INUTH – Aug 13 – A survey of 86K Indians aged 25-35 by OkCupid, has found that 68% of Indians think marriage is not a necessity in a serious relationship. Also, ~90% of them said they would consider having a serious relationship with someone who couldn't have children.
Category: OkCupid
OkCupid’s First TV Campaign in India
AFAQS! – Aug 8 – In its first ever TVC, OkCupid focuses on authentic relationships. The ad celebrates singles who aren't letting anyone else decide for them – not parents, not society, not even their own inhibitions.
by Aishwarya Ramesh & Abid Hussain Barlaskar
See full article at afaqs!
Match Group’s CEO on Innovating in a Fast-Changing Industry
HBR.ORG – Aug 5 – The speed of change is one of the things I love about this industry. Companies need to innovate constantly – with technology, pricing, product features, and business models – to stay ahead of competitors and continue to grow. I ran Chemistry.com from 2006 to 2008. It was my first general management job, and I loved building the team. We grew the site quickly. As Chemistry.com expanded, the company's flagship Match.com seemed to be plateauing. So in 2008 management asked me to move over to Match.com and try to reenergize that brand. Two important shifts were under way that hurt Match.com. First, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish, had pioneered a new ad-supported business model. The second shift involved algorithms. By 2008 companies were getting more sophisticated about analyzing and understanding users' preferences and behavior. In 2009 Match made its first big acquisition, in the form of a company called People Media, that had a variety of smaller sites aimed at specific demographics. Facebook and Twitter were bringing more people onto social media, which sparked more interest in online dating, especially from older people. The biggest technology shift came after 2008. That's when Apple introduced the App Store. Within a few years that completely changed the face of our industry – a change sparked largely by Tinder. Last year Tinder's revenue topped $800M, demonstrating that many people are willing to pay for features. Right now we're working on several new strategies that we expect will drive our next phase of growth.
by Mandy Ginsberg
See full article at Harvard Business Review
Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger
NEW YORK TIMES – July 17 – Dozens of databases of people's faces are being compiled without their knowledge by companies and researchers, with many of the images then being shared around the world. The databases are pulled together with images from social networks, photo websites, dating sites and cameras placed in restaurants and on college quads. While there is no precise count of the data sets, privacy activists have pinpointed repositories that were built by Microsoft, Stanford University and others, with one holding ~10M images. Facebook and Google have most likely amassed the largest face data sets, which they do not distribute, according to research papers. But other companies and universities have widely shared their image troves with researchers, governments and private enterprises. Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, the A.I. start-up, said his company had built a face database with images from OkCupid. He said Clarifai had access to OkCupid's photos because some of the dating site's founders invested in his company. An OkCupid spokeswoman said Clarifai contacted the company in 2014 "about collaborating to determine if they could build unbiased A.I. and facial recognition technology" and that the dating site "did not enter into any commercial agreement then and have no relationship with them now." She did not address whether Clarifai had gained access to OkCupid's photos without its consent.
Nabil Ghaly Is the Engineer Who Says OKCupid Ripped Off His Patent
HEAVY.COM – June 24 – Nabil Ghaly is an engineer, an inventor, and a business owner. He is also the plaintiff in a case which charges that Humor Rainbow, the parent company of OkCupid, illegally used technology that he had patented over 15 years ago. Ghaly says that he sent repeated letters to Humor Rainbow to alert them to the fact that he had already patented the technology. He asked them to sign a licensing agreement but, he says, they declined. That's when Ghaly decided to bring the matter to court. Ghaly's patent infringement case opened on June 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ghaly filed for a patent for a hand-held matchmaking device in 1999. His system would ask participants multiple choice questions in order to create a profile. The device would store that information and then use it to determine whether participants were compatible with each other. Ghaly charges that back in 1999, this was a brand new idea and that he deserves credit for his prescience. His complaint charges that OkCupid didn't file for a patent for a mobile dating app until 2013 (that patent was granted in 2017). It's not clear whether Ghaly also intends to go after other dating apps for patent violation. Humor Rainbow settled a previous patent violation lawsuit from the parent company of JDate. The patent describes a computerized system for deciding whether two people are interested in each other. Under the system, the two people are notified if they are mutually interested in each other.
Dating App Once Tells Users How Hot They Are
by Hannah Frishberg
See full article at NY Post
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This Pride Month, Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid Are Swiping Right on Inclusion
by Sutrishna Ghosh
See full article at Your Story
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In India, the Online Dating User Base Triples in 2018
LIVEMINT – June 11 – Dating companies believe that the growing demand for online dating in India is driven by its female population. Executives overseeing dating apps peg the dating app market to be valued at $100M in the next five to eight years. A Google report released this May said dating searches are catching up with matrimony queries, with a 40% increase over the past year. TrulyMadly has 5M users in India and is recording 300K-500K messages exchanged and 15K mutual matches per day. But women only comprise 20% of the profiles at best. "Since customizing the product for India in Sep 2018, we have witnessed an overwhelming response with active female users on the app tripling," said Melissa Hobley, CMO of OkCupid, an app that has ~1M users in India.
People Want Gay Marriage to Be Legal in India: Study
Can We Trust the Match Group Cartel With Our Dating Data?
