WOMEN LOVE TECH – Lucia Haigh, CEO of RSVP, runs one of Australia’s longest-standing dating platforms, now serving a largely mature audience. RSVP differentiates itself from swipe-first apps by emphasizing detailed profiles and authenticity. The platform addresses ghosting with predefined responses, and works with local organizations on safety and scam prevention. Haigh views AI as central to improving matching, personalisation, and protection.
See full article at Women Love Tech
OPW INTERVIEW – Mar 16 – Daniel Haigh (Dir. Product RSVP/Oasis since 2014) and Dave Heysen (CEO of RSVP/Oasis since 2014) created Oasis, which was bought by RSVP in 2014, the original Internet dating service at scale, in Australia. RSVP was bought by Fairfax Media in 2005, which itself was bought by Nine. Now Daniel and Dave are acquiring RSVP and will run it, along with Helium Dating, and launch a new app. I asked Daniel and Dave about their plans. – Mark Brooks
Why did you buy RSVP back?
Fairfax Media was acquired by Nine Entertainment in 2018, and as a result Nine became the major shareholder of RSVP. Since this transaction we recognised that RSVP would be better placed as an independent business and we (Dave & Daniel) are excited to have had the opportunity to complete a company buyback in January 2021. However, our relationship with Nine is still strong and we have an ongoing multimillion dollar media spend agreement in place over the next 3 years. The majority of this advertising will be for ongoing marketing of RSVP in Australia.
What will you do with RSVP next?
Although RSVP has certainly been affected by overseas competition, we are very confident about the future, and have a strong position in the Australia market. Our current focus is improving the services provided by RSVP. We genuinely want to help our customers find a lifelong partner, and will always refine our online dating platform while providing a high level of customer care. We are also completing the development of a brand new native app which we are super excited about.
How about Oasis?
Sadly we decided to close down our Oasis.com / Amorenlinea.com brands in December 2020. We had some serious backlash (to put it mildly) from our members upon announcing this decision as Oasis had a very strong following throughout Australia, UK and South/Central America. The service was no longer viable. Oasis was a free site and advertising revenue has been steadily declining year after year, while the technology platform was becoming more expensive to maintain.
You launched a new app recently. Can you tell us more about it?
We soft launched a new online dating app called Helium at the end of 2020. Although we are still rapidly developing the app we are excited about initial numbers with almost 200,000 users having signed up to the service. Features include direct contact (none of this swiping or liking stuff), fully featured (and encrypted) messaging platform, mini-video calling, 'Really Me' verification and so much more! Helium is available worldwide in all English and Spanish Latin American markets. See https://www.heliumdating.com.
See the top news on RSVP
See the top news on Helium
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments
OPW – Mar 12 – Dave Heysen and Daniel Haigh sold their company, Oasis, to RSVP, went on to run RSVP and are now acquiring RSVP, which is the hallmark dating brand in Australia. Dave and Daniel are the majority shareholders now. The company is no longer owned by Nine (who bought Fairfax). Watch OPW.news for more information and an expanded post next week.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments
AD NEWS – Nov 3 – Creatives from Marcel, Loud and VCCP weighed in on ads from Tinder, Elite Singles, eHarmony, Bumble and RSVP.
eHarmony
Seems like a safe bet for those who take dating and relationships seriously.
eHarmony understands that there's a moment when something just clicks but could have gone down a much richer creative path.
Tinder
It's great that Tinder are self-aware and don't take themselves too seriously. As for the idea, it's ok but we've seen this sort of set up before.
Tinder, Apple TV
The writing's great. Characters are funny. Very watchable. Feels like a sitcom. And strategically it works hard. This definitely gets a swipe to the right.
RSVP
Hats off to The Core Agency and RSVP team for sticking with a great line, 'Find a keeper', and building on a really strong platform.
Elite Singles
For all its obvious flaws, this ad makes up for it in spades when it comes to appealing to a particular audience. It knows who it wants to target and is not shy about it. However, there's a big difference in appealing to your audience, and understanding them.
Bumble
Bumble is the cool kid. The fact that there is only one ad in the series that features a guy, and that he doesn't utter a word, is a teeny bit unnerving though. It totally appeals to the confident millennial females out there.
MEDICAL DAILY – Feb 21 – A new study from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has found that most dating app users aren't reaching out to people with desirable traits. The findings were published in journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking. Researchers looked at the digital dating preferences and contact behavior from online dating site RSVP. Results of the analysis showed that "stating a preference for what people are looking for appears to have little to no bearing on the characteristics of people they actually contact".
by Bri Williams
See full article at Smart Company
What's Troozi's founding story?
Me and my co-founder Nikhil Jain met when we were working at RSVP. We formulated a rapid growth plan and tried to destigmatise online dating in Australia. RSVP moved from a #3 position in market to becoming the clear market leader in Australia over a 3 year period. We spent ~7 years working on RSVP before independently leaving to pursue other startup interests. Jain turned his focus to India. India posed an incredibly exciting opportunity for launching a new product focused on urban singles and younger women keen to expand their social circles.
