OPW – "As of September 30, 2022, Ship is no longer available. For questions or concerns, please contact us", says a message on the getship.co website. It is unclear why Match Group quietly pulled the plug on Ship, a dating app that lets singles involve friends in the matchmaking process, but it seems the app did not get enough traction. In the latest earnings call, Bernard Kim, Match Group CEO, said: "We must focus our investment on brands that are growing and pull back in areas that are not driving growth." This is the strategy Match Group is taking in 2023.
Category: Ship
Dating Apps Wingman and Ship Let Friends Take Over
ESQUIRE – Mar 18 – Tina Wilson is the founder of Wingman, a 3-year-old app that allows users to recruit friends and family to swipe on their behalf. Like many, she was irritated by the fake profiles and bad matches that come with online dating. "I kind of had that light bulb moment," says Wilson. "Wow, wouldn't it be fun if I could just let my friends do it for me? They have great insights. They're always going to toot my horn, and they love me, but they can also talk about my flaws and help me bypass some of the craziness that goes on." Ship is another friend-swiping app that launched last year. It is not surprising that both Wingman and Ship were founded by women; men, studies have found, often have a harder time than women building and maintaining friendships. In Britain, nearly 1 in 5 men says he has no friends at all. According to a spokesperson for Ship, women tend to have more friends swiping on their behalf than men do.
Dating App Ship Lets Friends Find Your Matches
ENGADGET – Aug 15 – The Match Group and Betches Media have now released an Android version of Ship, which lets users swipe for their friends and discuss profiles in group messages. The iOS version, which debuted back in January, is now the fastest-growing dating app in the Match Group family. With Ship, users can invite their friends (as well as parents and siblings) to join a "crew". Members of the user's crew can swipe on dating profiles on their behalf. A "crew chat" group messaging feature can be used for members to discuss the merits of a potential match.
Females ‘Ship’ MatchGroup’s New Dating App
WALL STREET JOURNAL – May 21 – Match Group has teamed up with millennial digital brand Betches to create Ship, which was launched in January. Ship allows friends to vet potential mates for one another. On its first-quarter conference call in early May, Match said Ship is seeing strong engagement in big cities. The company said ~70% of registrations thus far are female and ~60% of matches are made by friends.
Dating Startups Aim For Disruption, But Good Ideas Can’t Buy Them Love From Investors
by Savannah Dowling
See full article at Tech Crunch
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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