bumble to reveal its most valuable secrets so that Match Group could make another, higher, offer. Immediately after Bumble shared those secrets, Match Group filed its infringement lawsuit. Bumble's current pleading goes on to argue that Match Group is the real copycat: After Bumble launched its "Bumble Boost" feature in 2016, Tinder copied that with "Tinder Gold" in 2017. Then in February 2018, Match announced that Tinder will let female users choose whether only they can initiate conversations with future matches.

by Steve Thomas
See full article a DMagazine

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New Dating App Crown Uses NCAA-style Bracket To Crown A Winner

Posted on July 30, 2018

Crown winnerCHICAGO TRIBUNE – July 27 – Crown is a new project from Match Group. Every day at noon, users receive 16 different profiles, chosen by an algorithm. Users crown a winner by choosing between two people at a time, narrowing the 16 choices to four. But the possibility of romance can only begin if one of the quartet of matches also "crowns" the user. The app, still in beta, is available for iOS only and in selected cities (Crown launched in LA in June). More specifically, the format of Crown may convince users they have choices, but actually force them to choose between two profiles they are not interested in, Chicago dating and relationship expert Anita A. Chlipala says. With limited space for a bio, Crown is based mostly on profile photos. Also, the app only allows users to match with either male- or female-identifying profiles, unlike Tinder and Bumble which has a "male and female" option.

by Savannah Eadens
See full article at Chicago Tribune

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Is Match Becoming Un-Hinged With Its Latest Acquisition?

Posted on July 26, 2018

Match Group Hinge LogosTHE MOTLEY FOOL – July 24 – The latest service to join Match is Hinge, a site that once billed itself as the "anti-Tinder" because it focuses on relationships instead of hookups. The purchase leaves Bumble as the only major dating app not owned by Match, and the two are currently suing each other. Match has acquired dozens of services over the past nine years and in the past three years spent $610M acquiring different brands, about equal to its cumulative operating earnings for the same period. While none of the deals have seemed to have gone like a bad date, the rise in Match's cost of revenues has outpaced its revenue increases due to acquisitions like POF and Pairs. Last year, revenue from North America, which contributes 56% of Match's total, grew 9% as a result of more people signing up for Tinder. Yet North America ARPU was flat. The deal for Hinge gives Match a 51% stake with the right to purchase the rest of Hinge within the next year. Though Hinge doesn't disclose the number of users it has, undoubtedly individuals using dating apps have accounts at multiple sites, so Match is paying for members it likely already owns. Match's total subscribers hit 7.43M in the Q1, up 26% YOY, and some of them have to be Hinge members, too. Making another acquisition might put another dating app into Match's diverse collection, but it doesn't really do anything to bolster what is making money for it, namely Tinder.

by Rich Duprey
See full article at The Motley Fool

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“Me Too” Founder Is Joining Match Group’s New Sexual Assault Advisory Board

Posted on July 23, 2018

Match group tarana burkeFAST COMPANY – July 20 – Back in 2011, Match.com settled a lawsuit with a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a member of the site. While Match posts safety tips for online dating, critics say dating services can do more to keep their users safe. Now, Match Group is forming a new board with a mission of preventing sexual assault. They have conscripted six members, including Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement and serves as the senior director of Girls for Gender Equity. The council, which will convene four times a year, will advise Match Group on how to improve safety on its platforms.

by Melissa Locker
See full article at Fast Company

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Match Group CEO: Facebook Is No Threat To Us

Posted on July 20, 2018

Match group mandy ginsberg july 18FORTUNE – July 19 – Mandy Ginsberg has had an interesting first year as CEO of Match Group. She recalled the moment she learned that Facebook had entered the dating arena. She had just finished preparing remarks for an earnings call, when her phone began blowing up with the news. "The stock started dropping a dollar a minute," she recalled. "I just threw all my prepared remarks away and started over." Ginsberg feels confident that the mostly young love-seekers don't want to be dating on the same platform where their parents hang out.

by Ellen McGirt
See full article at Fortune

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Match CEO: “People Don’t Want Facebook Meddling In Their Dating Lives”

