LA TIMES – July 26 – eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren left retirement four years ago to bring the site back to relevance. Mission accomplished. Now he is returning to retirement and Grant Langston, VP of brand marketing, assumed the CEO role Monday. His focus will be on improving the company's website and app. "Newer dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel have attracted millions of young users with simpler interfaces. It's time for eHarmony to catch up", Langston said. Leading the effort is Ken Walker, a former executive at job search start-up ZipRecruiter who was named chief product officer last month. The product went neglected as Warren prioritized turning around other facets, Langston noted. eHarmony's TV ads had become less effective in driving user sign-ups. He doesn't expect other executives who may have been skipped over for the CEO position to depart, but he's sure that there will be personnel changes.
Category: Outlets – LA Times
Tinder CEO Sean Rad: “Getting Fired Turned Out Great”
Three Day Rule Lands Funding
by Paresh Dave
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Gay Dating App Grindr Gets $93M Investment From A Chinese Company
LATIMES – Jan 12 – Gay dating app Grindr has handed majority ownership to Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun World Wide Technology for $93M valuing Grindr at $248M post-investment. Grindr had been exploring a sale or fundraising round for much of last year.
by Paresh Dave
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Whim Dating App Sets Up Dates Quickly
LA TIMES – Jan 28 – Eve Peters, the former product lead at OKCupid Labs, launched Whim, a dating app that takes people offline as soon as possible. If two people are interested in each other (both swipe right), they're going on a date. They tell the app when they're available, and it'll tell them when and where they're meeting. Whim will launch as a subscription service priced from $12 to $30 a month. Clover, another dating app, recently added On-Demand Dating, similar to what Whim has planned.
by Tracey Lien
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Train Spottings: Matchmaking For New Yorkers On The Move
LA TIMES – Jan 8 – Erika Christensen started Train Spottings, a matchmaking service for New York's subway riders. "If you want to meet someone, you have to go where people are. They're on the subway," said Christensen, who launched Train Spottings two years ago. Train Spottings recently claimed its first marriage. Erika approaches both men and women on the subway platforms and asks them whether they are single. If they say yes, she gives them her business card.
Lulu: Controversial App For Rating Men
LA TIMES – July 14 – Lulu lets women rate their male friends, lovers and ex-boyfriends. When women download Lulu, it syncs with their Facebook accounts to verify that they’re female. Men are blocked. Once in the app, women can read anonymous reviews posted by other Lulu users and add your own ratings and create a profile for a male. The percentage of real and independently written reviews is unknown. Males can tell their sides or remove their profiles from Lulu through a separate app called LuluDude. Lulu founder Alexandra Chong originally raised $1M in 2011, and secured an additional $2.5M in seed financing in 2012.
eHarmony Study: Couples Who Met Online Have Happier Marriage
LA TIMES – June 3 – The study was led by John Cacioppo, a respected social psychologist at the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and scientific advisor to eHarmony. Those who turn to the Internet to find a mate may be more committed to finding a long-term relationship than those who don't. People open to online dating may have other strengths, including certain cognitive skills such as empathy, persistence or impulse-control, that help foster happiness in committed relationships. Online daters may also be hunting for a mate from a larger and more diverse pool of prospects, he said. As a result, they may be more likely to find a compatible long-term match. Finally, online dating sites may give potentially compatible partners more opportunities to reveal themselves to one another before meeting face-to-face.
by Melissa Healy
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Tinder Aims To Make Dating Easier
LA TIMES – Mar 10 – Tinder, a new free dating app that, in a twist on the "hot or not" game, matches users with potential partners in their area without the risk of rejection. Since October, the app has helped make ~20M matches, the company said. Tinder is financially backed by InterActiveCorp's business accelerator Hatch Labs. After downloading the app, Tinder syncs to your existing Facebook profile and integrates public data about you to rate your compatibility based on your shared friends, interests, networks and location. If you're interested in a person, you swipe left; if you're not, you can move on to the next candidate by swiping right. It's all anonymous until both Tinder users say they like each other. Then they can chat using the app.
by Jessica Naziri
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eHarmony Founder Has His Heart Set On Reviving The Dating Site
eHarmony declined to release financial details but said new memberships increased 20% in the last month from the month before. It also said a member's average total amount spent on the site is up 15% year over year.