Dating Services

After a tumultuous year that involved an FTC lawsuit, a split from parent company IAC and the departure of CEO Mandy Ginsberg, Match Group has published its fourth quarter and full year financial results for 2019. Total revenue for the company exceeded $2 billion for the first time.

For the third quarter 2019, Match Group shared the following highlights:

• Total Revenue grew 20 percent over the prior year quarter to $547 million
• Average Subscribers increased 19 percent to 9.8 million, up from 8.2 million in the prior year quarter, and ARPU increased 1 cent to $0.59
• Operating income was $180 million, an increase of 19 percent over the prior year quarter
• Adjusted EBITDA increased 22 percent over the prior year quarter to $215 million

Match Group reported annual earnings for 2019, and its star dating app Tinder came out on top with almost $1.2 billion in revenue for the year.

Tinder had on average 5.9 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2019, 36 percent more than the previous year according to The Verge. At the same time, Reuters reported in early February that Match Group missed its fourth quarter revenue estimates as subscriber growth on Tinder fell to its lowest since the fourth quarter of 2018, perhaps an early sign of market saturation. 

Grindr’s 2020 is off to a difficult start. In just a few short weeks, Grindr was accused of violating the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) data protection legislation by the Norwegian Consumer Council, found itself the subject of three complaints filed with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, and was suspended from Twitter’s ad platform as a result. The popular gay dating app is also under investigation by the U.S. House Oversight and Reform subcommittee for doing an inadequate job of screening minors.

Adding to Grindr’s growing list of concerns is new research showing that the company’s Android application was exploited to defraud advertisers. According to a report from Pixalate, the Palo Alto-based fraud detection firm that discovered the scam, the app was used to facilitate a cross-device ad fraud scheme that tricked advertisers into thinking they were purchasing ads on Roku-connected devices. Pixalate named the scheme “DiCaprio” after discovering the A-list Hollywood name used in a file containing some of the malicious code.

Facebook has been forced to delay the launch of its signature dating service in Europe after failing to provide the European Union data regulator with a required assessment of privacy risks to users. 

According to CNet, The Irish Data Protection Commission raised concerns about Facebook’s privacy practices, and whether the company complied with the European Union’s data protection rules, which are more stringent than those in the U.S. 

Under these new rules, companies considered to be “high risk” in the handling of personal information of users are required to conduct a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) prior to being approved. This includes a written report addressing and outlining potential privacy risks, which the agency said Facebook did not provide, even after the agency sent regulators to Facebook’s Dublin office to gather the required documentation, according to Tech Crunch. 

Match Group announced the roll out of new filter features for its star dating app Tinder, following suit with Bumble, who rolled out similar features late last year.

The filter features include both free and paid options, according to Tech Crunch, but Match Group did not disclose many details, other than comparing the features to Tinder U, which filters matches solely to other nearby college students. 

Match Group aims “to make the utility of Tinder better and more efficient,” according to CEO Mandy Ginsberg, who just announced she’ll be leaving the company after fourteen years at the end of February. 

It’s been almost half a decade since news of Ashley Madison’s hacking scandal was heard ‘round the world. Now, just as memories of the hack had started to fade, data from the breach is at the center of a new cyber extortion scam.

In summer 2015, all the dating industry could talk about was The Impact Team — the group of hackers that gained access to Ashley Madison’s database of more than 37 million members and threatened to release customer records unless the dating site for adulterers shut down. The hackers made good on their threat and Ashley Madison found itself facing a $760 million class action lawsuit. Though some predicted that it could be the end of the dating site, Ashley Madison held strong and celebrated reaching 60 million members last year.