CNN – US Android app developers (who earned $2M or less annually from the Google Play Store between 2016 and 2021) will be able to claim money from a new $90M fund Google will establish as part of a wider settlement with app makers over Google's app store practices. The settlement is designed to address app developers' years-long allegations that Google imposes onerous and anticompetitive restrictions on app makers as a condition of hosting their apps on its Google Play Store. Google said it would continue a pricing model established last year that allows US app developers to pay a lower fee, 15%, for the first $1M in annual revenue collected from the Google Play Store.
Category: Outlets – CNN
Tinder CEO: We’re Leaning Into Desire for More Authenticity
CNN – June 22 – Jim Lanzone, CEO of Tinder, discusses the new features, including video, available on the dating app and how online dating is evolving.
Interview With Bumble CEO – “Making Relationships Better for Everybody”
CNN – Mar 10 – CEO and Founder of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd speaks to Christiane Amanpour about how she is changing the online dating landscape for women. "Technology has this remarkable ability to either perpetuate behavior or to rewrite it," Whitney said. "I was very dissatisfied with the way relationships were set for women. By giving women more control, we are leveling the playing field and stabilizing the situation for everyone. This reduces harassment and rejection. "Why not have consequences for bad behavior? … When you make relationships better for women, you make relationships better for everybody."
Scammers on Dating Apps and Social Media Made $304M in 2020
CNN – Feb 22 – A record $304M was reported lost to romance scams in 2020, up 50% from 2019. The pandemic has made things easier, creating legitimate reasons for scammers to hide their real motives, claiming they cannot meet in person or need money for medical treatment. According to the FTC, gift cards and wire transfers are the most commonly used payment methods by online scammers, both of which can be difficult to track.
Chipotle Teams up With Hinge
Young Americans Are Having Less Sex Than Ever
CNN – June 15 – Sexual inactivity increased among young American men between 2000 and 2018, according to researchers from Indiana University and Sweden's Karolinska Institutet who studied survey data from US adults. Postponement of adulthood and the growth of the Internet and digital media could be reasons for why. Men who were unemployed, had part-time employment or lower incomes were more likely to be sexually inactive, researchers found. Women aged 25 to 34 were also having less sex, with students being most likely to be affected.
Bumble CEO: Dating in the Age of Covid
CNN – May 19 – How people date during a global pandemic? Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble, says her company is helping their users answer that question and find connection from a distance. She talks about how this pandemic may permanently change the way people date, and how Bumble is positioning itself in a competitive market for dating services. "We have actually come out of our two best revenue weeks in the history of the group. People are enjoying digital dating," says Whitney Wolfe Herd.
Quarantine Together Is a Dating App for These Times
CNN – Mar 29 – Daniel Ahmadizadeh and Christopher Smeder designed Quarantine Together, a dating app for exactly this moment. The app launched on March 8. The app is text-based. Every day at 6PM, the app asks its registered users whether they washed their hands. If they say yes, they are introduced to another user by text. After 15 minutes, the matched users will be offered a link to video chat.
Whitney Wolfe Herd: the CEO of a $3 Billion Dating Empire
CNN – Dec 13 – Whitney Wolfe Herd launched Bumble, the female-focused dating app, in 2014. Wolfe Herd's vision – that the app would empower women to make their own choices, rather than burden them with it – caught on. Last year, she made a strategic decision to push Bumble into India. "The most traditional, the most misogynistic mindsets globally – those markets for us are completely wide-open prairies," she said. Now, Wolfe Herd is preparing for one of her biggest challenges yet: Taking over the CEO seat of Bumble's parent company MagicLab four months after former owner Andrey Andreev was accused of racism and sexism, allegations that he has denied. Investment firm Blackstone bought the company from the Russian billionaire last month, in a deal that valued it at $3B. On top of growing Bumble and shifting cultural norms, Wolfe Herd is set on changing laws in 2020. Earlier this year, she and Bumble successfully advocated for a new Texas law outlawing digital sexual harassment. The company is now working with Senator Ling Ling Chang in California to get a similar law passed in that state. Wolfe Herd said the hope is to get a federal law passed, something the company is "fiercely committed to."
The Success of Tinder’s Swipe Night
CNN BUSINESS – Oct 23 – "Swipe Night" is Tinder's first foray in original content. This month, Tinder released a four-part, short-form video series with a few twists. New episodes were released every Sunday in October, but were available only for six hours, from 6 p.m. to midnight local time, exclusively on the Tinder app in the US. The episodes were interactive. Users were asked to swipe left or swipe right to make a choice, which then affects the rest of the story. Third, those decisions then determined who they matched with on Tinder in the future. The purpose of "Swipe Night" was to create a discussion among Tinder users. And it worked. Total matches on Tinder jumped 26% compared to a typical Sunday night, and messages increased 12%. Given the engagement it received in the US release, Tinder is planning an international rollout of the series in February 2020.