Category: Outlets – Washington Post

Dating Sites Depend On Algorithm

Posted on October 21, 2013

Howaboutwe logo newWASHINGTON POST – Oct 21 – When Aaron Schild­krout co-founded HowAboutWe.com, he wanted it to be something different than the other dating sites, which relied on mathematical calculations to match singles. But now HowAboutWe depends on formulas. “We need to get smarter about who we show you", Schildkrout said. HAW team created an algorithm that combines a users’ profile info with their behavior on the site. Match.com President Amarnath Thombre says what users often say they are looking for is not always the kinds of profiles they view. Match.com implemented a user-action-driven algorithm in 2009. AshleyMadison.com's algorithm is frequently adjusted to reflect aggregate user behavior and individual preferences. In 2002 married women searched for married men, but today, ~12% are interested in single partners.

by Mohana Ravindranath
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eHarmony Wants To Help You Get A Job

Posted on May 15, 2013

Eharmony-logoWASHINGTON POST – May 14 – For over a decade, eHarmony has been helping people find a date. Now, the company wants to help people find a job. eHarmony is developing a career service that would connect employers with job seekers. eHarmony is entering an already crowded market dominated by Dice and LinkedIn. And while critics have knocked traditional job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder as outdated, these sites still accounted for ~18% of external hires in 2012. eHarmony product is still in development and is estimated it will launch in the Q2 2014.

by Sarah Halzack
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Dating Startup Hinge Expanding To New York

Posted on May 8, 2013

Hinge logo new Jan 13WASHINGTON POST – May 6 – Hinge, a free dating app that connects users to the friends of their Facebook friends, plans to launch in New York this summer. The app has attracted ~10K users since its launch in the Washington area in February. Every day at noon, Hinge users receive a batch of their Facebook friends’ single friends, and can indicate if they’re interested. If two users mutually indicate interest, Hinge sends an e-mail introduction. In the future, the team plans to incorporate third-degree connections — friends of friends of friends.

by Mohana Ravindranath
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How The Internet Is Boosting Marriage Rates

Posted on May 3, 2013

WASHINGTON POST – May 2 – University of Montreal economist Andriana
Bellou says Internet “has the potential to reduce search frictions.”
Bellou exploits the fact that broadband arrived in the United States
unevenly during the 1990s and 2000s and compares the rates of adoption
with Current Population Survey data on marriage rates for Americans aged
21-30. What she found was that “marriage rates grew on average more in
states with greater increases in broadband penetration.” The data is
awfully messy, but there does seem to be a correlation:

Ever married graph
In 2011, just 51% of American adults were married, down from 72% in 1960.

by Brad Plumer
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Hinge Helps Users Date Friends Of Facebook Friends

Posted on February 16, 2013

Hinge logo new Jan 13WASHINGTON POST – Feb 14 – Justin McLeod recently started a D.C.-based mobile dating app called Hinge, which lets users rank and connect with their friends’ Facebook friends. Every day at noon, Hinge users who sign up using their Facebook accounts receive a batch of 25 profiles of potential matches collected from a pool of their friends’ friends. Users rank the profiles on a scale from 1 to 5. If two people rank each other at 4 or 5, Hinge sends a “match” introduction to both. Hinge’s algorithm weeds out users who are listed on Facebook as married or in a relationship, who aren’t local, and who are out of users’ desired age range. Since its launch last week, Hinge’s app has been installed a couple thousand times. The app has already produced ~600 matches.

by Mohana Ravindranath
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Hinge.co: New Facebook Dating App

Posted on January 18, 2013

Hinge logo new Jan 13WASHINGTON POST – Jan 18 – Hinge.co launched this summer as the love child of Facebook and Friend-setups. Justin McLeod, CEO came up with the idea after eyeing a cute girl in one of his Harvard Business School classes and later finding that they had a dozen Facebook friends in common. Together with Bennett Richardson, CMO, and Matt O'Donnell, CTO, Hinge was born. Facebook users sign up for the Hinge game and by answering a series of questions such as "Who throws the best parties?. The game develops a list of compatible friends of friends.

