Category: Outlets – Wall Street Journal

Grindr Plans to Focus on Monetization After IPO

Posted on November 18, 2022

Grindr logo for social mediaWALL STREET JOURNAL – Grindr is set to list on the New York Stock Exchange today, and the company plans to further monetize its services, review subscription prices and beef up its finance team once it joins the public markets via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Grindr will combine with blank-check company Tiga Acquisition. The transaction, valued at $2.1B, is expected to provide Grindr with ~$384M in proceeds, which will bolster its balance sheet and help with paying down debt. The company will list on the New York Stock Exchange under a new name, Grindr Inc. During Q2, Grindr's revenue grew 34% YOY, to $46.6M. The company reported a net income loss of $4.3M in Q2 compared with a $1.8M profit in Q2 '21. The year-over-year loss was largely driven by one-time costs associated with going public, such as legal, consulting and audit fees. Q3 results haven't been released yet.

by Jennifer Williams-Alvarez
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Single People Want Deeper Connections and More Substance

Posted on November 16, 2022

Dating picWALL STREET JOURNAL – Singles are emerging from the pandemic more serious about finding a partner and less focused on looks, according to the latest Singles in America study, conducted by researchers at the Kinsey Institute and funded by Match. ~75% of the study's participants say they want to find a partner who wants to marry, roughly similar to last year and up from 58% in 2019. Singles became more interested in finding a stable partner and they're spending more time on phone calls and video chats before meeting IRL. Today, one-quarter of singles say they've had a video chat with a date before meeting in person, up from 6% in 2019. Each year, researchers ask single people what they’re looking for in a partner. The No. 1 answer this year is "someone to trust and confide in." Physical attraction dropped out of the top five during the pandemic.

by Elizabeth Bernstein
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Dating Apps Test the Price of Love

Posted on October 6, 2022

The price of soulmateWALL STREET JOURNAL – A decade into the dating-app era, many apps have switched from free to "freemium" models, offering paid subscriptions and a la carte features that are meant to improve the odds of finding a match. The most popular dating apps all offer paid memberships that can run from $12 a month to $600 a year. Dating app executives say that while paying isn't necessary to find a match, paid features can help users save time and find connections more easily. The free version of Hinge has a limit on the number of likes each user can send and displays blurred photos. The paid version offers users unlimited likes and clearly displays the profiles of users who like them. Another common add-on is a "boost," where a user's profile is shown to more people in a set period. Tinder has 10.9M paid users to date and is currently at work on a new paid feature, says Faye Iosotaluno, the company's COO.

by Lane Florsheim
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How Online Dating Scams Work – and Who Gets Targeted

Posted on September 9, 2022

Dating app scammersWALL STREET JOURNAL – Americans reported losing ~$1.3B in romance-related fraud from 2017 to 2021, according to the FTC, greater than any other category of fraud tracked by the agency. Scammers typically target older, poorer, less educated and single people. Women are reported to lose more significant sums of money. In the majority of cases, the victims are older than 40, with 50 to 59 being the most vulnerable. Data also suggest that the degree of financial loss increases with the age of the victim. Dating sites should have built-in technical trust-building mechanisms. Simple two-factor authentication can substantially reduce the number of fake accounts by weeding out less-sophisticated scammers. The industry also needs to develop a web-assurance seal program – an outside agency that monitors and ensures that sites comply with the policies.

by Bart Ziegler
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Online Dating Is Great for Investors, Complicated for Customers

Posted on July 18, 2022

Online dating for social mediaWALL STREET JOURNAL – Together, Wall Street expects Match and Bumble to generate ~$4B this year. Online dating provides more specific results from a wider net. Tinder has ~10M people paying to meet someone on the app. But pitfalls abound. People use dating apps because everyone else seems to be using them. A recent study by the Marriage Foundation found couples who met online were six times more likely to get divorced in the first three years of their marriage than those who met in college or through family or friends. Romantic love may need to adapt to technology rather than the other way around.

by Laura Forman
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Investor Wariness of Subscription Tech Services Extended to Dating Apps

Posted on May 12, 2022

Match Group Bumble stock developmentWALL STREET JOURNAL – Investors have fallen out of love with tech subscription businesses lately, facing the reality that there is no such thing as infinite growth. Dating has been no exception: Match and Bumble shares were down an average of ~59% over the last year as of Wednesday's close. Over that period, S&P 500 has lost under 5%. Dating companies are looking to international expansion to tap into markets where their apps are historically underpenetrated, but where they think opportunity is especially ripe. Bumble has made a big push in India, while Match has had a lot of success with its Pairs app in Japan.

by Laura Forman
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Grindr User Data Has Been for Sale for Years

Posted on May 3, 2022

Grindr logo 2018WALL STREET JOURNAL – Grindr's user locations were collected and sold via ad networks since at least 2017; Grindr says it has curtailed the data it shares. Grindr cut off the flow of location data to any ad networks, ending the possibility of such data collection two years ago, the company said. The data didn't contain personal information such as names or phone numbers. But the Grindr data were in some cases detailed enough to infer things like romantic encounters between specific users, as well as identify clues to people's identities such as their workplaces and home addresses. "Since early 2020, Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors," a spokesman for Grindr said in a statement.

by Byron Tau & Georgia Wells
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Tinder Adds Background Checks

Posted on March 9, 2022

Tinder and GarboWALL STREET JOURNAL – Tinder is introducing a tool to let users run background checks on prospective dates, as the company continues to address concerns about the safety of dating apps. Match Group said it has been developing the tool since last March, when it announced an investment in Garbo Technology, a nonprofit background check organization. While some Tinder users may benefit from learning potentially important information about a date, false positives or lack of data in some results are also likely to make some people fearful, said Naomi F. Sugie, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California. Garbo said it has tried to address the pitfalls of background checks by adding its confidence indicators and limiting the information it provides.

by Ann-Marie Alcántara
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Pandemic and Crypto Fuel Increase in Romance Scams

Posted on February 15, 2022

CurrencyWALL STREET JOURNAL – The number of romance-related frauds reported to the FTC rose ~70% in 2021, and the total amount lost jumped to $547M. The pandemic may have fueled the continued growth of romance scams as the coronavirus has provided a convenient excuse for scammers to say they aren't able to meet in person. Last year also saw scammers increasingly using romance as a hook to lure people into bogus investments, particularly those involving cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency was the top method that victims used to make payments in 2021, at ~$139M. That is nearly five times the cryptocurrency amount reported in 2020 and more than 25 times that in 2019, the FTC said. In comparison, ~ $121M was lost through bank transfers or payments and another $93M through wire transfers in 2021, FTC data shows.

by Mengqi Sun
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Voice – the New Secret to Online Dating Success

Posted on February 3, 2022

Hinge Voice PromptsWALL STREET JOURNAL – Dating apps are giving users the ability to add voice recordings to their profiles. Last October, Hinge added Voice Prompts to its user profiles. "~65% of our users were saying getting to hear someone's voice earlier on in the dating journey would be really valuable," said Michelle Parsons, chief product officer at Hinge. In June 2021, Tinder gave users the ability to add video recordings – including voice – to their profiles. The League dating app did the same back in December 2019. A quarter of League users are taking advantage of the technology.

by Kathryn O'Shea-Evans
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