TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – May 16 – Fed with potential partners thinking she was a closet necrophile, trained mortician Carla Valentine set up Dead Meet – a dating site where people who work in the 'death industry' can get together. Valentine launched the site in late 2014. She works as a technical curator at the Barts Pathology Museum in London – where she recently won an award for her collection of 300 brains. Dead Meet now boasts ~5K members.
Category: Outlets – Telegraph
Iran’s Regime-approved Dating Site
by Shaunagh Connaire
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk
Bumble: A Safe Dating App For Women
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Apr 16 – Since its launch at the end of 2014, Bumble has attracted 3.5M users – and is currently getting 25K new users a day. "I wanted to start a network that encouraged positive online behaviour versus bullying", says Whitney Wolfe, Bumble founder. On Bumble, a man can only message a woman a finite number of times before the app raises a red flag, asking her whether she's being harassed. The dating app has now introduced a new feature: Bumble BFF (best friends forever). This allows users to pinpoint prospective friends in their local area and meet up.
Tinder Users No More Promiscuous Than Other Online Daters
TELEGRAPH – Apr 8 – Researchers at Webster Vienna Private University in Austria surveyed 75 users of Tinder or other dating agencies were asked to complete questionaires about their motivataion for online dating, and to rate their sociability, self-esteem and sexual permissiveness. The results did find that males were more likely than females to use these services to find a casual sex partner. However that finding is not confined to the world of internet dating. Previous studies have shown that similar patterns exist among males when seeking casual sex partners both online and offline. "The results of the current study are in line with a broader body of research indicating that nowadays users of online dating resemble those who do not use online dating. It is likely that as online dating continues to grow in popularity, its users are becoming increasingly diverse and therefore more reflective of the general population."
Whitney Wolfe: People Want Dating Apps Where Women Can Feel In Control
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Feb 14 – Whitney Wolfe is 26 and she has already been at the helm of two major dating apps – Tinder, which she accused of sexism on her departure, and now Bumble. She always held back in dating. "When it came to guys I had to sit on my hands. I wasn't allowed to text them first according to my friends and society. That's really broken." She launched Bumble, a dating app where only women are allowed to make the first move. A year in, Wolfe and her team are working on ways to expand the app's influence. They're trialing a reward-system that will benefit "well behaved" users – people who have used the app consistently, interacted with their matches and never been abusive or rude.
by Cara McGoogan
See full article at Telegraph.co.uk
Sweatt: The Dating App For Fitness Freaks
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Jan 10 – Sweatt, a digital start-up from New York, has launched an app that matches prospective partners based on their exercise habits. Pitched as 'Tinder for fitness fanatics', Sweatt asks users to input their exercise practices – primary workout, favourite time to exercise, frequency of workouts per week etc. Using this data, the app produces a list of potential partners and presents this to other like-minded singles.
New App Blinq Uses ‘Science’ To Rate Users’ Attractiveness
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Jan 7 – Blinq can guess age and rates users on a scale from 'Hmm…' to 'Godlike'. The app has developed a feature with the University of Zurich which uses artificial intelligence.
Dating App Happn Expects To Reach 10M Users
TELEGRAPH.CO.UK – Oct 3 - Happn has just raised $14M. The app launched in Paris in 2014, and claims 6.5M members worldwide with 700K in the UK. It took the company ten months to reach a million users. Now Happn is signing up 1M new users per month, and expects to reach 10M by the end of the year. The app connects people who have crossed paths in real life. The new funding will be used to drive expansion into Asia – with launches planned in Manila, Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong – and grow Happn's presence in Europe, South America and the US. While the app is completely free for women, men have to pay to send charms. The company has already been working with car company Fiat on an advertising campaign.
Tinder Is Now A Serious Product Used By All Ages
TELEGRAPH – Aug 25 – Despite the app's original reputation for wanton hookups, Tinder continues to get bigger and more diverse. Speaking last year, Tinder's former CMO Justin Mateen said "Early on, over 90% of our user base was aged between 18 and 24. Today, that number is about 51%. 13-17 year-olds are now over 7%, 25-32 year-olds are about 32%, 35-44 is about 6.5% and the remainder are older than 45.” Even those small percentages represent huge communities – with an estimated 50 million users, that 3.5% over 45 segment is still nearly 2 million.
Ashley Madison Employee Told To Input “Phony” Female Profiles
TELEGRAPH – Aug 21 – Doriana Silva, who worked at the company's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, tried to sue the firm after claiming she suffered repetitive strain injury (RSI) after being given a month to input 1,000 bogus memberships. The case adds to suspicions that countless British victims of an online hack of its database, whose details are now publicly available as alleged users of the website, are innocent victims whose email addresses may have been bought in bulk by Ashley Madison.
by Gordon Rayner
See full article at Telegraph