Match Group

When it comes to our personal lives and how we spend our time – many of us like to share what we’re doing over social media. We post pictures of the food we eat, talk about the five miles we ran in the morning, and want our friends and followers to know if we’ve started a cleanse or just lost ten pounds.

While these are good updates for your friends to rally around, offering supportive comments over Facebook and likes on Instagram, is it really helping your dating life? According to a new study by dating site PlentyofFish, fad diets and talking about your health routines are a huge turn-off for daters.

Gen Xers and Millennials believe their followers want to see and hear everything about the healthy lifestyles they adopt, but this survey shows that the diet and fitness craze is not only driving couples apart, but preventing singles from creating new relationships.

In terms of restrictive diets, 70% of women and 75% of men don’t want to date someone on a gluten-free, low/no carb or vegetarian diet. In addition, 47% of singles surveyed don’t want to date a vegan, either. (Sorry animal lovers.) While the jury is out on why this is the case, at least among POF users, perhaps most people don’t want to limit their own options or vary their routines, especially if they don’t know the relationship will work out in the end.

Exercise is another challenge for daters, with men being less than supportive of their girlfriends and dates than many people might think. Thirty percent of women have felt pressure from a partner to improve their exercise habits. Even more alarming – men admit it. Twenty-eight percent of men said they pressured a woman they were dating to exercise more, 32% pressured a woman to improve her eating habits, and 11% have broken up with a woman over exercise.

Women are the first to deprive themselves in preparation for a date, too. Twenty-two percent have dieted or not eaten in the time leading up to a big date.

When it comes to keeping fit – men and women differ on what it means to exercise. Thirty-nine percent of women walk, while 40% of men lift weights.

Interestingly, the PlentyOfFish survey targeted the most health-conscious users in North America's 10 fittest cities to reveal how singles view fitness and diet when it comes to forming romantic relationships. As it turns out, the most health-conscious daters are not the most tolerant of others who might be good romantic partners in other ways. Maybe it’s time we went a bit outside our comfort zones.

For more on the dating site which brought us this study you can read our POF review.

Tinder has hit a bit of a rough patch lately. The company behind the hyper-popular mobile dating app was recently slapped with a lawsuit by its former VP of Marketing, Whitney Wolfe. In the suit, Wolfe alleges that she was sexually harassed and discriminated against at work, stripped of her co-founder title, and forced out of the company when she complained.

There’s no question that Wolfe’s accusations have affected the people involved, one of whom was suspended indefinitely, but what remains to be seen is whether they affect the company as a whole and its majority shareholder IAC.

Investors have been hoping that IAC, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, would use Tinder’s success to spin off its online dating businesses into a separate company, thereby making IAC shares more valuable. But now that Tinder’s in trouble, that prospect could be in trouble too. “Given what’s going on at Tinder, I would assume that probably would cause IAC and Match to think a little bit longer and harder about pursuing that at this juncture,” Scott Kessler, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ, told Bloomberg News last week.

I’m just guessing here, but IAC and its shareholders probably aren’t too pleased at this complication throwing a wrench in a very lucrative opportunity. Investors have been encouraging IAC execs for months to speed up the process of making Match its own business, but now their plans may be thwarted (or at least slowed down).

Last year, IAC made $788 million in revenue from membership and subscription dues for dating services – well more than twice what it had made five years earlier, despite the fact that they have yet to monetize Tinder. What's more important than revenue for investors is market value, which Tinder has in spades. Tinder is one of the hottest commodities on the market right now, and creating the separate Match group could cause spikes in the stock prices of both IAC and the newly formed company.

History has shown that this is a good move for IAC. When the company separated Match from its search business, its stock price jumped significantly. Barry Diller, IAC’s chairman, has also seen huge profits from spinning off businesses from IAC. The question now is whether or not Tinder is damaged goods and, if so, just how damaged. So far the company is remaining frustratingly tight-lipped about both Tinder’s trouble and the possibility of Match becoming its own company.

