MASHABLE – Feb 12 – Pictures say a lot more about people than online dating profiles. That's the thinking behind a new dating app Glimpse. Glimpse taps into Instagram accounts. Singles can browse through profiles in the app and view a collection of pictures that show how other singles spend their time and view the world. Glimpse is currently available by invitation.
Category: Outlets – Mashable
Wing Ma’am: HowAboutWe For Lesbians
MASHABLE – Jan 28 – Ariella Furman had a hard time connecting with the LGBT community when she relocated from New York to Pittsburgh. "The existing sites were focused on hookups. Women tend to look for relationships," she said. So she created Wing Ma'am, an app that debuted on iTunes last week after a brief demo run. The app grew to 8K users during its beta period. It connects users around quality dates and experiences.
Match.com To Use Facial Recognition For Better Matches
MASHABLE – Sep 16 – Dating sites are collecting an enormous amount of data about how people look for a partner. "We keep refining our algorithms," said Amarnath Thombre, president of Match.com. "We take historical data into account, as well as distance, and what people say they want in a partner and who they are pursuing." In the future, Match.com wants to use facial recognition technology, which allows users to highlight the features they are most attracted to so the site can provide them with better matches. HowAboutWe's focus is on offline. "It's difficult to predict chemistry online," said Aaron Schildkrout, HowAboutWe co-founder and co-CEO. "That's why we focus is on actual dates. It’s only after you achieve significant liquidity in a market that you can build a useful algorithm."
Bang With Friends Sex App Registers 5 Users Per Minute
MASHABLE – Bang With Friends, an app that anonymously connects Facebook friends for casual hookups, has rapidly grown since its launch, registering five new users per minute. The app's user base, primarily in their twenties, has surpassed 30K. The creators, three anonymous men from California, plan to introduce support for same-sex matches and an iPhone app soon. Users sign in with Facebook, select friends they are interested in, and click "Down to Bang." Mutual interests are notified via email. Despite its controversial debut, the app continues to attract significant media attention and user interest.
Ten Popular Dating Apps Reviewed
MASHABLE – July 19 – Dating apps are growing in popularity and are providing quick connections on the go. Mashable reviewed 10 dating apps, some of which are stand alone apps and some are an extension of a web platform. OkCupid, HowAboutWe, Zoosk, PlentyOfFish, Jazzed, Grindr, Blendr, MeetMoi, eHarmony, and Sonar are included.
Three Major Online Dating Sites Agree To Screen For Predators
MASHABLE – Mar 21 – The state attorney general’s office will work with Match.com, eHarmony.com and Spark Networks to screen for sexual predators, identity thieves and scammers. A joint statement issued Monday notes the prevalence of online dating and says the companies’ main objective is to keep users safe. A Match.com spokesperson told Mashable the site is already taking the precautions outlined in the agreement, and an eHarmony spokesperson said existing screening mechanisms have helped keep sex offenders off the service in the past.
by Kate Freeman
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Facebook Acquires Friend.ly
MASHABLE – Oct 11 - Facebook has acquired two-year-old social question-and-answer startup Friend.ly for an undisclosed sum. The Friend.ly team will join Facebook and focus on new products for the social network, while the Friend.ly site will continue to operate as a separate service. Friend.ly, a service similar to Formspring, raised $5.5M in Series A funding.
by Jennifer Van Grove
See full article at Mashable
Mark Brooks: Friend.ly was founded by Harvard and Stanford educated Ed Baker. It's a discovery engine to help people learn more about their current friends. A 'lite' idating app, of sorts. (Full Disclosure: Friend.ly was advised by the Courtland Brooks team)
Soul2Match Matches Singles with Similar Faces
MASHABLE – Sep 14 - Online dating startup Soul2Match promises to match singles based solely on their headshot. The site's founders cite several studies that show what we’re all really looking for in our ideal mate is ourselves. Soul2Match is an extremely simple dating site. Instead of filling out long questionnaires, users take a photo of themselves and post it to the site or the iPhone app. The site uses facial recognition software to analyze features in the photo and the photos of other users, and spits out a “compatibility score.” There’s an option to message people who are highly compatible with you.
How Match.com Calculates the Ideal Mate
MASHABLE – July 14 – Match.com started in 1995, online dating was an obscure practice. About three years ago, the company decided to delve into that data to help improve its matches. It brought on current VP of strategy analytics Amarnath Thombre to head up the charge. Since then, he and a team of 12 have been hard at work developing an equation for successful match recommendations. These are the four main components of the equation.
1. What You Say
When you sign up for Match.com, you fill out a survey about yourself, your preferences and what you’re looking for in a partner.
2. What You Do
What people say and what they do don’t always match up.
3. What People Like You Do
Match.com tunes into the behavior of people who are like you.
4. A Bit of History
In 16 years of business, Match.com has collected a mass of data. It uses that data to make some guesses about who you like before you even rate your first match.
Tastebuds.fm: Finds a Music Loving Date
MASHABLE – July 13 – Tastebuds.fm is a dating site that launched last summer to help music heads connect over their mutual adoration for bands and has just added a new feature called “Events Matchmaker”. Events Matchmaker allows users to find concert-going dates.