TECH CRUNCH – Nov 22 - Hot Or Not founder James Hong is a father of three. He wanted to keep his kids safe from the unsuitable, adult-oriented content on YouTube so he launched Cakey, a YouTube app for children. Cakey offers a basic interface to YouTube where kids can browse through pre-screened kid-safe video “collections” presented in a film reel-like interface.
by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 17 – Antidate is a new dating app where women aren't visible until they send an expression of interest to a guy, such as starting up a chat or tapping on a guy’s profile to say hey. Male users are visible within the app to women, including their location. A full version of Antidate launched last week. Its founders are currently on the hunt for investors.
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 15 – New dating app Clover is a sort of OKCupid meets Tinder but with the focus on getting offline as soon as possible. Clover's users add in the calendar where and when they’d like to meet up with someone. The app then suggests a potential prospect to join them and they decide if they’d like to spend their time with them. Clover is free to use but offers premium service for $9.99 as well as some pay-to-play features, i.e name change for 99c.
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 4 – Sean Rad will step down as Tinder’s CEO. He is to remain with the company and serve as the president of the board. Tinder and IAC will soon start looking for a replacement CEO. Pushing out a young CEO from a growing company is hardly a new tactic. It remains unseen if Rad will stick around at his new post. Yet IAC cannot take away Sean Rad’s title of Tinder founder. He holds 10% of the company’s value.
TECH CRUNCH – Oct 30 – Elimi is a new dating app created by two Polish entrepreneurs Adam Labedzki and Sebastian Brzuzek. Using the app, users create questions and potential mates answer them. The banter goes on until one person is disgusted by the other or a match is made. The company raised $135K in seed investment from local Polish angels. They’ve hit about 1K users and have hosted 2K games so far. Many of the interactions are currently in Polish.
by John Biggs
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Mark Brooks: In theory its good to help singles interact using games. In fact they tend to focus on chatting and trying to get out on a date, as well they should.
TECH CRUNCH – Oct 10 - Tinder for a long time had been flooded with spam bots – fake accounts that flirt with users in order to redirect them to adult sites and take their money. Tinder addressed the issue with a technical update. It cut down the in-app spam. However, it didn’t necessarily address the spamming activities themselves. According to a new report, Tinder bot spammers just moved to a new channel: SMS.
TECH CRUNCH – Sep 2 – Last year, Tinder introduced Matchmaker, a way for users to introduce their Facebook friends to each other. Matchmaker has since been phased out of Tinder, but a new startup, Mashr, is resurrecting the feature as its central thesis. On Mashr, a user pairs two of their friends together and offers a quick explanation on why they should meet. If both agree Mashr makes the connection much like Tinder. Users on Mashr can pair any of their Facebook friends, even if those friends haven’t downloaded Mashr yet; those friends will then get a Facebook notification, which will drive app downloads.
by Billy Gallagher
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Mark Brooks: This functionality makes perfect sense. Except in the real world very few people play matchmaker, and they burn out quickly. For this to work, matchmakers must be rewarded with recognition. Perhaps even financially.
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 4 – There are a lot of dogs on Tinder lately. East Village-based animal rescue organization Social Tees, long with creative agency internship program The Barn at BBH have whipped up a few doggy dating profiles for rescue dogs in the New York City area. The initiative has received ~1,500 matches in less than 24 hours and one of the dogs has already found a home.
by Sarah Buhr
See full article at Tech Crunch
TECH CRUNCH – July 24 – Facebook is growing about twice as fast on mobile compared to its services as a whole. It has now 1.07B mobile monthly users, and 654M daily mobile users. That helped it bring in 62% of its ad revenue from mobile.
TECH CRUNCH – July 22 – On Project Fixup, users create a profile and take a simple quiz about their interests, likes and dislikes. The sites then sends the info to an assigned “fixup specialist", who works like a matchmaker. The fixup specialists set users up on a blind date with someone they think they’ll mesh with. They coordinate the date, time and location for the couple to meet. The concept is now launching out of beta and into San Francisco this week. None of the “fixup specialists” are professional matchmakers though. Each matchup costs $20 and comes with a 100% “Awesomeness Guarantee.” That means if a user had a bad experience, he/she gets the money back.