OkCupid – Page 25 – Online Personals Watch

This Is The Busiest Time Of Year For Online Dating

Posted on January 6, 2016

MARKETWATCH – Jan 5 – Dating app Zoosk expects a 20% jump in users in the first two weeks of the year and eHarmony had a 21% increase in mobile registrations since the holidays. Grindr usually experiences a 30% to 50% increase in users. Match.com expects a 60% surge in new members between Christmas Day and Valentine's Day. Sign-ups on OkCupid, were up 30% this past Sunday. Many singles sit around the family dinner table during the holidays and think, "Maybe it would be better to have a partner," says Mark Brooks, a dating-industry analyst and the editor of Online Personals Watch. "That's when they start hitting dating sites in droves and go on dates before the indigestion sets in." It may also be more polite to arrange dates in the New Year rather than during the holidays, especially with family around. "They're going to be around for you long after your relationships," he says. "The trick with holiday dating is to make sure no one feels neglected."

by Quentin Fottrell
See full article at Marketwatch

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Q&A With Sam Yagan

Posted on November 23, 2015

SUNTIMES – Nov 21 - Sam Yagan is the CEO of Match Group. The 38-year-old start-up ace, the son of Syrian immigrants, spoke openly about the crisis involving his parents' homeland. Born in Chicago, raised in Bourbonnais, the married father of three attended the Illinois Math & Science Academy, Harvard and Stanford Graduate School.

Q: Talk about your family’s history.
A: My parents were born in Syria and immigrated to the US. My dad came to pursue his education in the late '60s. He later went back home, got married, brought my mom in '75.

Q: What was your trajectory into tech start-ups?
A: I founded SparkNotes in 1999 with my two best friends from Harvard. Then, I started eDonkey, a media technology company, in 2002. I went to Stanford, then founded OkCupid in 2003. I co-founded Techstars Chicago. Each year, we take 10 start-ups, mentor them, help them grow. Now in our sixth year, our companies have raised ~$100M. In 2011, we sold OkCupid to Match Group.

Q: Your family is clearly an example of a successful immigrant story. What are your thoughts about calls for the U.S. to shut its borders to Syrian war refugees after the attacks in Paris?
A: I'm disappointed. We are a nation of immigrants.

Q: The civil war has gone on for more than four years in Syria. Have you had family affected?
A: I have cousins and other family members who have been displaced by the war. Thankfully, no one has been killed or injured. My parents are still thinking they're going to go back. My dream is just for peace.

by Maudlyne Ihejirika
See full article at Chicago Sun Times

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Match Group Files For IPO

Posted on October 17, 2015

WSJ – Oct 16 – Match Group, owner of Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com has filed to go public on Friday. Their shares would be listed on Nasdaq under the symbol MTCH. The preliminary filing indicated Match would raise up to $100 million. Match Group's parent company IAC will retain over 50% of voting rights after the IPO.

The company logged $888.3 million in revenue in 2014, up about 11% from the previous year, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Match's net income for 2014 was $148.4 million, up 18% year over year. All Match's dating properties have more than 59M MAU and approximately 4.7M paid members.

by Georgia Wells & Maria Armental
See full article at WSJ

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Facebook Suggests Users Friend Dating Site Matches

Posted on October 12, 2015

MOTHERBOARD – Oct 12 -The issue has been coming up with alarming frequency for users of Tinder and OkCupid in recent months. Emilio Ferrara, a data science and machine learning professor at Indiana University who studies social networks said the most obvious answer would be that these apps are collecting and sharing your information. Tinder and OkCupid both denied they share user info. Brian Hamachek, a software engineer who has reversed engineered Tinder's API and is very familiar with Facebook's API said there is no reason to believe those two sites are comparing your data. He believes the Tinder and Facebook overlap is most likely a side effect of similar algorithms working to connect people.

by Kari Paul
See full article at Motherboard

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Dating Apps: Tech Doesn’t Matter, Says Sex Columnist

Posted on October 10, 2015

NYMAG – Oct 6 – Users choose dating apps the same way they choose bars – based on the people. The make-or-break factor in whether users stick around, is the crowd. With new apps getting launched every few months, the dating app people will like best is the one that happens to have a user base that fits the demographic of people they want.