I think a lot of things while sitting at my computer, but until now, none of those things have involved which giant Internet company has the hottest employees. I was perfectly content to search for cat videos on Google and order weird home appliances I’ll never use on Amazon without thinking about the attractiveness of the people on the other side of those companies.

Then Hinge came along, a dating app that matches young professionals in similar networks, and decided that was no way to live. According to Hinge, users are 14.2% more likely to “swipe right” for Amazon employees than their counterparts at tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Microsoft came in second, with right swipes occurring 8.2% more often than average. Apple ranks as the least attractive tech firm, with a dismal percentage of 0.2, which is a bit surprising given the cool factor attached to all things Apple.

Before you rush to send in your resume to Amazon, consider the facts behind the findings. Amazon reported having 117,300 employees as of January, including part-time workers. In contrast, Microsoft is home to 99,000 employees, Apple to 80,300, Google to 47,756, and Facebook to 6,337. Because Hinge connects daters through their career networks, it’s likely that more Amazon employees are on the app in the first place.

Oh, and there’s also the fact that Hinge found Amazon employees to be the least “picky” of all the tech companies. Meaning, in the app world, that they’re more likely to swipe right on a profile. And meaning, in the real world, that they’re not exactly selective about who they go on dates with (no judgment, of course…do your thang, Amazon employees). Amazon employees’ more open minded approach to dating could also account for their higher numbers.

Facebook employees displayed the most pickiness – defined by how often the users pass on prospective matches by swiping left – of the bunch. Employees at the social network turned down potential matches 7.5% more than the average Hinge user. Apple employees were found to be the second pickiest, though at a rate of only 0.5% more than average.

On the whole, techie types stacked up well against the competition. Men and women at four of the five companies were all rated more attractive than the average Hinge user (the fifth, Apple, got right-swiped at about the average rate).

Good luck ever ordering from Amazon again without thinking about the hottie who may be processing your order on the other side.

IAC is positioning itself to be the center of the online dating world. Its 150 brands are cornering the market, particularly Match.com, OkCupid, and popular dating app Tinder. Now, it’s added How About We to its roster. Neither IAC or How About We disclosed the purchase price.

How About We offers a unique twist in online dating – focusing on the offline part of the process. Members can create date ideas, post them to How About We, and see if anyone cares to join them on the date. This bypasses the typical process of scrolling through profiles and matches as you would do on other sites.

The company has gone through a lot of changes in the last couple of years, starting with broadening its reach to include curated dating services for couples (extending their user base and approach beyond just the singles market). More recently, the company purchased popular online dating site Nerve.com, and added three new content websites to the mix to offer editorial on dating advice, celebrities, sex, relationships, and other hot topics.

Did it spread itself too thin?

According to the New York Times, How About We co-founder Aaron Schildkrout (now the chief executive for This Life, Inc., the parent company of How About We) thinks this will only broaden their opportunities. “We spent the last five years building and scaling HowAboutWe; our unique ‘offline dating’ experience has been used by millions of people and has helped many, many people fall in love. Our new partnership with IAC will help us bring this dating experience to an even larger number of people than ever before.”

This contradicts his statements earlier this year, where he positioned the company to compete heavily with IAC. “The online dating business is completely monopolized — IAC owns online dating,” Schechter told Fortune in January. “So what we’re trying to do is build a media company whose sole focus is love. And we think that’s the way to beat IAC.”

The How About We dating service and media properties were sold to IAC, but a portion of the company remains independent: the couples service. Last month, employees were reportedly left in the dark about whether or not they would be fired in the wake of the acquisition, with some being promised they would stay only later to find that offer recanted.

According to the New York Times, some employees will be moving to IAC, others will be staying to work on the couples service, and some have been laid off.

Most things are going brilliantly for Tinder these days, but one thing most certainly is not. Whitney Wolfe, Tinder’s former vice president of marketing, slapped the company with a sexual discrimination lawsuit at the end of June.