by Veronica Toney
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ChristianMingle.com Growth

Posted on January 10, 2013

Christianmingle logoWASHINGTON POST – Jan 10 – ChristianMingle is owned by the same company, Spark Networks, that owns JDate, the wildly successful Jewish dating service. Indeed, JDate has been the engine behind ChristianMingle’s “God” campaign this year. Spark has plowed revenue generated by the older, more established JDate into promoting the Christian site. ChristianMingle is now the biggest of Spark’s 28 dating sites, each for a specific subset of singles. The company says ChristianMingle is the nation’s leading Christian-based dating site, with ~8M registered members. Spark Networks' Christian dating division had revenue of $22.9M during the first nine months of 2012, an increase of 111% over the same period the year before. (Its Jewish division had revenue of $19.4M, down 5%). Spark poured ~$30M into marketing and advertising for the division, more than double the year before. Overall, Spark lost $4.45M over the first three quarters of 2012 after a loss of $503K during the same period of 2011. ChristianCafe, which says it is the only Christian-owned dating site among the major players, has a marketing tie-in with Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian group founded by author and radio preacher James Dobson. Focus on the Family once had ties with eHarmony.com and its founder, Neil Clark Warren, but eHarmony has moved away from a Christian-centric approach in a bid for a broader market.

by Paul Farhi
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At OkCupid, Being An Atheist Is A Date-maker

Posted on November 14, 2012

Okcupid logo aktualniWASHINGTON POST – Nov 14 – In some circles, being an atheist is a strike against you. But at OkCupid, including the word “atheist” in a first message to another user was more likely to garner a reply than any other religious descriptor except Christian. “Mentioning your religion helps you, but, paradoxically, it helps you most if you have no religion,” co-founder Christian Rudder wrote on the site’s blog. OkCupid was founded by Rudder, Sam Yagan, Chris Coyne and Max Krohn. In the 1990s, while still Harvard math majors, they created SparkNotes, a series of study guides that was sold to Barnes and Noble. The four launched OkCupid in 2003, and the site has since attracted ~10M users. Three of the founders describe themselves as nonbelievers in their onsite profiles.

by Kimberly Winston
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Mobile Dating Apps Grow In Popularity

Posted on August 20, 2012

Mobile dating appsWASHINGTON POST – Aug 19 – Americans now use dating apps more than online dating sites, according to a 2011 report by Flurry Analytics. Globally, the mobile dating market is expected to be worth $2.3 billion by 2016, up from $1 billion in 2011, according to Juniper Research. In June, six participants signed up for a mobile dating boot camp, organized by cyber-dating expert Julie Spira, at the iDate Mobile dating conference. They sat before a roomful of industry executives to discuss the apps they used for two weeks and provided honest feedbacks. Developers are turning to real-life concepts to woo users, like the common friend. That’s where Facebook comes in, with apps like Zoosk and Are you Interested? A new wave of apps such as Coffee Meets Bagel and Yoke focus on common friends and use Facebook profile information to match people. “You can judge a person by the company that they keep,” said Mark Brooks, analyst and consultant to the Internet dating industry. "There is no secret formula for an app to succeed", said Brooks. But “the more you can model the real world, the better you’ll do,” he said. New mobile app developers realize this and are tapping into the wealth of information available on Facebook, while trying to balance users’ privacy concerns. Spira says that just like online dating, people should apply common sense with an app.

by Amrita Jayakumar
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Hinge Social Dating Facebook App Launches

Posted on July 16, 2012

Hinge logoWASHINGTON POST – July 13 – The Hinge application uses Facebook friends-of-friends as a source of potential dates through a game-like interface. The service is live in the Washington D.C. Area using a freemium model with a $7 per month premium subscription. According to Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch, “No one has gotten this right. The privacy concerns are incredible.” But, he adds, “it’s one of the last big opportunities in the online dating space, for sure.”

by Ellen McCarthy
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