Category: Outlets – BBC
Whitney Wolfe Herd: Championing Female Empowerment in the Tech and Dating Industries
by Imran Rahman-Jones & Shiona McCallum
See full article at BBC
China Addresses Declining Marriage and Birth Rates With Government Measures
Traditional Matchmaking Thrives: Willie Daly’s Legacy in Ireland’s Lisdoonvarna Festival
BBC – The Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival in Ireland has been connecting singles for 170 years, making it Europe's largest singles festival. It takes place each September and attracts a mixture of people. Willie Daly, a third-generation matchmaker, has been instrumental in maintaining this tradition. Throughout his 60-year career, he claims to have matched over 3K couples, focusing on the importance of love in life. Attendees of the festival not only find romantic connections but also form friendships, with many returning annually.
Coffee Meets Bagel App Faces Extended Outage
BBC – Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB), a dating app boasting ~10M sign-ups globally, experienced a multi-day system outage starting on 27 August, frustrating many users. Some users missed planned dates, with one individual resorting to LinkedIn to reconnect. There's online speculation about the cause, ranging from a ransomware attack to potential data breaches. Amidst the company's assurances of working on the issue, users have criticized the lack of detailed information regarding the outage.
Muzz Loses Appeal Against Match Group
BBC.COM – The Court of Appeal upheld a June 2022 ruling that the average consumer would have thought Muzmatch – now Muzz – was part of Match Group, which also owns Tinder. Muzz has criticised the ruling, calling the legal action "deeply worrying for other start-ups in the dating sector". Muzz launched in the UK in 2015 as Muzmatch, a dating app specifically for Muslims. Match Group has attempted to purchase the business on four separate occasions, including making an offer of £28M ($35M), which was turned down.
Egyptian Police Hunt LGBT People on Dating Apps
BBC – In Egypt, homosexuality is highly stigmatized, and there have long been allegations that police are hunting LGBT people online. There is no explicit law against homosexuality in Egypt, but BBC investigation has found that the crime of "debauchery" – a sex work law – is used to criminalize the LGBT community. It is extremely difficult for LGBT people to openly meet potential dates in public in Egypt, so dating apps are a popular way to do that. But just using the apps can be grounds for arrest based on the incitement of debauchery or public morality laws in Egypt.
The Five Biggest Lessons of the Year
BBC – In 2022, more folks openly moved away from both gender and attraction binaries. Online daters got increasingly vocal about exploring different types of relationships, from solo polyamory to platonic life partnerships. Gen Z has particularly embraced the grey area of dating by purposefully entering into 'situationships'. Overall, openness towards many kinds of non-traditional relationships has gained visibility, too. Ethical non-monogamy has been all over TikTok, often in the form of polyamorous relationships. For single people, navigating dating apps has still been hard. It's undeniable that dating apps have become the primary way for younger daters to meet, with thousands of online dating sites in existence and 48% of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US using them.
Why Single People Smell Different
BBC – There is a wealth of psychological and biological information stored in our scent, but for some reason we choose to ignore it. Body odour can reveal details about our health, and the presence of diseases (cholera smells sweet, acute diabetes like rotten apples). We might have a preference for certain smells, and there might be a genetic reason for that, but we don't act upon smells when choosing who we marry. Couples who had high HLA-dissimilarity had the highest levels of sexual satisfaction and the highest levels of desire to have children. The link between BO preference and genes spurred a fashion for T-shirt speed-dating and even "mail odour" services. But it would appear we do not make choices based on BO preference.
Tinder: Women’s Safety Now at the Heart of the App
BBC – Tinder is launching a partnership with campaign group No More, aiming to end domestic violence. "Our safety work is never done," says Tinder's CEO. But charity End Violence Against Women says it is only a "small step" in addressing the disproportionate amount of abuse women experienced online. Ms Nyborg says one of the ways she is addressing those concerns is hiring more women. "There is a difference between knowing something is important and feeling it," she says. Tinder's partnership with No More will educate Tinder members and also the staff.