Profiles

Peter English, who founded popular travel site Kayak.com, has turned to a new venture. He and his partner Rachel Cohen are launching an app called Lola Dating.

According to a feature in The Boston Globe, Lola is designed to get people to meet IRL. The app offers users a calendar up front, and invites them to look for openings over the next four days (the sooner they can schedule a date, the better it seems). Lola users can mark the times and dates they are free, and the app takes it from there, matching them only with people available on the same night. The app will only be available for residents of Boston at launch.

According to its founders, meeting in real life quickly is key. They met after connecting on Bumble and instead of messaging back and forth, scheduled to meet in person right away. They were both convinced that endless messaging without getting to know each other in real life was a real problem among dating app users.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has passed The Online Dating Safety Act. It is now eligible to be brought to a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, though the timing of the vote remains unclear.

According to The Washington Examiner, the Act would require dating app services to provide a “fraud ban notification” to users who have been in contact with a user who had previously been removed from the platform for fraudulent activity. Additionally, the notification would have to include a statement that the banned member may have been using a false identity or attempting to defraud other users.

Bill H.R. 6125 also requires the notification to include a warning that the user being targeted by the fraudulent actor should not send money or personal information to another member, as well as a link to resources on fraud prevention and tips on how to avoid online fraud, according to The Ripon Advance. The bill stipulates that the dating platforms must provide a customer service number that is attached to the warning so that users have someone to speak with if they have questions or concerns.

Blued, China’s most popular gay dating app, plans to expand in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. while the Chinese government clamps down on LGBTQIA content.

According to Rest of World, Blued’s new parent company New Town wants to make the platform “the world’s largest social network for the LGBTQIA community,” and part of its strategy is to encourage user participation and community interaction, especially outside of China.

New Town’s CEO Li Ping sees enormous potential in the LGBTQIA market, and intends to grow the platform by targeting markets in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and North America. “The growth of the LGBTQ population in Southeast Asia and North America is particularly evident,” a spokesperson told Rest of World.

Match Group’s new queer dating app Archer launched nationwide on October 11th, which was also National Coming Out Day. And to celebrate, the app hosted parties at popular gay bars across the country.

The app’s headquarters is based in Dallas and Austin (also Match Group’s headquarters), which have some of the country’s most active LGBTQIA+ scenes. Prior to launch, the app was tested in the New York and Los Angeles markets and saw early success, especially among younger users. The company points out that 62 percent of people on Archer were 35 years or younger, according to Culture Map Austin.

The launch parties and events taking place in major cities (though not Austin), are in line with Archer’s mission: an app designed to foster a social environment. The app is marketed as a “social first” app, allowing users to express themselves through photos, messaging (including group messaging), and connecting without any kind of preset label. In fact, the profiles are arranged in feed and grid view options typically found in social media, rather than on dating apps.

Cybersecurity company Avast has pointed to a popular AI tool that is helping scammers build better fake dating profiles and manipulate unsuspecting dating app users.

Nicknamed LoveGPT, the software has been around a while, but now its capabilities are stronger since it has incorporated AI into its tool. Now, LoveGPT can create more believable and better crafted profiles to trap users into interacting with them, not realizing they are chatting with a bot. This makes it easier to lure them into a scam.

According to website Decrypt, Avast claims that LoveGPT can create fake profiles on at least 13 different dating sites while it scrapes user photos, messages, profile bios, and other data. (It stores the scraped data in multiple databases.) The tool then separates users into different demographic categories, such as age, to better target victims and create more realistic profiles.

Image: Tinder & Peacock

Dating app Tinder has partnered with Peacock streaming service to launch “Horror Movies” as an in-app Interest and also to host private date night screenings for horror movie fans.

The new Horror Movies Interest badge Tinder is adding allows its users to filter and search for those who share a love of scary films, according to Tinder’s press release. In addition, Peacock is adding a new dedicated “For You and Boo” date night collection to its service, which will be available starting October 5th.

To add the new interest badge to their profiles, users can go to “edit profile” and scroll down through the interests to find “Horror Movies,” and select it. Once added, Tinder users will also be eligible for an exclusive in-app offer, but only between October 4 and October 31.