Category: Outlets – Tech Crunch

WittyThumbs Helps Decipher What Messages Really Mean

Posted on June 7, 2017

Witty thumbs logoTECH CRUNCH – June 6 – WittyThumbs is essentially RapGenius for dating conversations. Users take a screenshot of their text messages, upload it to the site, and other users can annotate and give feedback. There's also a premium option to chat with a dating expert for one on one feedback – this is billed by the minute, and starts at $30 for 30 minutes of advice.

by Fitz Tepper
See full article at Tech Crunch

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Bumble Is Opening A Physical Space In New York For Dates To Meet Up

Posted on June 2, 2017

Bumble beehiveTECH CRUNCH – June 2 – Bumble is opening a pop-up location in New York City. While the space will be open during the week for couples to meet up (or friends to just stop in and check it out), there will also be a series of events focused on relationships, female entrepreneurship and more. The space will also have a coffee (and real) bar, as well as Bumble merchandise for sale (where all proceeds go to charity). It will be located in Soho at 158 Mercer Street.

by Fitz Tepper
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Exclusive Dating App The League Is Launching In 10 More Cities This Summer

Posted on May 26, 2017

Theleague invitationTECH CRUNCH – May 24 – Originally launched in early 2015, the app is still only in 7 cities – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C and London. But the startup just announced they are adding 10 cities before the end of August. They are: Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Denver, Seattle and Toronto. The startup will also be hosting a launch party in each city.

by Fitz Tepper
See full article at Tech Crunch

See all posts on The League

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Truepic Fights Photo Fraud

Posted on May 14, 2017

Truepic logoTECH CRUNCH – May 12 – Startup Truepic has raised $1.75M seed funding to become the "the world's first digital photo notary". Truepic's patented technology verifies uploaded photos that they were not edited, and watermarks it with a time stamp, geocode, and other metadata. Truepic's SDK can be embedded in other products plus its own consumer app, and can be used on dating sites, Airbnb or eBay. Clients can pay a monthly fee to build Truepic's SDK into their apps so the whole process happens within their product.

by Josh Constine
See full article at Tech Crunch

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Loveflutter Makes Tweets Part Of Users’ Profiles

Posted on May 9, 2017

Loveflutter with twitter screenshotsTECH CRUNCH – May 9 – U.K.-based online dating startup Loveflutter has rolled out a revamped version of its app that lets users add their Twitter feed to their dating profile, in a similar way Tinder imports Instagram feeds. "Your tweets say a lot about your personality and therefore are good online dating fodder," said Loveflutter co-founder Daigo Smith. Loveflutter has teamed up with Receptiviti to analyse the tweets for personality type.

by Steve O'Hear
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Someone Scraped 40K Tinder Selfies For AI Experiments

Posted on May 1, 2017

55bae6348208d761170bbca8_19740TECH CRUNCH – Apr 29 – A user of Kaggle, a platform for machine learning and data science competitions which was recently acquired by Google, has uploaded a facial data set he says was created by exploiting Tinder's API to scrape 40k profile photos from Tinder's Bay Area users. The data set has been downloaded ~300 times, and there's obviously no way to know what additional uses it might be being put to. A Tinder spokesperson said: "This person has violated our terms of service and we are taking appropriate action and investigating further."

by Natasha Lomas
See full article at Tech Crunch

See all posts on Tinder

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Paktor Moves Into Live-streaming Via Merger Deal

Posted on April 27, 2017

Paktor logo new jan 16TECH CRUNCH – Apr 26 – Dating app Paktor, 'The Tinder of Southeast Asia,' is moving into live-streaming and media content after it announced a merger deal with Taiwanese startup 17 Media. Paktor currently offers four dating apps – core service Paktor and acquired apps Down, Kickoff and Goodnight – while 17 Media's runs its 17 live-streaming app, photo social network Swag and video group chat service Lit. The new entity is expecting ~$100M in annual revenue and 50M users. The list of established companies moving into streaming is nearly endless. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Momo, and fast-growing Kuaishou among others.

by Jon Russell
See full article at Tech Crunch

Update: M17 has raised an undisclosed amount in investment from Korean VC firm KTB Network as part of a larger round, which is due to close in a few weeks.

See all posts on Paktor

This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Tinder Available On Desktop

Posted on March 29, 2017

Tinder desktopTECH CRUNCH – Mar 28 – Tinder is launching Tinder Online, a web-optimized version of the dating app so people can Tinder at their desktops. Tinder Online doesn't include any of Tinder's revenue features like Tinder Boost or Super Like, for now. Head of Product at Tinder, Brian Norgard, says that Tinder Online is meant to serve users in emerging markets who don't have enough storage on their phone or a big enough data plan for Tinder's image-heavy feed. It's also meant to offer Tinder power users the option to do their swiping and messaging on desktop, which is far easier on power users than a mobile app. Tinder has always been a native mobile app, first on iOS and then on Android. But the company now serves 196 countries across the world, and is learning to be flexible when it comes to giving people options about how they use Tinder. Tinder is currently testing Tinder Online in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, and Sweden, with plans to launch everywhere 'soon'.

by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

Coffee Meets Bagel Introduces $35/month Premium Membership To Fight Ghosting

Posted on March 22, 2017

Coffeemeetsbagel-premium-package-screenshotsTECH CRUNCH – Mar 22 – Coffee Meets Bagel, the dating site that focuses on high-quality, limited matches, has today announced the launch of its premium service. One of the biggest features is Activity Reports, which show stats on a user's profile about % of times they engage in chats with connections, % of the time they send the first message, whether or not they've been active in the last 72 hours, and a marker for how long it usually takes that person to respond to messages. Premium members will also see read receipts for messages they've sent.

by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch

Irena Brooks: Dating app The League has also recently introduced "the read receipts" feature to its premium members.

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Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team

The League Wants To End Ghosting

Posted on March 20, 2017

The league logoTECH CRUNCH – Mar 18 – The exclusive dating app adds "read receipts", a new feature that could help the paid members to figure out if someone's deliberately ignoring them or if they just haven't opened the app in a while. The League membership costs $179.99/year and includes features like profile feedback and access to more potential matches.

by Anthony Ha
See full article at Tech Crunch

See all posts on The League

Summarized by the Courtland Brooks team