Online Dating

Rosette Pambakian

Rosette Pambakian, former Tinder VP of marketing and communications, is suing the company and its ex-CEO. Pambakian filed a lawsuit on Monday, August 5, accusing the former CEO of Match Group and Tinder, Gregory Blatt, of harassing and sexually assaulting her at a company holiday party in 2016. The suit also alleges that the company fired Pambakian in retaliation for going public with her accusations.

Pambakian says the assault took place at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. According to the lawsuit, Blatt approached Pambakian at the party and made sexual comments to her “in a lewd voice.” Pambakian says she went to a hotel room upstairs with two colleagues to get away from Blatt, but later that night, he found his way to their room. When he entered, he groped and kissed Pambakian while the two colleagues, one of whom was Blatt’s executive assistant, witnessed the nonconsensual encounter. Together they distracted Blatt until he finally left in a car service, the complaint says.

Match Group is serious about its expansion in the Asian market. It just announced the launch of its new app Pairs Engaged – a “marriage concierge” service to compete with the country’s popular arranged marriage industry.

Pairs Engaged is the opposite of the company’s star dating app Tinder. There’s no casual glancing through photos and swiping left and right. Instead, the customers Match Group is targeting are looking to get married within a year and are serious about the search process.

OkCupid is known for its progressive approach to dating, and soon after its provocative “DTF” campaign in the U.S., the dating app company is launching another unconventional ad campaign in India to appeal to younger daters.

The new campaign is called “Find My Kind,” and aims to give more agency to people looking for a partner. Indian singles have typically adhered to tradition when it comes to finding partners – relying on friends and family members to set them up on dates or seeking arranged marriages.

But younger daters, and especially female daters, have more agency in modern India because they are career-focused and more financially independent than previous generations. In order to appeal to potential customers who are part of this cultural shift - but might not know how to meet potential dates outside of familiar circles - OkCupid has designed an ad that takes viewers through the dating app process.

Momo ended 2018 on a mixed note. In the good column: revenue jumped 51 percent in the third quarter of the year and net income rose nearly 8 percent year-over-year. In the bad column: news broke that 30 million Momo users may have been affected by a data leak.

If there was any doubt then which column would win in the end, it’s long gone now. Momo is back on its feet and recently scored the coveted number one spot on Fortune’s 2019 list of Fastest-Growing Companies in the world. It’s the Chinese dating app’s first appearance on the annual top 100 list.

Hornet Dating App on Google Play

Hornet has accused Google of discrimination after its app was removed from the Google Play store several times with no explanation. The gay dating app’s CEO, Christof Wittig, expressed concern that Google’s moderators in Malaysia were blocking Hornet because same-sex relationships are illegal in their contry.

Founded in 2011, Hornet has become a popular gay social network with over 25 million users globally. Hornet’s success has propelled it to the top of the market for gay apps in countries as diverse as France, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan. The company has also been hard at work expanding its user base in the United States.

Swipe right for romance and… revolution? As the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong continue into their third month, and the police response has become violent, demonstrators are growing increasingly creative in their tactics. Tech-savvy activists are now turning to their favorite mobile apps - including Telegram, WhatsApp, Pokemon Go and Tinder - to organize demonstrations and share tips for evading authorities.

Gavin Huang, an editor for the Chinese culture website Goldthread, took to Twitter to share a photo of a Tinder profile he encountered. “So it’s come to this,” he wrote on August 1, “I’m getting protest info on Tinder.” The attached screenshot shows a profile picture with a schedule of protest events and a bio inviting curious swipers to join a strike.