Category: Outlets – Tech Crunch

Social Discovery App Sonar Gets New Investment

Posted on March 1, 2013

Sonar logoTECH CRUNCH – Feb 28 – Sonar, a social discovery service that was among the top apps at last year’s SXSW in Austin, is announcing new investment from Bing Fund. This angel fund and incubator program from Microsoft was publicly revealed this summer, allowing Microsoft to partner with entrepreneurs, which can then receive subsidies to use Bing APIs in their apps, as well as access the technologies developed by Microsoft Research. Sonar’s app uses check-ins on Facebook and Foursquare, plus geo-tagged tweets, to show you lists of nearby people, ranking them first by friends you know, then showing you other relevant people nearby.

by Sarah Perez
See full article at Tech Crunch

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch and InternetDatingInvestments.

Apple, Facebook: Marriage Equality Is A ‘Business Imperative’

Posted on February 28, 2013

SenateTECH CRUNCH – Feb 27 – Dozens of major U.S. companies have come out in support of marriage equality, including Apple, Facebook, eBay, and Intel. In Proposition 8, which made same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the companies argue that “recognizing the rights of same-sex couples to marry is more than a constitutional issue. It is a business imperative.” This is not the first time that tech giants have come out in support of marriage equality. Google, for instance, setup an online campaign, with a heartwarming video, to support same-sex marriage laws in the 2012 election.

by Gregory Ferenstein
See full article at Tech Crunch

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

HowAboutWe Launches New Ad

Posted on February 26, 2013

Howaboutwe new landing pageTECH CRUNCH – Feb 26 - HowAboutWe has launched a new commercial alongside a new site landing page with options for both singles and couples. HowAboutWe begins its transition from a traditional dating site to a lifestyle brand for relationships in all stages. Singles pay anywhere between $8 to $35 per month. Meanwhile, couples pay a monthly membership fee of $22 to receive access and discounts on cool dates. The new landing page has shown a 20% bump in conversion rates during its testing period, which was preceded by January. January saw 2x more HowAboutWe couples subscriptions than the previous five months combined.

by Jordan Crook
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Science Shows Dating Sites Aren’t Better At Finding You Love

Posted on February 14, 2013

Idating general pictureTECH CRUNCH – Feb 14 – Dating sites basically claim to predict the future, arguing that they have a crystal ball with a higher probability of users ending up in romantic utopia. It’s a funny assumption, because even the bleeding edge of social science, which arguably has access to a lot more accurate data than eHarmony, is really quite bad at predicting human behavior. Individuals, in general, are terrible at knowing what they want in a significant other. The browsing process can cause users to objectify potential partners, commoditizing them as options available in a marketplace of profiles. Social scientists see this as a perfect case of the ‘paradox of choice,’ when increasing options decreases satisfaction. Online communication shuts out the most informative pathway of communication by completely obscuring body and intonation. It’s very easy to lie online. Dating is entirely a numbers game, and the search method is largely irrelevant.

by Gregory Ferenstein
See full article at Tech Crunch

Pair Buys UK’s Cupple And Rebrands As Couple

Posted on February 4, 2013

Couple app screenshotTECH CRUNCH – Feb 3 – Tenthbit, the mobile app studio behind the couples app Pair, has bought Cupple, a UK-based rival mobile app for two people only, and has rebranded itself as Couple. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Tenthbit raised a seed round of $4.2M in May 2012. Cupple will, for now, remain as a standalone app, but users will have the ability to migrate their data to Couple from Cupple if they choose. Cupple did not disclose current usage figures, downloads or geographical reach. Pair meanwhile notes 1.25M messages sent every day, 160m messages between couples to date and 800K downloads.

by Ingrid Lunden
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Brian Bowman: Facebook Is Primed To Disrupt Online Dating

Posted on January 28, 2013

Facebook picTECH CRUNCH – Jan 25 – Men and women experience online dating very differently. Men typically send out hundreds of emails hoping someone will respond. Women can receive hundreds of emails a week, but respond to less than 2%. Most dating profiles are static and lack social network updates. For most social discovery startups, there is a significant cold-start problem. Few startups are funded well enough to afford the marketing required to achieve scale. No social dating site has gained meaningful traction: theComplete.me (10K), Yoke (10K), Circl.es (1K), LikeBright (1K), thedatable (200), and atthepool.com have struggled. With Graph Search, can Facebook reinvent dating, drive down the associated stigma? Just because someone’s profile indicates they are single does not mean they are ready for dating. On Facebook, receiving messages from strangers feels creepy. Facebook’s profiles are shallow. The real question may be how important is the dating market to Facebook? It will be a challenge to run so many vertical solutions: dating, recruiting, ratings, reviews, etc. Facebook can easily leverage their massive social graph to enable meaningful friend-of-friend introductions. They can create very detailed, self-updating profiles by displaying and structuring data from Pinterest, Spotify, Pandora, Yelp, Netflix, Amazon, ESPN, GoodReads and more. They can dominate real-time communication: chat, check-ins, poke, texting and Skype video chat.

by Brian Bowman
See full article at Tech Crunch

Uber Partners With Grouper

Posted on January 22, 2013

Grouper uber partnershipTECH CRUNCH – Jan 21 – On-demand car service Uber is teaming up with Grouper. With a new program and promotional event called #UberGrouper, users can sign up for an exclusive deal in their city allowing them to use Uber as their luxury transportation of choice on their Grouper meetups. Grouper brings its members together for “Groupers,” which are basically like group dates.

by Sarah Perez
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Tagged Introduces New App – Sidewalk

Posted on January 22, 2013

Tagged sidewalk app logoTECH CRUNCH – Jan 22 – Tagged, the people discovery service with 300M registrations and 3M daily users, is stepping into offline meetups by launching standalone app Sidewalk that feeds you fun happenings in your city, as well as who you might run into where you’re hanging out. Building Sidewalk as a standalone app rather than as a feature of Tagged also protects the company. The idea is that you’ll open Sidewalk, discover something fun going on nearby, get off your butt and go there, and meet people. There are no gimmicks, forced ice breakers, or private messaging. Sidewalk also has less anonymity. The app is simply a portal to connection around real-life moments.

by Josh Constine
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This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Tinder: New Dating App Backed By IAC

Posted on January 4, 2013

Tinder logoTECH CRUNCH – Jan 4 – Tinder is a new dating app that focuses on the social and mobile aspects of dating. It launched in October and took off on a few college campuses. The co-founders say that they’re continuing to listen to users, tweaking the experience based on feedback and, with traction building, they’ll be looking to build off their seed funding from IAC and raise a series A in the coming months. CEO Sean Rad says that Tinder is resonating with college students because the app has taken a more subtle approach to dating, it is location-enabled. The experience is anonymous until someone you like returns your interest.

by Rip Empson
See full article at Tech Crunch

Social Discovery Platform At The Pool To Raise $1 Million

Posted on November 29, 2012

Atthepool logoTECH CRUNCH – Nov 28 – At The Pool, a social discovery network that aims to be the anti-Facebook, has emerged from beta and is in the process of closing a $1M seed financing round led by Clearstone Venture Partners. In addition, the startup is adding some localization support for its growing international user base. At The Pool users sign up for groups (or “pools”) based on their background, interests and the type of people they’re interested in meeting. At The Pool then provides the matches.

by Rip Empson
See full article at Tech Crunch