Category: Skout.com

Dating Apps Aren’t Obliged To Protect Underage Users

Posted on August 7, 2015

AgeWASHINGTON POST – Aug 6 – Dating apps usually require that their users be above 18 or 21. But Hot Or Not welcomes anyone over 13, the absolute minimum age set by a 1998 law that governs children’s online privacy. Tinder also openly welcomes underage users. 7% of Tinder users are between 13 and 17. Most of these apps do claim to segregate the over-18s from the under-18s. Tinder only shows adult users to other adults. But it is easy to falsely register as a 14-year-old looking to hook up. COPPA, the federal statute that governs how Internet companies interact with kids, only applies to children younger than 14. And under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a site operator can’t be held responsible for the misdeeds of its users. Skout also allows users under 18 but it moderates them relentlessly.

by Caitlin Dewey
See full article at Washington Post

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Summarized by Courtland Brooks Internet Dating Marketing Consulting

Skout Launches Group Messaging App

Posted on June 23, 2014

Skout fuse appTECH CRUNCH – June 20 – Skout, an app backed by Andreessen Horowitz that helps strangers meet locally, is branching out with a new group messaging app called Fuse. Once someone starts a ‘Fuse,’ everyone else has 3-10 minutes to respond. Once the timer ends, all of the content disappears. There’s also a Ghost mode, so people can respond anonymously. Skout CEO Christian Wiklund said they broke out the app separately because they didn’t want to bog down the core Skout experience with too many extra features. That’s a similar decision to what Facebook has done with Paper and Messenger.

by Kim-Mai Cutler
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Skout Partners With Nixter To Help People Find Parties To Go To

Posted on May 5, 2014

Skout logoVENTURE BEAT – May 2 - Skout has acquired Nixter, a small startup with an app that helps people find nightclubs. Together, they are launching NightLifeGraph.com aimed at helping nightclub promoters sell tickets and manage their guest lists. Skout has been profitable for the past six months and is adding 1.5M new users each month. Skout's users are young urban dwellers looking for something to do and someone to do it with. Nixter was founded in 2008 by two pairs of brothers who were working as nightclub promoters. NightLifeGraph.com is free for nightclubs and makes money by charging consumers: For instance, it tacks a $1.54 surcharge onto a $10 ticket. Location-based advertising could be another source of revenue.

by Dylan Tweney
See full article at Venture Beat

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Skout Spams Its Users – Error Or Intention?

Posted on September 6, 2013

Skout logoTECH CRUNCH – Sep 5 – Mobile dating app Skout raised $22 million from Andreessen Horowitz and is more than half a decade old. It also had a recent spate of spamming its users using other user profiles to drive activity. According to Skout, this was caused by a bug which is now fixed. A company with Skout’s scale certainly tracks its metrics and must have noticed the spike in messages being sent.

by Alex Wilhelm
See full article at Tech Crunch

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Skout App May Shut Teen Forum Permanently

Posted on June 22, 2012

Skout logoLA TIMES – June 21 – Skout shut down its forum for 13- to-17-year-olds last week and assigned a team of security specialists to determine whether it can make the app safe for teens. If not, the company plans to close that forum for good. The alleged assaults on two girls, ages 12 and 15, and on a 13-year-old boy underscore how tough it can be to keep kids safe on a new generation of mobile apps. Skout was originally created as a flirting app for adults, and users had to be 18 or older to sign up. It morphed into more of a social networking app that finds people nearby with whom a user can swap messages, photos and virtual gifts and make plans to meet up. But so many of the app’s users were kids (~15%) that last year Skout opened a separate forum for teens.

by Jessica Guynn & Michelle Maltais
The full article was originally published at The Republic, but is no longer available.

