by Laura Forman
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Category: Outlets – Wall Street Journal
More Younger People Are Looking for Friends on Match, Bumble and Tinder
WALL STREET JOURNAL – July 8 – Dating apps are getting friendlier. More younger people see no problem swiping left or right to find friend matches rather than dates or hookups. Millennials and Generation Z have been comfortable using dating apps to meet platonic friends for a few years now, especially when moving to a new city. During the pandemic, the practice boomed. In a recent survey of 300 members of Generation Z aged 16 to 24 in the U.S., 35% said they have used dating apps to make platonic friends over the past 12 months, according to OnePulse, a consumer insight app and web portal. 27% said they used dating apps to make friends because they were lonely in lockdown. More women than men – 39% vs. 29% – said they used dating apps to make platonic friends.
by Ray A. Smith
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Singles Return to In-Person Dating
by Anne Marie Chakker
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Former Match Group’s Employees Spar Over Handling of Sexual-Assault Allegation
WALL STREET JOURNAL – May 29 – When Greg Blatt announced his plan to resign as Match Group CEO in 2017, the company presented the transition as orderly and planned well in advance. Privately, executives at Match Group and IAC expressed concerns that a sexual-assault allegation against the CEO might become public and discussed how long to say the transition had been in the works, according to documents filed this week in a lawsuit the companies have been battling in New York state court. "The company has nothing to hide," a spokesperson for IAC said in a statement. A lawsuit filed in 2018 over Tinder's valuation included a claim from Rosette Pambakian, a former Tinder VP, that Mr. Blatt groped and harassed her at a company party in Dec 2016. The suit says Match Group knew about the allegation but played it down to keep Mr. Blatt in place as he worked on the valuation. Mr. Blatt has said in a defamation lawsuit against Ms. Pambakian that the incident was consensual. Match Group fired Ms. Pambakian in 2018. She filed a wrongful termination suit against Match Group and IAC in California state court, saying that the firing was connected to her going public with her sexual-assault allegation. Match Group has denied that claim.
Bumble’s CEO Says Pandemic Transformed Online Dating
WALL STREET JOURNAL – May 12 – Dating has been transformed during the Covid-19 pandemic as people world-wide embraced online connections more than ever, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble. Instead of connecting, chatting and then meeting in person, many Bumble users in the past year decided to meet over video first before seeing each other in person, introducing a new step to online dating dynamics. Ms. Wolfe Herd said Bumble planned to introduce more features for users that enable them to fine-tune their preferences. She said while the pandemic had shifted many processes in business and consumer habits, the need for relationships is a constant. "We all need connection," she said. "This is something that is never going away."
Bumble’s Head of Product Design to Join Twitter
WALL STREET JOURNAL – May 11 – Lara Mendonça, the woman who led the design of Bumble's dating app in the run-up to the company's February IPO, is joining Twitter, bringing a philosophy of designing for inclusion and safety to a platform that is taking steps to curb abuse and harassment. Lara Mendonça is set to join Twitter on June 14 as a senior manager of product design in the company's "creation and conversations" team. Bumble declined to comment on Ms. Mendonça's departure and on her successor.
by Katie Deighton
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Japanese Dating App, Pairs, Gives Women Control and Makes Men Pay
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Apr 25 – Match Group says Japan is its second-biggest market after the U.S., thanks to the popularity of its Pairs app. The company says its revenue in the country is seven times what it was five years ago. Pairs is Japan's top-ranked dating app, with 3.1M downloads in 2020, according to App Annie. It is aimed at singles serious about matrimony and tries to make women comfortable about signing up. Men have to pay and show their full real names if they want to start chatting. Women get in free and can use initials (46% of Pairs users are women). "Internet dating in Japan wasn't just stigmatized – it was beyond a stigma. It was viewed as dirty," said Mark Brooks, a consultant who advises internet dating businesses. "Japan has always been enticing to internet dating companies, but they knew they had a job to do to clean up the reputation of the industry overall." About half of Match Group's $2.4B in revenue last year came from outside the U.S. Match Group's success in Japan started with an acquisition of Eureka, the developer Pairs, in 2015.
by Suryatapa Bhattacharya
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Tinder Names New CMO as Dating App Pursues Gen Z
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Apr 13 – George Felix, a former marketing executive for Pizza Hut, KFC and Procter & Gamble, is joining Tinder as the dating app seeks to recruit new users, especially those under 25 years old. He succeeds former Tinder CMO Jenny Campbell, who left the company in Nov 2020.
You’ve Got a Friend in New Social-Media Apps
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Mar 6 – Dating apps are taking a platonic turn. An analysis by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz showed friend discovery is the fastest-growing category of mobile social apps in the U.S. Citing data from Apptopia, with friendship apps like Itsme, Wink and Yubo being the fastest-growing apps nationwide. Bumble BFF accounted for 9% of its total monthly active users as of Sep 2020. That traffic seems to have come mostly organically. Match Group has also been chasing friendships and other platonic connections. It estimates this market is twice the size of dating. Match Group paid $1.7B in cash and stock for South Korean social-media company Hyperconnect in its biggest acquisition ever. Hyperconnect is already generating profits and did $200M in revenue in 2020, up 50% YOY. Hyperconnect owns two video apps in Azar, which is the highest grossing one-to-one video chat app in the world; and Hakuna, which offers group live video, audio and avatar-based streaming.
Tinder, Bumble and Hinge Show Surge in Americans Looking for Love Online
by Yan Wu
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