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.

The pressure to write the perfect dating profile is enormous. It needs to be confident but not arrogant, intriguing but not cryptic, unique but not outlandish, alluring but not unapproachable. There’s nothing easy about condensing your personality into a few carefully curated sentences and photographs. Inevitably, things must be left out. But which things?

For many users, the answer is sexual preferences. It’s an easy detail to omit - and some would say the rules of decency require such details to be omitted - but brothers Emerson and Morris Hsieh see things differently. The young co-founders launched Waves, a dating app that allows users to match based on sexual interests, and are currently part of famed incubator Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 batch.

Match Group, owner of Tinder, OkCupid, PlentyOfFish and Match.com, has added a new name to its portfolio of dating platforms: Harmonica. The Egyptian online dating startup has been acquired by Match Group for an undisclosed sum.

Harmonica was founded in early 2017 by Sameh Saleh, Tamer Saleh, Shaymaa Aly and Aly Khaled. The app aims to help singles in the Middle East match with potential life partners while respecting the faith, traditions, and culture of the region.

“Two years ago, we founded Harmonica with our sisters, cousins, and friends in mind, with the goal of helping them find a perfect partner. It was critical that what we built was something to protect them and represent the values that our community cares deeply about,” Sameh Saleh said in a statement. “It was also important that our parents would be comfortable with them using our app. We’ve already facilitated hundreds of marriages just in Egypt and believe that with Match Group’s vast experience, there are exciting opportunities ahead.”

Hingie - Hinges new Mascot

Hinge just launched a new international marketing campaign to double down on its new tagline – “designed to be deleted.”

The ads feature a furry and adorable mascot – Hingie – who appears when a young woman logs on to her Hinge account and begins messaging a new guy. Hingie continues to lurk in the vicinity as she goes on dates, enduring all sorts of tortures through their budding relationship until he’s no longer needed – he’s burnt by a candle, bitten by a dog, pummeled with arrows, and crushed by a fan.

When the couple find love and delete the app, Hingie explodes, leaving behind a flurry of little red and pink hearts.

Study on Access to Personal Info by Dating Apps

Image: datingroo

Dating app users often don’t realize how much personal information they are giving away just by signing up. But Datingroo, a U.K.-based online dating research company, has released a new study that shows exactly how little privacy most dating app users have.

Datingroo studied the ten most popular dating apps from Tinder to PlentyofFish to eHarmony, examining 45 personal data access points in 13 categories such as precise location, other accounts on the device, network connections, and modification or deletion of the contents on USB storage, and found some surprising results.

Among all the apps, Badoo and PlentyofFish have access to the most data in user’s devices (92% of all access points studied). Combined, they have more than 522 million users worldwide, which means they have access to an enormous amount of information. Coffee Meets Bagel has the fewest users (7 million), as well as the least data access.