FINANCIAL TIMES – May 16 – Luna, a new blockchain based dating app, hopes to make anonymised data open to researchers, who will design algorithms to match couples. Luna hasn't launched yet but it does have a "white paper". Using online interactions, it would like to dive deep into the data to understand what makes a successful match. Andre Ornish, Luna's founder, says he is already speaking to social psychologists about how they could use the data to spot patterns that could lead to "higher-fidelity matches".
Category: Outlets – Financial Times
One Month Left Before New EU Data Rules Come Into Force
FINANCIAL TIMES – Apr 25 – There is one month to go until the EU's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force, governing all data that companies hold on individuals. Fines for breaches are as high as 4% of annual global revenue. The UK information commissioner's office (ICO) has said there will be no "grace period". Here is the ICO 12-step guide that lays out how to document data, know the rights of individuals, deal with subject access requests, obtain consent, lawfully process data – and what to do in case of a breach.
Momo Acquires Tantan
FINANCIAL TIMES – Feb 23 – Momo paid for the top Chinese dating app $600.9M in cash and 5.3M shares. That brings the total value of the deal to ~$760M. Tantan, dubbed Chinese Tinder, had raised $120M, including a $70m last year. It has enabled 5B matches since its launch. (Tinder claims 8B matches.) Tantan's management will stay and the companies will continue to operate independently.
by Yuan Yang
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The Upmarket Dating Apps
FINANCIAL TIMES – Nov 27 – These exclusive dating apps promise a more refined, exclusive and ultimately fruitful experience.
- Raya – an "exclusive" dating app that offers access to another echelon of society. According to members, entry into the club is a semi-arbitrary process that depends on users' status in the celebrity hierarchy, looks and following on Instagram.
- The Inner Circle – it was founded in 2012 in Amsterdam by David Vermeulen . "We try to focus on people who are inspiring and ambitious," he says, adding it has ~500K users worldwide. The site uses Facebook and LinkedIn to help vet applicants and runs events.
- The League – aims at the same demographic. "You're joining a community of triple-vetted people who are ambitious and intellectual enough to have a LinkedIn account and you're seeing what they do and their background," says founder Amanda Bradford, who started the company in 2014 and says it now has 250K MAU.
by Kadhim Shubber
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Marriage And Divorce Rates Among Pensioners Rise
by Paul McClean
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How Has Brexit Affected The Dating Scene
FINANCIAL TIMES – June 20 – The consequences of Britain's departure from the EU remain a hotly debated topic. For some couples it has highlighted a lack of shared values and this has in turn placed tension on their relationship. Immediately after the referendum, two heartbroken voters launched Remainder, "the dating and social app for the 48%" of the population who opted to stay in the bloc. Mark Brooks, a US-based consultant to the dating industry, says politics is one of the most important criteria used on dating site profiles and in the algorithms such services use. "When people look through profiles they review them in an 'eliminatory style'," he says. "They're looking to find reasons to not go on a date with people [and] politics is a biggie these days, bigger than before the [Trump] election for sure." Brooks says, the fact that politics has moved higher up the agenda for those seeking a match means it is viable to create "niche" dating sites based on political beliefs, like TrumpSingles.com. He also says services should be explicitly posing the question: "Do you support Trump?" to their clients.
by Sarah Gordon
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Why Are People Unhappy With Online Dating
FT.COM – Feb 12 – Michael Norton, a psychologist at Harvard Business School conducted a survey with two other behavioural scientists, Jeana Frost and Dan Ariely. It revealed that people were unhappy with their online dating experience in three ways:
- The "online" bit of the dating was not fun
- It took forever
- People tend to have high expectations before the dates and feel disenchanted afterwards
Jeana Frost had an alternative approach to online dating. She created a virtual image gallery in which people had a virtual date, represented by simple geometric avatars with speech bubbles. People enjoyed these virtual dates and, when they later met in person, the virtual date seems to have worked well as an icebreaker.
Virtual dating has not taken off commercially, says Norton, in part because companies have tried too hard to make it realistic.
Match Aims To Raise $433M In IPO
FT.COM – Nov 9 – Match Group is aiming to raise as much as $433M in its IPO. The company was looking to sell 33.3M shares at a range of $12 to $14 each.
by Shannon Bond & Nicole Bullock
See full article at Financial Times
Hunt For The Perfect Data: Christian Rudder Of OkCupid
FT – Feb 17 – Christian Rudder, the co-founder and president of OkCupid, never had plans to revolutionize the world of online dating. He has never used dating sites himself. Rudder says the permeation of the Internet in our day-to-day lives has virtually taken away the stigma of online dating. Facebook, especially, has played a big role. When OkCupid was launched in 2004, its main distinguishing factor was giving users the ability to look beyond “age, sex, and location” to more personal characteristics that are better indications of a match. The algorithm is based on the weight that users give to the questions they care about. On the site, which now has 30M members, users can answer questions across a wide range of topics. These weighted answers are compared with another user’s and a match percentage is generated. Rudder realized he had an unprecedented amount of information on human desire and behaviour so he wrote a book: Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which was published last year.
by Christopher Kompanek
See full article at Financial Times
Cupid Investor Ups Stake Ahead Of Disposal Vote
FINANCIAL TIMES – Dec 12 – Richard Griffiths, the former chairman of Evolution Securities, has raised his stake in Cupid to above 10%, as the company nears a crucial vote on December 23 to offload its websites and turn into a shell company. Cupid has proposed to sell its dating websites, including Cupid.com and Uniformdating.com, to Tradax and Together Networks, which are chaired by Max Polyakov.
See full article at Financial Times
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