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Skout Searches For Answers After Sex-Predator Crisis

Posted on June 17, 2012

Skout logoWSJ – June 15 – 15M people had downloaded Skout. ~15% of the users were 13 to 17 years old. On Tuesday, that all changed. Skout suddenly shut down its teen community amid reports that predators allegedly connected with minors and raped or sexually assaulted them, using Skout’s app to facilitate the meetings. “We would ban all users from Skout if we had to, if we felt their safety was at risk, and we wouldn’t wait to do it,” CEO Wiklund said. Could Skout have prevented the situation with better technology? According to Wiklund, Skout’s security measures already included algorithms and bots that automatically looked for “bad behavior” by users. Skout also used crowdsourced photo moderation provided by Crowdflower to monitor profiles for pornographic content. The teen community generated about 20% of the company’s revenue, the CEO reports. Revenue was not a consideration in shutting it down, he said. Social networks, from Skout to Facebook, have yet to crack the code of accurate age verification online. Credit cards might be a potential avenue to online identity verification. But Wiklund says, “Teens don’t generally have credit cards.” Instead, Skout is considering other approaches. These may involve verifying a user’s identity against their profiles on Facebook.

by Lora Kolodny
See full article at WSJ

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Skout Suspends Service For Teens Amid Rape Allegations

Posted on June 13, 2012

Skout logoLA TIMES – June 12 – Skout has temporarily shut down its services for teens amid a series of rape allegations involving its underage users. "Until we can design better protections, we are temporarily shutting down the under-18 community," founder Christian Wiklund wrote. In the last couple of weeks, three men ranging in age from 21 to 37 have been accused of posing as teenagers on the app's teen forum and allegedly luring boys and girls ages 12 to 15 to sexually assault them, according to a New York Times report. The men, all currently facing criminal charges, allegedly used Skout to contact minors.

by Michelle Maltais
See full article at LA Times

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Skout Is About To Take Over The World

Posted on May 14, 2012

Skout logoBUSINESS INSIDER – May 13 – Christian Wiklund, CEO of Skout, wants to build a global network on the scale of Facebook and Twitter. Skout is adding 40k – 50K new users on the app every day. Dating and flirting only comprises ~20%t of Skout's use cases. Most use it to just meet new friends.

Q: What are you focusing on now?
CW: To build a global network for meeting new people.

Q: Things weren't always doing this well though. 
A: It's really in the past year that we've really taken off. A year ago we were signing up 100K per month. Now it's 40-50k users per day.

Q: What are you using the money you've raised for?
A: I don't want to take one market by market, I want to push everything as quick as possible. We need more engineers, iOS developers and back-end developers.

Q: A big focus now seems to be dating. Will that change?
A: Our lates survey found 80% were now using it for finding new friends, 20% for dating. It's a place people go to socialize. Will there be flirting? Yes. Will there be friendships made? Yes.

Q: What's are the goals for this year?
A: Keep pushing the product forward.

Q: Do you still expect to make money if you shift the focus away from dating?
A: Skout is free. We charge for extras such as seeing who checked you out. My bet is that it's still gonna work.

by Matt Lynley
See full article at Business Insider

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Skout: From Deadpool’s Door To $22M Funding

Posted on April 4, 2012

Skout logoTECH CRUNCH – Apr 3 – Eighteen months ago Christian Wiklund’s company Skout was down to three people after burning much of the $4.6M it had raised since being founded in 2007. Wiklund and his co-founder Niklas Lindstrom put their heads down. They changed the app to focus on young people who wanted to meet strangers and singles who wanted to flirt. Skout’s new app came at a very lucky time in the market. The app supports ~300M messages per month and it’s signing up ~1M users per month. So on the back of this turnaround, Skout is raising $22M in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. With the funding, Skout plans to find a new office that will hold 120 people.

by Kim-Mai Cutler
See full article at Tech Crunch

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This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.

Looking For Location-Based Love

Posted on March 13, 2012

Location based loveBETAKIT – Mar 13 – According to Juniper Research, the mobile dating market is expected to grow to $1.4 billion by 2013, and startups are poised to take advantage of that growth. A recent study by Skout noted that 69% of people were comfortable meeting up with someone they met on their iPhone, and 40% were using a mobile dating service while out at bars, clubs and restaurants. The U.S.-based app also lets romance-seekers view “hotspots” on Google Maps as a fiery glow, representing what locations are currently trending. Grindr uses geolocation to enable users to find other men within close proximity. This is accomplished through a user interface that displays a grid of user pictures, arranged from nearest to farthest away. Tapping on a picture will display a brief profile for that user, as well as the option to chat, send pictures, and share one’s location. Sharing location-based data brings up the question of safety. Ian Bell is the founder of Tingle, a dating app for iPhone. He said the idea of using location in a dating app can make users wary. Tingle tracks a user’s location and shares their proximity, as opposed to a specific location, when users pass near one another.

by Asif Khan
The full article was originally published at Beta Kit, but is no longer available.

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