NEW YORK TIMES – Feb 27 – Six customers of matchmaking services share their experiences. Their fees ranged from $500 to $25K. Many matchmakers either don't have or won't share statistics on their success rates. It's common not to provide references, citing a need to protect privacy. The companies generally aren't listed on review sites like Yelp. The New York Times interviewed a few singles across North America who have used matchmakers. Most of them agreed that the matches were better than Tinder matches. Here are edited versions of five conversations, including some comments and responses from the matchmakers.
Category: Outlets – New York Times
Grindr Is Fined $11.7M Under European Privacy Law
NEW YORK TIMES – Jan 26 – The Norwegian Data Protection Authority will fine Grindr $11.7M for illegally disclosing private details about its users to advertising companies. The agency said Grindr had transmitted users' precise locations, user-tracking codes and the app's name to at least five advertising companies, essentially tagging individuals as L.G.B.T.Q. without obtaining their explicit consent, in violation of European data protection law. Grindr shared users' private details with, among other companies, MoPub, Twitter's mobile advertising platform, which may in turn share data with ~100 partners. In a statement, a spokesperson for Grindr said the company had obtained "valid legal consent from all" of its users in Europe on multiple occasions and was confident that its "approach to user privacy is first in class" among social apps. The company has until Feb. 15 to comment on the ruling before it is final.
by Natasha Singer & Aaron Krolik
See full article at New York Times
Finding Love Without Alcohol
NEW YORK TIMES – Dec 29 – According to a 2014 survey by Plenty of Fish, 48% of singles reported consuming two to three drinks on a first date and 36% percent have had a drink before a first date. Outside traditional dating apps, are online platforms like 12StepMatch, Love in Recovery and Single and Sober where it's understood that no one drinks. Loosid app, a sober social network that started in 2018, offers boozeless guides, chat groups and a sober dating platform.
by Hilary Sheinbaum
See full article at New York Times
See the top news on POF
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Sparks Fly on Virtual Dates, but Not So Much in Real Life
NEW YORK TIMES – Dec 8 – At the beginning of the pandemic, many singles turned to video dating. Some daters felt instant attraction online, but no chemistry in person. "Video gives us just one view of someone," said Dr. Jacqueline Mendez, a licensed marriage-family therapist and certified sex therapist in LA. "There's a missing piece of the energy of the physicality of the person. So what ends up happening is that we start developing a fantasy of this person, just given the information that we have." Another disadvantage of video dating is the inability to see a person's full body and gestures.
Apple Halves Its App Store Fee for Smaller Companies
NEW YORK TIMES – Nov 19 – Apple, facing growing antitrust scrutiny over what it charges companies for access to its App Store, said it would cut in half the fee it takes from smaller app developers. Developers that brought in $1M or less from their apps in the previous year will pay a 15% commission on those app sales starting next year, down from 30%. The change will affect ~98% of the companies that pay Apple a commission, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. But those developers accounted for ~5% of App Store revenues last year. Apple said that it had made the change because 2020 was a difficult year for many small companies. The fee cut probably won't calm the waters between Apple and the larger app developers that have long protested the fee most loudly. Epic Games sued Apple in August. A month later, 13 companies, including Spotify and Match Group, formed the nonprofit Coalition for App Fairness to fight the "app tax." And American and European regulators are investigating Apple for anticompetitive behavior, partly because of its commission.
Dating in the Runup to the Election
More Singles Are Fast Tracking New Relationships
NEW YORK TIMES – Oct 8 – Americans are dating with an intention that some experts say that they haven't seen before. Many experts, along with daters themselves, say that daters have become more likely to couple up, to lower their standards and to do what they can to find a partner to face whatever comes next. Hinge's surveys indicate that 69% of the app's users are "thinking more about who they're really looking for" and 50% say they are "no longer chasing after people who aren't interested in them." A survey of 2K dating app users Match conducted between July and August, showed that 59% of daters were considering a wider range of people as potential partners and that 55% were fast tracking new relationships more than before the pandemic.
by Jonah Engel Bromwich & Sandra E. Garcia
See full article at New York Times
80% of Matchmakers Now Offer Coaching
How Coronavirus Is Changing the Dating Game for the Better
How a Dating App Helped a Generation of Chinese Come Out of the Closet
NEW YORK TIMES – Mar 5 – Blued, one of the biggest gay dating apps in the world, has succeeded because it plays by the ever-shifting rules for L.G.B.T.Q. China – bringing together a minority community without activism. China is home to an LGBTQ population larger than all of France, ~70M people. But according to a United Nations estimate, less than 5% of gay Chinese choose to come out. Blued has a reported in-country user base of some 24M. Homosexuality was formally considered a mental illness in China until 2001. But in recent years, the government has neither expressed explicit support for the LGBTQ community nor sought to crush it. Whereas Russia has adopted a position "that LGBT rights is a Western conspiracy designed to weaken the nation," says Darius Longarino, a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. China's one-child policy further increased pressure on some gay Chinese to stay in the closet and enter heterosexual relationships, because parents pinned all their hopes on one child to provide genetic, legally recognized grandchildren to continue the family line. Blued app launched in 2012. The company, once kept alive by 50-to-500-yuan donations, received its first angel investment of $480K in 2013. It then raised a Series A round investment of $1.6M led by the VC firm Crystal Stream and in 2014 raised an additional $30M from another VC firm, DCM. In the last few years, having monopolized the gay-dating app market in China, Blued has expanded to Mexico, Brazil and India.