TECH CRUNCH – May 30 – Grouper has been around since 2011. The service matches users with singles they may enjoy canoodling with, but asks that each party bring two of their friends for a group date. Grouper was founded by Michael Waxman. In his opinion, Grouper has a leg up on the competition because it facilitates real-life meeting, whereas traditional dating sites and social networks are more focused on letting you message and look at photos.
Category: Outlets – Tech Crunch
Zynga Tells CupidWithFriends To Stop Using ‘With Friends’
TECH CRUNCH – May 17 – Zynga has told the makers of the dating site CupidWithFriends that they need to change the site’s name, because it allegedly infringes on Zynga’s trademarks. CupidWithFriends was built by the startup Apartment 7. The site launched a couple of months ago, allowing users to build and edit dating profiles for their friends. There’s also Bang With Friends which was recently booted from the Apple App Store.
Apple Boots Bang With Friends From The App Store
TECH CRUNCH – May 17 – Less than ten days after Bang With Friends made its mobile debut on the iOS App Store, Apple has seemingly changed its mind and given it the boot. The guys behind the app tried to chaste things up a bit for Apple, changing the name for the iOS to “BWF". The Android app, meanwhile, is still just “Bang With Friends”. A page put up by the team says they’re “working with Apple to get BWF back in the App Store shortly”.
New Dating Startup: WednesdayNight
TECH CRUNCH – May 13 – With a new startup called Wednesday Night, users connect their Facebook accounts and are then given three recommendations. If they’re interested in dating one of them, they then pay $50 and are set up with a date on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. They’re also connected with a dating coach who can provide advice via email or text. The website comes from the team of Jared Tame and Teng Siong Ong who are already working on two other dating services — Flock and CupidWithFriends. (They sold their previous startup, Y Combiantor-backed GraffitiGEO, to Loopt.)
Are You Interested Makes 2M Connections
TECH CRUNCH – May 9 – Are You Interested has been in the online dating game since 2007, predominantly focused on the Facebook platform as a way to connect people. In the past few months AYI launched a new feature that connects you with friends of friends. There are ~20M Facebook profiles connected to AYI and 3M active users per month. And since they implemented their friends of friends feature in March, AYI says that ~2M connections have been made through the new feature. Matching friends of friends is the “next big thing”. Another startup that’s been around since last year is Coffee Meets Bagel, and it could be said that they were the first ones to match friends of friends together, albeit at a much smaller scale.
by Jordan Crook
See full article at Tech Crunch
We asked Cliff Lerner, CEO of Snap Interactive, to comment. He said:
"We're very excited by the user reaction and early data around connecting through your mutual friends. The new feature is increasing engagement, with US women being 41% more likely to connect with a man when there's a friend in common. It's also providing viral growth opportunities with 1,000's of users messaging their friends directly to learn about a potential date.
We look forward to continuing to iterate on meeting new people through mutual friends as well as building a deeper mobile integration. Our mission is to improve the online dating experience for meeting new people. We believe we are uniquely positioned to offer the friend functionality due to our Facebook scale of 20 million Facebook connected profiles, ensuring users have a robust experience to meet through their friends."
How The Internet May Have Increased Young Marriages 14%
TECH CRUNCH – May 9 – One study suggests that the Internet is responsible for boosting holy matrimony 14% among 21-30-year-olds. Of regions with similar composition in race, socioeconomic status, population density, unemployment, and age, the author finds the Internet is associated with 13-30% boost in first-time marriages. A 2005 Pew Poll which found that 5% of all marriages began online.
Loveflutter Is A Google Freebase-Powered Dating Site
TECH CRUNCH – Apr 23 – Loveflutter is a new dating site powered by Freebase, the 37-million strong open database of people, places and things acquired by Google in 2010 and now part of the search giant's Knowledge Graph. The site connects people based on shared interests. Loveflutter shows you matches who like the same kinds of music, books, movies, TV shows, and sports. Loveflutter can suggest places to go on a date, based on local venues it pulls in from Foursquare. Other features include "Verified Profiles".
Tastebuds Scores $600K
TECH CRUNCH – Apr 21 – Tastebuds, the startup that matches people based on their musical tastes, is announcing a $600K seed round from Black Ocean, which will be used to launch mobile apps, grow its developer team, as well as formally launching in the U.S. Last May Tastebuds launched a Spotify app, which essentially embeds the service inside of the streaming music site. Tastebuds is free to join, although the company has experimented with a number of premium micro-features, such as “Incognito mode”, which hides your online status and enables you to browse profiles anonymously. It isn’t ruling out a more standard recurring subscription model in the future.
by Steve O'Hear
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Tallygram, OkCupid’s Foray Into Friend Finding On Facebook, Hits The Deadpool
MeetMe Introduces In-Feed Advertising With Flurry Partnership
TECH CRUNCH – Mar 29 – MeetMe new ads, which are being introduced through a partnership with Flurry, will appear in the Live Stream, offering a more “native” approach, said CEO Geoff Cook. “This is the first time we are placing ads within the context of the application itself, where the user encounters advertising while scrolling. The ads look and feel more like content with social cues like ratings and comments surfaced.”