Here's a breakdown of some of the dating apps Maureen O'Connor, a sex columnist, have experimented with:

Tinder: Single people who hang out at bars.
OKCupid: Single people who hang out at coffee shops.
Match: Squares.
JDate: Jewish squares.
eHarmony: Christian squares.
Ashley Madison: Horny married guys.
Blendr: Horny single guys.
Happn: People with nice jeans who live near your subway stop.
Coffee Meets Bagel: Risk-averse nice guys.
The League: Hedge funds and Hamptons.

Dating apps, like all social situations, are malleable. They're whatever people want them to be.

by Maureen O'Connor
See full article at NYMag

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A Computer Could Learn When To Swipe Right On Tinder

Posted on September 16, 2015

ITWORLD – Sep 15 – A Canadian researcher, Harm de Vries took 10K photos from Tinder and gave the computer his opinion on 8K of them. The computer tried to determine his likes or dislikes for the remaining images but managed only a 55% success rate. He decided the computer needed more images to choose from, so he pulled ~500K photos from OkCupid. With a greater number of images to work with, the computer achieved a 68% success rate. "It's a pretty good start," he said, "but I think it can be improved a lot."

by Martyn Williams
See full article at ITWorld

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Most Dating Sites Have Bad Password Practices

Posted on September 10, 2015

FORBES – Sep 10 – An analysis of the security practices of 24 leading online dating sites has concluded that only seven use secure-enough password practices. Password management company Dashlane assessed each site on 19 different criteria, including the minimum length for a password to be acceptable, and whether there was a requirement for a mix of letters and numbers. Only Zoosk and OkCupid score ~50%. Most mainstream Internet services generally get 75 or above; Apple scores 100%. eHarmony scores 38, while Match.com, Gleeden and Adult Friend Finder all get 30%. At the bottom end of the scale, Badoo and POF with 22.

by Emma Woollacott
See full article at Forbes

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OkCupid Launches New, Gender-Inclusive ‘Identity’ Project

Posted on July 2, 2015

ADVOCATE – June 29 - OkCupid launched a new website called Identity, a project that seeks to expand the conversation about sexual orientations and gender identities. The new site allows anyone, whether a regular OkCupid user or not, to share and contribute their own gender identity stories through a simple questionnaire. Identity also acts as a one-stop resource for various definitions of different sexual identities to be viewed. Currently, definitions of 13 gender identities, including transgender, cisgender, agender, androgynous, etc., and 22 orientations — gay, lesbian, bisexual, demisexual, etc. — are available on the site.

by Raffy Ermac
See full article at Advocate

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Match Group Could Fetch ~$1.2B From Its IPO

Posted on June 28, 2015

BLOOMBERG – June 26 – IAC’s Match Group plans to to sell ~20% of its common stock this year. The sale could fetch $600M to $1.2B if 10% – 20% of the business is sold to the public, according to Cowen and Co., valuing the division at $6B or more. IAC bought Match.com in 2003. Meetic joined in 2009 along with People Media. In 2011, IAC spent $50M for OKCupid. In 2012 came Tinder which "gamified" the online dating process. "There’s a lot of people that just weren’t prepared to get onto Internet dating," says Mark Brooks, a dating-website analyst and consultant at Courtland Brooks. "Tinder warmed people up to the psychology that it’s not a dating site. Everybody is on it; it’s fun. That’s really the thrill ride here." But free and fun dating apps can be volatile, while cannibalizing customers from such paid services as Match.com, Brooks says. Last year, as the popularity of free-to-use Tinder grew, paid subscriptions at Match fell by ~100K in the Q4, compared with Q3. Now IAC is trying to make money out of Tinder.

by Alex Barinka
See full article at Bloomberg

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Match Group To IPO This Year

Posted on June 25, 2015

PR NEWSWIRE – June 25 – IAC's Board of Directors has approved the pursuit of an IPO of Match Group. Joey Levin, formerly CEO of its Search & Apps business, has been named CEO of IAC and joined its Board of Directors. Greg Blatt will remain Chairman, and Sam Yagan CEO of The Match Group. IAC expects The Match Group to issue less than 20% of its common stock in the IPO, with IAC's remaining stake in The Match Group represented by both high- and low-vote common shares. The IPO is expected to be completed during Q4 of this year.

See full article at IAC website

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