In the suit, Wolfe claims her former boss called her a “whore” at a company event in the presence of Tinder CEO Sean Rad and that she was stripped of her status as a Tinder co-founder. When she complained about her treatment to other executives, including Rad, she says they forced her out of the company.

The story goes back to 2013, when Wolfe and chief marketing officer Justin Mateen dated for several months. After they broke up, Wolfe claims Mateen sent her a series of inappropriate text messages and e-mails filled with racist and sexist language. When she complained to Rad and Match.com CEO Sam Yagan, they allegedly ignored her repeated complaints about his behaviour.

Wolfe also contends that Mateen told her she was not listed in Tinder’s press materials as a co-founder because having “a girl founder” who was just 24-years-old (at the time) would devalue the company. Later, after Mateen allegedly called her a “whore” in front of Rad and other co-workers, Wolfe says she offered to resign in exchange for “modest severance” and the vesting of her stock options. Instead, she claims, she was fired.

John Mullan, one of Wolfe’s attorneys, said in a statement that Wolfe “lost her job simply for refusing to take the abuse any longer.” Another one of her attorneys said “IAC and Match.com, which own Tinder, allowed this culture to exist and did nothing to prevent the discrimination or harassment. IAC and Match.com need to be held responsible for their failure to supervise the executives at Tinder. There really was no ‘adult in the room.’”

In response, IAC indefinitely suspended Mateen. “Through that process, it has become clear that Mr. Mateen sent private messages to Ms. Wolfe containing inappropriate content,” the company said in a statement. “We unequivocally condemn these messages, but believe that Ms. Wolfe’s allegations with respect to Tinder and its management are unfounded.”

The story gets more complex when you try to determine who actually is a legitimate co-founder of Tinder. TechCrunch did an in-depth examination of the people involved in Tinder’s creation and it’s…convoluted, to say the least. It’s hard to see how they themselves can keep up with it all (and maybe they can't), much less anyone else.

Wolfe is seeking compensatory damages, including for lost pay and benefits, as well as punitive damages for emotional distress.

We all know about dating app Tinder by now. It’s known less for its accuracy in matchmaking and more for its accessibility in meeting people anytime, anywhere – who are up for a brief fling or flirtatious chat. While Tinder is getting a lot of name recognition, another dating app called Hinge is slowly surfacing, city by city, taking the dating app world by storm and attracting a recent round of $4.5 million in venture capital money.

Why is Hinge getting so much attention (and money)? Because it is differentiating itself from Tinder in the most basic of ways. Hinge is focused on the quality of matches, which means instead of scrolling through endless photos and swiping left or right, the app finds a fixed number of matches for each user that they think suit you. Hinge is all about playing matchmaker. (It also doesn’t help Tinder that its CMO Justin Mateen was suspended recently for sexual harassment.)

Hinge matches people based on particular factors, namely profession, education history, and interests, as well who you’ve been interested in previously. What’s different about the dating app is that it’s not just pairing you with people from your circles with the same job or who went to the same college. Hinge looks for less obvious connections, like that Ivy League college alums like to intermingle, or that guys in finance like to date female lawyers. Plus, matches are all gained through your Facebook circles (friends of friends only), and you must have a Facebook friend who’s already on Hinge in order to join. It makes for a kind of exclusive club feeling.

Hinge started small in the D.C. area, but it’s iOS and Android userbase is up 300% this year in the nine cities it operates in: DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and L.A.

Hinge however isn’t focused solely on the dating game. They want to move in the direction of the so-called “social discovery” app, where they match people who could be friends based on interests.

The new $4.5 million round from Founders Fund and Lowercase Capital brings Hinge to $8.6 million in total funding. Right now, Hinge is free, but in order to be profitable for its investors the company is probably looking into adding premium services for a fee, or potentially licensing its technology, according to website Tech Crunch.

For now, it’s slow-growth approach and catered matchmaking are making it a big hit, especially among the more serious and discerning female daters. It will be interesting to see where it goes next.