NY TIMES – Mar 9 – Gleeden's latest ad campaign — evoking the temptations of Eve with a partly eaten apple — has spawned a backlash and a national debate in France. The Catholic Family Associations filed a legal complaint against the site. Bus company Keolis said it withdrew the ad last month after receiving 500 complaints in a week. An anti-Gleeden petition that was circulated on social media garnered ~20K signatures. Gleeden launched in 2009, and has ~1M subscribers in France and 2.4M globally.
Category: Outlets – New York Times
Led By Tinder, The Mobile Dating Game Surges
NY TIMES – Feb 4 – Many app makers are trying to capitalize on the Tinder method of simple, smartphone-based dating. They add a twist to the swipe. Hinge sifts only through Facebook connections for friends of friends. Clover offers Tinder-like features but with an added bonus called “On-Demand Dating.” Users pick a location and a date, and Clover sends someone to meet them. Tinder processes ~1B swipes a day and matches ~12M people a day. Amarnath Thombre, president of Match.com in North America, said that in the last year it had registered a 35% increase in the people who use Match app, and a 109% increase in the number of people who use only the app to reach Match every month.
by Molly Wood
See full article at NY Times
See all posts on Tinder See all posts on Hinge
See all posts on Clover See all posts on Match.com
A Dating App, Happn, To Find A Match Nearby
NY TIMES – Dec 31 – French dating app called Happn started in New York in September. Happn works by simple geolocation. It scoops up every prospective partner within a couple of blocks, or roughly a 275-yard radius. The matching process is very similar to Tinder; if both parties signal interest, the app connects them. If users are interested in someone who has yet to notice them, they can send that person a notification called a “charm.” Though the app is free, charms must be purchased — 10 for $1.99. Happn has just reached 80K users in New York.
Joel Simkhai About His 6 Years Old Grindr
by Guy Trebay
See full article at NY Times
Zoosk Emphasizes Like, Rather Than Love In Its New Campaign
NY TIMES – Nov 5 - Zoosk is introducing an advertising campaign that makes no assertions about marriage, or even love. Rather, the campaign is based on the slogan “First Comes Like,” intended to highlight the moments when daters discover each other’s qualities.
by Andrew Adam Newman
See full article at NY Times
Mark Brooks: Meetic is one of Europe's leading dating services (owned by IAC) and its founder took the same approach. They said, they promise a date, but not love. They can't. That's too high and lofty a promise surely. It doesn't work to promise love in Europe. But I think in the USA, where we're more bullish and explicit about love, we can get away making such aspirational promises with our services. This is an area where Europe is a little less forgiving in general. Do you agree? Whats your thoughts? Do you think I'm blowing smoke? Then please comment? 🙂
Tinder, The Fast-Growing Dating App, Taps An Age-Old Truth
NY TIMES – Oct 29 – In the two years since Tinder was released, the app has exploded, processing ~2B swipes each day and matching ~12M people. Tinder is fast approaching 50M active users. People log into the app 11 times a day. Women spend ~8.5 minutes on the app during a single session; men 7.2 minutes. All of this can add up to 90 minutes each day. On Tinder, there are no questionnaires to fill out. Ms. Carbino, who recently concluded a Ph.D. candidacy at the University of California, joined Tinder to help the company understand what kind of visual cues could cause a person to swipe “like” or “nope.” The style of clothing, the pucker of the lips and even the posture, Ms. Carbino said, tell us a lot about their social circle, if they like to party and their level of confidence. While companies like eHarmony still assert they have a “scientific approach” to helping people fall in love, some dating sites are starting to acknowledge that the only thing that matters is the picture.
Is Online Dating Revealing Our Biases, Or Reinforcing Them?
NY TIMES – Oct 17 – In recent weeks, two new mobile dating apps have been launched. One, called Meld, is marketed to black professionals seeking meaningful long-term relationships; the other, Luxy, invites wealthy individuals to find someone with whom to share their high-end lifestyles. Luxy is a mobile-based app by the same people who thought up MillionaireMatch.com. Luxy’s launch, however, provoked a lot of backlash. The news release called the service “Tinder minus the poor people.” Meld elicited some skepticism as well. At Ebony, Kirsten Magwood asks whether separating black people from a larger pool of singles is necessary: “Is racially based dating a dated concept in 2014?”
by Anna Altman
See full article at NY Times
IAC/InterActiveCorp Makes Moves In Online Dating
NY TIMES – Sep 14 – IAC has been snatching up dating sites for the last several years. In March, IAC increased its majority stake in Tinder. As of the end of last year, IAC said it hosted 30M active users among its dating properties, 3.4M of which are regular paid subscribers. The Match Group is now responsible for about one quarter of IAC’s overall revenue. “We are not just the acquirer of choice,” said Sam Yagan, CEO of the Match Group, “we are the only acquirer.” Investors seem nervous. They have been pushing for IAC to spin off the Match Group as soon as possible, probably because they think the popularity of dating sites is about to crest. Dating through mobile is exploding and has remained a weak spot for much of the industry. Another problem is that the market has become crowded. Mr. Yagan is not worried. He said there was still plenty of business to go around.
Jewish Matchmaker Whose Hand Led Hundreds Down The Aisle
NY TIMES – Aug 15 – Tova Weinberg is one of the country’s top Jewish matchmakers. At any given time, Ms. Weinberg has the names of “hundreds, maybe thousands” of single Jews bouncing around in her head, and over the years she has introduced “about 250” couples who went on to get married, not including those who met online at SawYouAtSinai.com, the matchmaking website she helped found. In 2004, investors approached her and asked her to help them start SawYouAtSinai.com. that currently has ~18,350 members and 355 matchmakers, including Ms. Weinberg. One of her primary tasks, on the website and for her private clientele, is to help singles be less picky, Ms. Weinberg said.
Playing The Numbers In Digital Dating
NY TIMES – Aug 15 – Dating is a numbers game, people say, but the direction it’s taking online and in apps means ever bigger numbers. The problem with bigger numbers and endless possibility: They don’t go well with humans. We don’t have the processing power. Dating is not simply about finding like-minded people, but about limiting your potential set of choices. When we’re making a selection from what sociologists call a bounded set of choices, we can “satisfice” —reach a kind of threshold of satisfaction. When the number of options increases, we become maximizers — unsatisfied with those options, and wanting more. More isn’t necessarily the answer. It’s about finding good matches in smaller sets. Maybe algorithms aren’t there yet. Or maybe that’s not the goal of the game.