OkCupid

A new study found that dating app users tripled in India over the course of 2018, thanks mainly to women.

Dating app usage in the Indian market has huge potential, and not just because of the impressive growth over the last year. Overall user penetration still rather low at 2.7 percent as of 2018, but it’s expected to hit 3.2 percent by 2023 according to online market researcher Statista. Analysts also expect the market to be valued at $100 million in the next five to eight years, according to a report in LiveMint.

In late June, a Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to sending threatening letters to OkCupid’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas, in retaliation for banning him from the dating app.

According to a report in The New York Post, Liam MacLeod was banned from the app for repeatedly violating the terms of service back in 2017. The 47 year-old man then began sending threatening letters, some with a “blood-like substance” according to The Post, and others with a “suspicious white powder.” All of the mailings were addressed to OkCupid’s Chief Executive Officer.

Match Group announced some changes in key leadership and company structure in light of its new focus on the Asian market.

As U.S. and European markets make up the bulk of revenue for Match Group, the company sees great untapped potential in Asian markets, where young single populations are booming. According to Tech Crunch, there are more than 400 million singles in Southeast Asia and two-thirds have not tried a dating app.

Match Group is focusing on Japan, Taiwan, India, South Korea and Southeast Asia with three new general managers hired to oversee expansion in these areas. One manager is Junya Ishibashi, who will become general manager of Match Group for Japan and Taiwan. Taru Kapoor will be general manager of Match Group India, and Lyla Seo is now GM of Match Group for South Korea and Southeast Asia.

After more than two years in the top spot, Netflix is no longer the world’s highest-grossing non-gaming mobile app. That title now goes to Tinder, which grossed $260.7 million from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in the first quarter of this year.

App store intelligence firm Sensor Tower recently released its rankings of the highest grossing apps in the United States and worldwide for Q1 2019. Overall, global app revenue reached $19.5 billion last quarter, up nearly 17 percent year-over-year. Consumer spending on Apple’s App Store totaled approximately $12.4 billion globally, while Google Play revenue grew 20.2 percent year-over-year to approximately $7.1 billion. The world is increasingly moving to mobile, and for companies that are prepared to capitalize on the change, the potential for profit is huge.

HBO is set to air the eighth and final season Game of Thrones this month. For the show’s devoted viewers, it will be sad to say goodbye, but OkCupid is making sure fans won’t have to suffer alone. Users who publicly answer “yes” to the question “Do you watch Game of Thrones?” will now receive a profile badge prominently declaring their love for the series.

OkCupid predicts the badge will lead to 20% more likes and 15% more conversations for those who have it on their profiles. The idea may sound silly, but Game of Thrones has over 2 million mentions on OkCupid profiles. Shared interests are, if not a predictor of deep compatibility, then at least a good conversation starter. Television is something singles want to connect over.

February might be the season of love, but recent reports of hacking incidents may have you thinking twice before opening your favorite dating app. OkCupid is the subject of not one but two such stories - first a report revealing the dating site has denied a data breach despite multiple users’ claims of their accounts being hacked and stolen, and now the discovery of a security flaw from Israel-based cybersecurity firm Checkmarx.

According to researchers at Checkmarx, a vulnerability in the Android version of OkCupid’s mobile app could have exposed users to attacks of varying severity from cybercriminals. Bad actors could exploit the flaw to monitor usage of the app, read messages, track a user’s geographic location, send links with self-replicating malware or impersonate the victim.

“The disruptive potential of this attack is frightening as it is not hard to implement, it is not easy to detect by a typical user, and has high ​confidentiality​, high integrity​ and high ​availability​ impact,” said researchers in a post explaining the potential impact of the flaw.