Why did you feel there was an opening in the market?
India's middle class was exploding and more and more young singles were turning to online in the search for connections, friends, fun and love interest in urban centres. Australia in comparison was a very small market and had reached a state of maturity.
Mobile is the most exciting opportunity for the future of Troozi. India has just overtaken the US in smart phone users, now ranking as the 2nd largest market in the world.
Troozi has focused on building its social presence which has been very successful in appealing to the female user base. Troozi now has members all over the country and Indian singles in the US, Australia and the UAE have also jumped on board.
How many active members do you have at this stage?
We don't disclose our active member figures publicly but our engagement numbers continue to perform well and our churn rate is very small, members are checking their accounts frequently.
Are you focused on women more than men?
Yes, in our marketing efforts and product planning.
How fast is the Indian dating market growing?
India is still showing strong and rapid growth in online dating, forecasts have the addressable market at ~115 M people and conservative estimates suggest this will surpass 200M by the end of 2017.
Obviously, the growth is being largely driven by mobile usage. In 2015, 100M smart phones were shipped to India, up 23% YOY.
How are the use patterns changing?
Users are becoming more and more comfortable with dating profiles and putting themselves out.
What kind of funding are you looking for at this stage?
We will most likely start to roadshow Troozi for our next raise mid year and our next stage of growth. Our plans for how much investment we will go out and seek to secure will directly to relate to our plans to hit some key milestones this quarter.
What are your plans for 2016-2017 for Troozi?
Our plans for mobile iteration continue to be the priority.
Post by Mark Brooks @ Courtland Brooks.
SMH.COM.AU – Feb 14 – OkCupid's pitch says: "We use math to get you dates." Co-founder Christian Rudder is crunching data from millions of users to come up with insights such as women are most attracted to men their own age, and men are most attracted to women aged 20-22. "What people say they want, and what they really want, are very different in practice," says Kari Taylor, from RSVP. RSVP switched from profile-based matching to behaviour-based matching a few years back and saw an 80% surge in users saying yes to conversation requests. eHarmony's predictive model for attraction has improved up to 400% in the past couple of years. An algorithm for attraction is possible given how much data is available. But the real question is whether that's the direction the industry is heading. The biggest thing in the online dating is Tinder, an app that doesn't use any info except a photo.
by Inga Ting
See full article at SMH.com.au
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HERALD SUN – Jan 17 – The survey by dating site RSVP found women were 3% more likely than men to take up a “special friend”. 50% of those aged 18 to 29 had a mutually beneficial relationship with a friend. People aged 30 to 39 were most likely to have a friendship with benefits (58%). 1 in 5 singles older than 60 had a sexual relationship with a friend. More than 1/3 of people aged 40 to 59 admitted to such a relationship.
by Chanel Kinniburgh
See full article at Herald Sun
OPW – Jan 18 - Oasis Active is a big free Internet dating site that is very popular in Australia and South America. Dave Heysen and Daniel Haigh are the co-founders and will be attending iDate this week.
Why did Oasis Active merge with RSVP in June 2014?
We felt that together we would be a stronger market force and cover more of the market, particularly the Australian market.
What was the nature of the deal?
The deal was a Merger, with the aim to look for synergies between the two companies. Both companies need to be more dynamic to deal with the pace at which the market is currently changing. Together the two brands control a strong % of the Australian dating market and we will work to try and strengthen that position even further. The Oasis.com/Amorenlinea.com platform will also now have the resources to push further into markets outside of Australia and promote our new App coming out early in 2015.
What's your new role?
Daniel Haigh (the other co-Founder of Oasis Active) is now the Director of Product and Technology and myself CEO of RSVP & Oasis. We are both Executive Directors of the combined entity.
How's the team transitioning to work with RSVP?
Great – within the next few months we will all be under the same roof. The teams from both sides are excited at the prospect of working across all the brands RSVP, Oasis and Amorenlinea.com, to name a few. Combined we have circa 30 full Time employees as well as customer service representatives. Our customer service is a combination of in-house/outsourced. We currently have a couple of relationships outside of Australia that primarily help us with the languages we support apart from English, such as Spanish, Portuguese etc.
How will the products work in unison? Has their positions changed?
The brands will still remain separate. We have been pushing some traffic between the sites trying to offer daters more opportunity as there is under 10% crossover of membership in Australia. At this stage their positioning will remain the same but we will be working to make sure we give each brand the best chance in the market. If that means altering the market positioning, that is something we will have to do.
Oasis is quite international. Will you continue to push internationally? What countries are you strongest in?
We continue to grow our Spanish speaking base throughout Central and South America and Spain. We will be pushing harder in these markets once our new Spanish android app is released in February 2015.