THE VERGE – July 10 – Tinder Lite app is 25 times smaller than the main app, and while it maintains the core functionality, like swiping, it nixes more data-heavy ones, like the Feed. The idea is that Tinder Lite is faster, requires less battery life, and reduces data usage. For now, Tinder Lite users can't upgrade to a Tinder Plus or Gold subscription within the app, but the company says it plans to do so over time. The app will be available through Google Play in Vietnam in the "coming weeks" and will subsequently come to other areas in Southeast Asia and South America.
Category: Reporters – Ashley Carman
Tinder Co-founder’s Lawsuit Against Tinder Parent Company Moves Closer to a Trial
THE VERGE – June 14 – The judge rejects IAC / Match Group's motion to dismiss Sean Rad's case, allowing Rad and his co-plaintiffs to pursue their allegations that Match Group and IAC purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock options to the original dating app team. It's still unclear whether former plaintiffs like Rosette Pambakian, who alleged sexual misconduct on the part of IAC executives, will be able to participate in the lawsuit. She and three other plaintiffs withdrew from the lawsuit over an arbitration clause, but "without prejudice," which means that they could theoretically rejoin.
A New Tinder Test Lets People Pay to Turn Read Receipts on For Specific Chats
THE VERGE – May 31 – Tinder is testing two features that might entice more people to pay for the dating app. The app is offering some subscribers the ability to pay to view read receipts on chats, as well as the opportunity to break the algorithm and push their profile to the top of people's potential match stacks.
Match Group Paid Millions in Stock Awards That Could Help Tinder co-Founder’s $2 Billion Lawsuit
THE VERGE – May 8 – Match Group had to pay Tinder employees $9.4M in stock compensation this quarter because of the app's rapid growth. That might be consequential in the $2B lawsuit the company faces from Tinder co-founder Sean Rad. Rad claims Match purposely undervalued Tinder in an effort to avoid paying out billions of dollars in stock to the team's original employees. An independent valuation earlier this year valued Tinder at $10B, which would trigger performance-based payouts. This new valuation, which comes only two years after Match valued Tinder at $3B, could lend Rad's case some merit.
Tinder Hires a New Chief Product Officer to Keep College Kids on the App
THE VERGE – Apr 1 – Ravi Mehta comes to Tinder from Facebook where he was the product director for youth engagement and helped develop Lasso, Facebook's TikTok competitor. Tinder says Mehta has "spearheaded efforts to understand how Gen Z (users between ages 18 and 22) spends their time online and identified key product opportunities for this demographic." Last year, Tinder released Tinder U, its college student-only service that requires users to have an active .edu email address and be on campus. This year, it also developed its Spring Break Mode that lets Tinder U users select their spring break vacation spot and then swipe on potential matches ahead of arriving.
Tinder co-Founder Asks Court to Dismiss $250M Lawsuit From Tinder’s Owner
THE VERGE – Mar 26 – Tinder co-founder and former CEO Sean Rad has asked the New York Supreme Court to dismiss a $250M lawsuit against him by Match Group and IAC, the owners of Tinder. Match claims that Rad copied internal files and proprietary information before he left the company, violating his employment contract. In his motion to dismiss, however, Rad says the contract gave him the right to back up internal emails and hold on to those correspondences even after his tenure at Tinder ended. Match's claims are meant to counter a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Rad. In August 2018, Rad and other former Tinder employees sued Match Group and IAC over claims that the company purposefully undervalued Tinder to avoid having to pay the team billions more in equity. Now Match is countersuing, alleging that Rad copied "highly sensitive, non-public information" about Tinder business strategies and plans.'
by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge
Tinder No Longer Uses Elo ‘Desirability’ Score
THE VERGE – Mar 15 – RIP to the mysterious Elo score. Tinder published a blog post on the subject. The Elo score ranked people by attractiveness. The more people that swiped right the higher their score. The most desirable people interacted with one another. "Today, we don't rely on Elo, though it is still important to consider both parties who Like profiles to form a match." Tinder adjusts potential matches a user sees every time someone acts on his or her profile, it says. It sounds like Tinder uses something similar to the Gale-Shapley algorithm, or the algorithm Hinge has said it uses, which identifies patterns around likes. If I like one guy, and so does another woman on the platform, she and I might have the same matching taste. If she's liked someone on the platform that I haven't seen yet, Tinder could show me that profile in the hopes that I might like it, too.
Scruff Is Launching a Live Trivia Quiz Show
THE VERGE – Mar 13 – Scruff, a gay dating app, is launching a new live quiz show, called Hosting, that'll live inside the app. There will be a $500 prize for each game, and participants can browse who else is playing and either "woof" at them, which is like a Facebook Poke, or "favorite" them, which adds them to a list of people they might want to revisit. Every show takes place at 9PM ET, and is available in North America. There are three rounds with 10 questions each. Players have 10 seconds to answer each question. Scruff has committed to being an ad-free platform, so it says there won't be ads during the quiz show.
Match Group and Betches Partner for a New Dating App “Ship”
THE VERGE – Jan 22 – Match Group and the media brand Betches are partnering to launch an iOS dating app that allows users to help their friends pick out potential dates. The app is called Ship, and it lets users swipe for their friends and chat about profiles in a group chat within the app. Match supplies the tech expertise for Ship while Betches provides the branding, marketing, and bigger idea. Betches started as a website and is now a viral social media and digital humor company with ~6M Instagram followers and ~3M monthly unique visitors. Match is likely leveraging that built-in group to see if they can serve as a pool of daters from the onset. For now, there isn't a revenue model for Ship, although that'll probably change, assuming it attracts enough people to be successful.
by Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge
Q&A With League’s Founder Amanda Bradford
THE VERGE – Jan 10 –
Q: What is The League?
A: The whole mission of The League was to create power couples. Sometimes I joke and say it's an app for workaholics, but at the end of the day, it’s people that are really serious about their career and really want to make some kind of impact on the world.
Q: So for you, is the career the most important characteristic when looking for a potential partner?
A: I don't want to say it's most important, but I wanted to play more than just hot or not. You can see a little more about the person and what career that they decided to dedicate their livelihood, too.
Q: How are you determining who gets to be let into the app?
A: We use both Facebook and LinkedIn. Then we put everyone into a waiting list. It's similar to a college admissions pool. Job and education is a very big factor in the application. We can see who's checking back in, who's referring friends, and figuring out how it all works, and we use all of that information to predict who's going to be a good user in the system. We don't reject anyone. We just keep them on the waiting list. We try to encourage them to make some changes. There's also sort of like a demand score for everybody, and if you're in high demand, you might get in faster than if you're in lower demand.
Q: Do you have an estimate of what percentage of people get waitlisted, and then make changes, and then later get in?
A: Our acceptance rate in general hovers around 20 to 30%. And then a lot of people don't come back and make changes. A lot of the people that we don’t accept were probably not the right fit anyway.