FORBES – Aug 5 – The FBI has issued a warning for Americans to be wary of romance scams, after the Bureau saw a 70% annual rise in reported fraud, where dating sites were used to trick victims into sending money, purchasing items or even laundering or muling money for people met online. In 2018, ~18K complaints were received with losses totalling ~$362M. And, for every reported incident there will be others where victims don't come forward.
Category: Outlets – Forbes
Match Group Shareholders Swipe Right for Bigger Margins
FORBES – July 30 – Match Group has begun telling its Android customers to enter payments details directly at the Match Group website, avoiding the Google Play store fee. This is a huge win for Match shareholders. Epic Games, maker of the popular gaming platform Fortnite, avoided the Play Store altogether last year. And Spotify is in the midst of a legal dispute with Apple. It is encouraging customers to make payments directly. It's the same tactic Netflix is now using. Apple made $257M scraping fees from Netflix in 2018. Epic Games, Spotify and Netflix have one common denominator: scale. Their businesses are so big, they don't need Apple and Google to succeed. You can now put Match Group in the same category. All in, Match had 8.6M paying subscribers at the end of the Q1 of 2019. That’s up 16% YOY. Revenue in the Q1 rallied 14% to $465M, putting the company on track to record $1.8B in 2019 revenue. Based on sales momentum, the stock could trade to $125 in two years, a gain of 65% from current levels.
Forbes Investigation Into Badoo’s Corporate Culture
FORBES – July 7 – Andrey Andreev's biggest asset is Badoo, a European- and Latin American-focused dating app that, with 60M users, stands as one of the world's largest. His buzziest, however, is Bumble, the dating app focused on empowering women. Andrey launched his first dating company – Mamba – in 2004. It was a bare-bones desktop dating site for Russian users. Finam Holdings invested $20M in Mamba for a 90% stake; Andreev sold the rest to Finam in 2006 for an undisclosed amount. Building off the success of Mamba, Andreev launched Badoo in 2006. In 2010, Badoo launched its iPhone mobile app. The company went from 20M user sign-ups to 100M in four months, mostly in Europe and Latin America, and notched $200M in revenue. (Forbes estimates that last year Badoo had a bit over $300M in revenue.) Simultaneous with this growth, Badoo began earning a reputation for wild parties. More concerning, several former employees say office behavior was hostile and discriminatory toward women. Andreev maintains that he is a collaborator and unifier, not racist or sexist as others allege. Wolfe Herd, who spent Bumble's formative period walking around London with Andreev for days, says she has never witnessed toxic behavior in the Badoo headquarters. And she stands firmly behind Andreev. "What I've seen firsthand from Andrey is creative and motivating behavior. Andrey has never been anything but kind and respectful to me."
by Angel Au-Yeung
See full article at Forbes
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Q&A With Tinder’s CMO Jenny Campbell About Gen Z
FORBES – June 17 – Jenny Campbell is current CMO of Tinder, and marketing veteran whose wide range of experience spans iconic brands like Nike and revolutionary ad agency 72 + Sunny.
Q: What made you most excited about joining Tinder as CMO?
A: It's hard to imagine the dating world without Tinder in it. It's just amazing to me how it flipped the entire dating category on its head. The scale of Tinder is massive, and as a marketer you get a courtside seat into what it is like to be young, social, single and dating in today's world.
Q: What is your vision for Tinder?
A: My goal is to make Tinder the most iconic, innovative brand for Gen Z. Our mission at Tinder is to make being single more fun by helping our members meet new people IRL.
Q: Can you give me an example of IRL experiences tied to the Tinder platform?
A: We are focusing on things like Spring Break Mode and Festival Mode. It allows users to badge their Tinder profile to show which music festivals they are going to, and then they can meet with other Tinder users who are also attending those festivals in advance.
Q: Brands are struggling with how to achieve greater levels of trust. What's your POV?
A: Trust is a tricky thing. Once you break it with the consumer, it's hard to get it back. You see this now with Facebook. I think Gen Z saw a lot of the traps that Millennials fell into around this and are doing things differently. What we're doing in terms of building trust is leaning into those smaller groups situations. For example, features like Tinder U. Tinder U is a college product and you have to have a verified college email address to be on it.
Q: What do you think the most compelling insights are about Gen Z?
A: I would say Gen Z is incredibly social. We know they are dating in groups. They are looking for experiences. Their media behaviors are different. Gen Z has five screens up at a time. We see different behaviors on Tinder as well. They fill out their profiles more completely than previous generations.
Apps Like Bumble Offer A Way Forward for Print Magazines
FORBES – Apr 10 – The rapid decline of print was hard to watch. Now tech brands have repurposed print magazines as their own branded marketing channels. They're not just placing the ads, they're running the actual publications. A lifestyle magazine is an effective way for a startup to communicate its values and weave itself into the physical world. Uber, Facebook and Airbnb are just a few of the big tech companies that have given print a shot. Dating app Bumble announced its print magazine last week.
Deep Learning-Powered ‘Fake Faces’ Will Transform Catfishing
FORBES – Mar 11 – Catfishing and the use of false profiles to scam and extort people online has become an unfortunate fact of our modern digital life. Deep learning now allows the creation of entirely artificial faces and voices. It is possible to create fake faces reflecting any demographic background and age. While the photos still contains tell-tale imperfections that give it away to the trained eye, the average person is unlikely to see if the image is fake, especially when viewed on the small screen of a mobile device while on the go.
Podcast With Sam Yagan
FORBES – Feb 10 – Sam Yagan is currently the CEO of ShopRunner which has raised ~$100M from the likes of Alibaba Group or August Capital. Previously, he served as CEO of The Match Group and led it through a period of growth culminating in its $400M IPO. Yagan cofounded OkCupid in 2003 and it was acquired by Match for $90M in 2011. Earlier, he founded SparkNotes, which he sold for $30M.
In this episode you will learn:
- How to deal with lawsuits and other threats to the business
- Building marketplaces and the important KPIs that make things work
- Lobbying with government and establishing a thought leadership position
- Using content marketing as a secret weapon
- Working at the company that acquires your business and scaling through the ranks
- Becoming an investor to pay it forward with other founders
- Difference between managing small teams and bigger teams
by Alejandro Cremades
See full article at Forbes
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Plenty of Fish Is Increasingly Popular in Mexico
FORBES MÉXICO – Dec 18 – With ~1M exchanged on the POF app per week, Mexico is starting to be POF's one of the most important markets. Mexico is a very attractive market because its users are very active and sociable.
Personals, a New Instagram Dating Community for LGBT, to Launch as a Dating App
Charly Lester, Co-Founder Of Lumen, Shares Her Story
FORBES – Nov 7 – Charly Lester is the Co-Founder and CMO of Lumen, the dating app for over 50s. Fresh from raising £3.5M from Andrey Andreev, the Founder of Badoo, Charly shares her story and motivation to make 50 the new 30. "Lumen was my co-founder's (Antoine Argouges) idea – but the minute he told me about it I knew it needed to be done, because for the last 5 years people had been asking me which app their divorced parents should try, and I had never had an answer for them. Women in their 50s and 60s have long complained about issues where men their age ignore them on dating apps, and only look for younger women. Men on Lumen are interested in dating women their age." Over 50s are too often the target of scammers and catfish online, so Lumen is the first mainstream dating app to insist on 100% photo-verification. Every user takes a selfie of him or herself on registration, and this is cross-referenced with the photos on their dating profile. The artificial intelligence also moderates for age. The app is already seeing ~1K downloads every day in the UK, and will be launching internationally very soon.