Posted on July 17, 2018

Match Group Mandy-GinsbergRECODE – July 16 – Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg is not too worried about the impact of Facebook on her business. Although she acknowledged it would be foolish to write them off as a competitor, Match's data shows that its users already employ multiple dating apps. "Tinder's our big growth engine, and Tinder tends to skew very young, so 18 to 25. Facebook does not skew that young in general. If you're a 23-year-old and you're going to be using two or three apps, definitively, we think you're going to use one of our apps, most likely Tinder," she said. 5% of Match's revenue comes from advertising, a stark contrast to Facebook's 98.5%. She pointed out that that might assuage some consumers' concerns about privacy.

by Eric Johnson
See full article at Recode

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IAC CEO Joey Levin: We Bought Hinge To Disrupt Ourselves

Posted on July 16, 2018

Iac joey levin linkedinCHEDDAR – July 13 – At first glance, Match Group's acquisition of dating app Hinge, known as the "anti-Tinder," doesn't seem to make much sense. But for parent company IAC, the more competition – even internally – the better. "We have always disrupted ourselves, and we like to disrupt ourselves," explained Joey Levin, CEO of IAC. "So when we see something that says it's the anti-something-we're-doing, if it's a good business, it's a good management team, it's a good story, it's a good product, that's something we're interested in doing. We like competing with ourselves."

by Conor White
See full article at Cheddar

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Hinge Releases “Most Compatible” Feature

Posted on July 16, 2018

Hinge most compatibleYAHOO LIFESTYLE – July 11 – This new feature recommends one highly compatible match every day. The app selects the matches based on algorithms that suss out users previous actions on the app and their interests. Hinge's latest feature comes on the heels of Match Group's purchase of a 51% controlling stake in the app in June. It also comes over a year after the company moved away from swiping.

by JP Mangalindan
See full article at Yahoo Lifestyle

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Match Group Update: Tinder Gold Is Getting Even Shinier

Posted on July 10, 2018

Match group logo jan 2017SEEKING ALPHA – July 10 – June has been a busy month for Match Group. The company announced that it had acquired a controlling stake in Hinge, and also introduced several new features for Tinder, with several more currently in the works. Tinder Picks is a new feature available exclusively for Tinder Gold subscribers. Picks, which mimics rival app Coffee Meets Bagel, presents users with four profiles daily based on factors such as education, interests, and swipe history. Loops feature, which it had previously tested in Canada and Sweden, allows users to post two-second, looping videos to their profiles in lieu of a static photograph. The company is testing a "Places" feature, which allows users to see potential matches who frequent similar bars, shops, and other locations. In Q1 '18, Tinder added 368K subscribers and delivered its best average revenue per user (ARPU) growth in two years. According to Match CFO Gary Swindler, Tinder's ARPU in Q1 grew 37% year-over-year. The company's ARPU as a whole reached $0.58 in Q1 – well above the $0.53 that it achieved in 2017. With such fantastic economics and a sticky user base, Match Group is significantly undervalued as a company. Yet, shares remain depressed amid negative sentiment surrounding Facebook's entry into online dating.

by Mike Berner
See full article at Seeking Alpha

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Can Match Fend Off Facebook And Bumble?

Posted on June 29, 2018

Match group website screenshot 2018FORTUNE – June 27 – Globally, there are 600M singles online – a number that's expected to jump to 700M by 2020 – yet the industry's biggest player by far, Match Group, is estimated to claim just 10% of that. If Match Group wants to stay No. 1, it will need to defend its turf. Those who know Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg say she is likely to be up to the task. She knows the industry inside and out, and she takes Match's mission almost as a personal responsibility. The company's biggest competitors include eHarmony, Spark Networks, Badoo and Bumble. Bumble claims 34M total registered users. Of its active users, roughly 10% are paid; last year the company is said to have pulled in $100M in subscription revenue. It has a Goliath-size backer: Wolfe Herd created Bumble with the help of Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo. Andreev owns 79%, Wolfe Herd 20% (the remaining 1% is split between two additional employees). For a few years, Tinder and Bumble coexisted but things recently turned testy. In March, Match filed its suit against Bumble, accusing it of patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. Four days later, Bumble fired back with an angry letter. A few days after that, it filed its own suit against Match, claiming Match had fraudulently obtained sensitive information during acquisition talks. But both companies were hit with a much bigger tsunami of news on May 8, when Zuckerberg made his announcement. Match Group is working on new female-friendly features, like a Gentleman's Badge, a designation recently added into its European Meetic brand that men earn through certain behaviors, such as filling out an entire profile or engaging in lengthy email correspondence; men with the badge get 33% more attention from women.

by Leigh Gallagher
The full article was originally published at Fortune Magazine, but is no longer available.

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