WSJ – May 8 – The new eHarmony service, called Elevated Careers, is expected to launch late this year. To prepare, eHarmony brought in Hadoop for analyzing massive datasets and a search engine from Elastic, as well as other technology upgrades. Job hunters fill out three questionnaires about their values, personality and experiences with corporate culture. Employers with open jobs, meanwhile, are profiled based on external data and information supplied by current and former employees.
Category: Outlets – Wall Street Journal
Indonesian Online Dating Market
WSJ – Apr 20 – For Singapore-based Paktor, Indonesia accounts for half its 1M active monthly users. Paktor, a Tinder-like app, is spread across Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, and it is doubling its numbers each quarter. Local online dating apps such as Yogrt and Wavoo, as well as mix-matching website Setipe.com, are also seeing a windfall in Indonesia. Cultural stigmas about casual dating still pose challenges, said Razi Thalib, co-founder of Setipe, which currently has ~300K members. Setipe is matching users for long term relationships. Yogrt app includes a game that users can play with their matches, while Wavoo has an augmented reality feature that allows users to see other nearby users from a map of their neighborhood.
eHarmony In The Age Of Tinder
WSJ – Mar 16 - eHarmony has reached record subscribers, 778k members and makes 15m matches a day, up from 5m a year ago. Revenues are now over $275m.
Dr. Warren: Under CEO Greg Waldorf users started seeing us like the other dating sites Match and Zoosk, when we’re really a social science site. We’re really, really interested in long-term relationships. Tinder is great for us. …it raises awareness that online dating and matchmaking exists.
Mr. Avedissian: We stopped offering some short-term subscription plans and introduced two-year and longer memberships, since it takes more than one to three months to find a soul mate. Users come to us when they’re willing to pay a lot more because they’re getting premium matchmaking. The average age of an eHarmony user has come down from the lower 40s and is ~4 years younger. 55% of new registrations are on mobile. …Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures invested $110 million in eHarmony in 2004. Dr. Warren came back and bought it back for $153.2 million. Now eHarmony doesn’t borrow capital.
Dr. Warren: We also want to help people find the right job. Our site, Elevated Careers, will be available by the end of June. We’re working on matching people according to 4 criteria: First, there has to be cultural fit between a person and a company. …The second part is whether you have the skills for the particular job. …Then we have two personality matches: One involves how you will match with your boss, the other is how you will fit in relation to your colleagues. …We were failures in Europe after we invested $33m in eDarling which we sold back for virtually nothing. We didn’t have brand recognition in Europe. Now we’re going to run the whole thing from our current offices…and make sure our matching algorithm works in each country. We’ll translate our site, beginning with Spanish. We’ve also had a lot of interest from India, China, Korea. …I feel that being gay could have easily been true for me. We make pretty good income from ‘Compatible Partners,’ even though we don’t advertise it a lot.
by Georgia Wells
See full article at WSJ
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Tinder Begun Offering Tinder Plus
WSJ – Mar 3 – Tinder Plus is a premium service that is the dating app’s first effort to generate revenue. Tinder also plans to introduce ads by the end of the month. The price will vary based on a user’s location and age. In U.S. the price will be $9.99 per month, although some users will be asked to pay as much as $19.99 monthly. In developing countries, the service will cost $2.99 per month. Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks, an advisory firm for dating companies, said Tinder will likely make money from subscriptions than from ads. “Tinder should be able to make tens of millions from ads, but they’ll earn more from the subscriptions to allow users to nix the ads, and be able to determine their location and being able to undo swipes,” Brooks said.
Who Is Using Dating Sites: New Survey
WSJ – Feb 27 – 2.36% of U.S. adults (5.6M people) reported using dating sites in the past 30 days. That’s more than double that of five years ago, according to new survey from market research company GfK MRI. 54% of them are men, 46% are women. The 25-34 age range comprise the largest age segment of online daters at 28%. More than half of online daters are people who have never been married, followed by 37% who are legally separated, widowed or divorced. 12% are currently still married.
‘The League’ Dating App Is For Successful People
WSJ – Feb 19 – The League, which launched in January and has raised $2.1M is for people who are “too popular as it is,” according to its site. 30% of the app’s users have advanced degrees, and 18% are executives, VPs or founders, according to The League’s founder and CEO Amanda Bradford. The app has a long wait list. 80K people currently are waiting for admission. The League isn’t the only player trying to get a piece of the more than $2B that the online dating industry is worth in the U.S., estimates Mark Brooks, CEO of Courtland Brooks, a firm that helps dating companies with business development and media relations. Bradford claims The League’s market lies somewhere between those of staid Match or eHarmony, and Tinder. “The goal is to keep The League well-balanced, diverse and classy,” Bradford says.
Asian Apps Try To Be The Anti-Tinder
WSJ – Feb 12 - Peekawoo is a new dating app based in the Philippines. The app has so far raised $85K and claims 25K. Users create a profile with 5 questions. If users match answers on three out of five questions, it’s a match. Another Asian app, Thrill, has ~100K users. It requires all users – who register using Facebook – to have at least five FB photos and 15 friends. MeetDrinks, an app that recently launched in Asia in Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai, takes the chatting feature out of online and sets up users for dates.
by Brittany Hite
See full article at WSJ
Thrill, India’s New Tinder Wannabe, Screens For Scammers And Stalkers
WSJ – Jan 31 – Josh Israel moved to India, hoping to create the Tinder of India. He launched Thrill. As he monitored his users, he saw that many men were opening multiple accounts and using fake photos. After a year of overhauling, the app re-launched last week. It uses Facebook to confirm identities. Men with fewer than 150 friends and those with fewer than five profile pictures are rejected. Men whose profiles say they are married or in a relationship are also locked out. People Group, the parent company of Shaadi, has recently paid $1M for 25% stake in Mr. Israel's company. Mr. Israel also agreed to redesign Fropper, one of India's first dating sites that he started a decade ago.
Risk Factors For Cheating: Age, Gender And Relationship Satisfaction
WSJ – Jan 26 – People are more likely to cheat on a partner in the year before a milestone birthday, according to researchers who worked with Ashley Madison. This suggests that there is roughly a 10-year cycle for heightened risk of infidelity. Here are the risk categories. People who engage in infidelity typically fall into more than one.
- Gender – Men are more likely to cheat.
- Age – Not only 9-enders are at heightened risk of cheating. People 35 – 50 tend to be focused on careers and kids. So people younger or older have a greater chance of cheating.
- Opportunity – Researchers call this “environmental” risk. For example: traveling frequently without a spouse put people at a heightened risk for infidelity.
- Relationship Dissatisfaction
by Elizabeth Bernstein
See full article at WSJ
Momo vs. Momo: China’s Tinder Fights For Its Name
WSJ – Dec 9 – Hangzhou Momo Wedding Service sued the better-known Beijing Momo Technology, the one set for a Thursday U.S. IPO , alleging they have exclusive use of the brand for what in China is called the friend-making businesses. The trial will likely take place around the end of December. Beijing Momo was founded in March 2011. Hangzhou Momo had the Momo trademark transferred to it this year from a software business.