BUSINESS WEEK – July 7 – Investors have been hoping Tinder’s success could lead IAC to spin off its online dating businesses into a separate company. It would make IAC shares more valuable. “Given what’s going on at Tinder, I would assume IAC and Match would think a little bit harder about pursuing that at this juncture,” said Scott Kessler, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ. The question now is whether Tinder will drag down the name of IAC’s dating operations.
Category: Outlets – BusinesWeek
Match.com’s Updated Mobile App Was Inspired By Tinder
BUSINESSWEEK – May 13 – Borrowing from Tinder’s swipe feature, Match redesigned its mobile app with a similar feature called Mixer. Winning on mobile is critical for Match. Over half of its traffic comes from mobile.
by Serena Saitto and Alex Barinka
The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.
“The Dating Ring” Brings A Plane Full Of NYC Brides To SF
BUSINESSWEEK – Mar 7 – On Memorial Day weekend, a plane will land in SF filled with single New York City women who are looking to find love. A startup called The Dating Ring is aiming to raise $50K to solve what it sees as a demographic dilemma: “There are tons more single women in NYC, and tons more single men in SF,” reads the company’s campaign on crowdfunding site, Crowdtilt. For $20, NYC women could win a free flight to SF. Donations of $1,250 guarantee the full package: a flight to SF, housing for four nights, three dates, two parties, and three private 30-minute matchmaking and date-coaching sessions via Skype. Bay Area bachelors can pay $20 to attend the party, or $100 for a ticket to the more refined cocktail party.
by Caroline Winter
The full article was originally published at BusinessWeek, but is no longer available.
Dating Sites Start Wooing Couples
BUSINESSWEEK – Feb 13 – The paradox of online-dating industry: Success and customer retention are incompatible. So HowAboutWe started HowAboutWe for Couples, that suggests activities for couples. IAC has also been looking for a solution to “lifecycle management” for some time. “A lot of people think we should start a wedding business,’” says Sam Yagan, CEO of IAC’s Match Group. “The problem is that users leave Match after they find someone, and it’s years before they get married. We lose our right to communicate with them.” Match.com launched couples website, Delightful, in October, with a companion app released last month. Delightful is built around access to date planners. It has hired people with experience as tour guides, restaurateurs, and hotel concierges and helps secure last-minute reservations for its members, who pay $12 a month.
by Joshua Brustein
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Tinder Is Dipping A Toe Into Advertising
BUSINESS WEEK – Jan 3 – Today, Tinder’s users are finding fake profiles for The Mindy Project actors Mindy Kaling and Chriss Messina and appeals to watch the Fox sitcom. The ad campaign follows a similar July tie-in with the USA Network (CMSCA) program Suits, which didn’t bring Tinder any revenue.
Dating App Tinder Catches Fire
BUSINESSWEEK – Sep 5 – Tinder is a pathologically addictive flirting-dating-hookup app. The average Tinderer checks the app 11 times per day, seven minutes at a time. The app was born in a startup lab controlled by IAC. The app had a crisp design and the irresistible swipe-to-rate gesture. “Services like Tinder and OkCupid acclimate new groups of people to meeting online,” said CEO Gregory Blatt. Tinder may one day draw revenue of its own, but for now it’s essentially a gateway drug to Match.com.
Match.com Is Crunching The Data Of Love
BUSINESSWEEK – Apr 29 – Match.com's secret: Watch what users do, not just what they say. Amarnath Thombre is Match.com's VP of strategy and the keeper of the site's matching algorithm. He works with 12 mathematicians and analysts, including a chief statistician. Netflix, Amazon, and lots of other Internet companies use mathematics to recommend products based on user behavior. The big difference with Match.com: its subscribers are in a rush to find a paramour. "I could make pretty accurate predictions about a woman who has been on the site for five years," Thombre says. "It's a lot harder when she's on the site for five days." When people first sign up on Match.com they fill out a questionnaire. That's where Thombre's biggest challenge arises: Bad data. Users exaggerate their IQs and lowball their waistlines. Match.com has found that 49% of men who insist on a woman who wants children actually chase prospective mates who don't particularly care. "They will say, 'I'm only interested in guys between the ages of 18 and 30,'" Thombre sighs. "The next thing you know they are e-mailing a 38-year-old." Thombre's algorithmic remedy: pay more attention to the choices users make on their site than what they say they want.
Divorces Rise As Taboo Falls In India
BUSINESS WEEK – Apr 14 – Just a decade ago, divorce was a dirty word in socially conservative India. But as the economy has boomed, the rigid boundaries governing traditional Indian life are beginning to fall, especially among the growing urban middle class. Dating among twentysomethings is growing popular, love matches (as opposed to arranged marriages) don't provoke the family scandals they once did and divorce is no longer out of bounds. The country maintains no statistics on divorce. In the 1980s, New Delhi had two courts that dealt with divorce. Today there are 16. A new Indian matchmaking website Secondshaadi.com, or second marriage, now targets divorcees and widowers. "Women, especially now, have little tolerance for bad marriages, for parental interference in their marriage. They have more economic independence," says Iti Kanungo, a court-appointed marriage counselor.
by Muneeza Naqvi
The full article was originally published at BusinessWeek, but is no longer available.
Cheating, Incorporated
BUSINESS WEEK – Feb 14 – Noel Biderman is the CEO of Avid Life Media, based in Toronto. "Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment," he declares. Adultery has been good to Biderman, but defending his product is a full-time job. After spending several years as a sports agent at Chicago's Interperformances, Biderman founded Ashley Madison in 2002, naming the company after the two most popular names for baby girls that year. AshleyMadison is by far Avid Life's most successful brand with 8.5M members, 1.3 million of whom have actually paid something. Avid Life is expected to generate $60M in revenue this year and $20M in profit. Biderman is quick to explain why his business isn't hurting anyone. "You eradicate Ashley Madison, you're not going to eradicate infidelity.Do you think if you stop allowing divorce attorneys to advertise, we would stop people from getting divorced?" he says. According to Justin Wolfers, an economist, Ashley Madison provides liquidity to an illiquid market, which may make the market bigger. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WEEK
The Mail-Order-Bride Trade Is Flourishing
BUSINESSWEEK – Jan 6 – 14 ago, Joseph Weiner founded Hand-In-Hand, a matchmaking agency that charges ~$2,000 for a "supervised courtship"—a process that matches guys with younger Eastern European women. Hand-In-Hand has now 30 satellite offices. It is estimated that the number of mail-order marriages in the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2007, when up to 16,500 such unions were sealed. Since the recession began, "we've seen more men sign up," says John Adams, the co-founder of A Foreign Affair, which charges $4,000 for the right to attend champagne-soaked "socials" in various Eastern European cities. After a few highly publicized murders of women brought to America through international matchmakers, the U.S. passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA). The statute requires background checks on U.S. citizens before communication via the matchmakers. Those who fail to comply cannot obtain a Form I-129F, Petition for Alien Fiancé(e). FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESSWEEK
Mark Brooks: Matchmakers are doing ok, despite the rise of idating and social dating (a la Facebook) because some people have money, but not time, for searching for their soul mates. I expect this trend to compound an increase.