FAST COMPANY – July 5 – Happn is launching locally in San Francisco. The app is already live in New York City and a few other U.S. markets. In total, the app boasts 2.5M users worldwide. Like Tinder, Happn's functionality relies on users' location, but instead of surveying the surrounding neighborhood or city, it zooms in much more closely, to a 275-yard radius. The app's purpose is to help users "find the people they've crossed paths with." Happn offers users a form of digital flirtation called "charms." If users haven't matched up yet, they can send somebody a charm to get their attention. Every user gets 10 free charms. Once those are used up, they can purchase 10 more for $1.99.
Category: Reporters – John Paul Titlow
Tinder Reengineers Its Gender Field
Q&A With Tinder’s Sociologist
FAST COMPANY – Aug 3 – To understand its users, Tinder employs sociologist Jessica Carbino.
Q: Why does Tinder need a sociologist on staff?
A: We're trying to understand what individuals desire and how they behave.
Q: What's your day-to-day job like?
A: My job is to understand user behavior and then create a better experience for them.
Q: Tell me more about the user research Tinder does.
A: For example: 6 months ago I analyzed 12K photos of users. 72% of our users present themselves wearing very muted colors rather than a bold color. We can then advice them to wear bold colors if they want to stand out.
Q: Does the product work differently depending on where users are located?
A: The product that we have released now is relatively applicable across markets. We do test a lot.
Q: Do you analyze the text of people's profiles?
A: We haven't done that yet.
Q: How does Tinder use design to encourage civility?
A: Given that we're linked with Facebook, we show mutual friends in common. Individuals who have friends in common will have a higher degree of social accountability and will not act in a way that's inappropriate.
Happn Is Launching In San Francisco
FAST COMPANY – Mar 26 – Happn, a fast-growing French mobile dating startup, is launching in its second US market today – San Francisco. The app is like a combination of Tinder and Craigslist's missed connections. Happn, which is already live in New York City, Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Sydney, was founded by former Daily Motion COO Didier Rappaport. It boasts 2.5M users worldwide. It offers users a form of digital flirtation called "charms" which they can purchase – 10 charms for $1.99.
How To Hack Online Dating And Use Data To Find True Love
READ WRITE WEB – Feb 13 – In her book, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, Amy Webb, outlines how she "reverse engineered" online dating, reevaluated her strategy and met her future husband. Webb kicked off her digital quest for a mate by listing 72 traits she wanted her future partner to possess; everything from personal habits and marital history to work ethic. Next, she narrowed down the ten most important characteristics and listed them as "top tier" traits. Then Webb assigned a total number of points to each item. 100 for her top trait and 91 for her least-critical item in her top ten list. The second-tier traits were all assigned 50 or fewer points. The result was a 1000-point scale that would allow her to grade. Before setting up her new profile, Webb decided to evaluate the competition. Using her 1000-point grading system, she had created 10 fake profiles and interacted with 96 different women. She paid attention to things like which gender initiated conversations most and made data visualizations of the most commonly used words in the profiles of popular women. Armed with new insights, Webb set out to create what she calls her "super-profile." It was concise, used positive language and wasn't as fixated on work.
by John Paul Titlow
The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.