Partnerships

Image: ABC

Sick and tired of the relentless positivity of people trying to put their best foot forward on dating apps? Brendan Alper has the solution - now with Mark Cuban’s blessing, Shark Tank stardom, and a six-digit investment.

Alper is the brains behind Hater, an unusual take on digital dating that matches users based on things they can’t stand. Instead of mutual likes, Hater searches for mutual dislikes, prompting singles to bond over their most despised people, places, things, and concepts.

Following a successful public debut around Valentine’s Day in 2017, Alper appeared this month on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank to take Hater to the next level.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. A dating app is teaming up with a voice-activated digital assistant to help tech-savvy singles find love hands-free.

Earlier this month, eHarmony announced a partnership with Amazon to bring a branded skill to Alexa. Enabling it allows eHarmony users to hear their matches and messages by voice, ask for more details about their dating prospects, and have photos of their connections sent to their smartphones.

This time around, it’s not eHarmony or Alexa that’s in the news. Plenty Of Fish has announced an integration with the Google Assistant on Google Home, as well as eligible Android and iOS phones. Same premise, different devices.

The divide between dating and politics is getting smaller, especially since the 2016 election. Many American daters are opting to put the political beliefs of potential partners front and center when it comes to seeing if there’s a spark. And dating apps are noticing this trend, too.

In September, OkCupid announced its alliance with Planned Parenthood Federation of America to allow its customers to show their political leanings when it comes to female reproductive health. OkCupid is offering an #IStandWithPP badge that shows up on the profile of anyone who has publicly answered “no” to the question “should the government defund Planned Parenthood?” The app’s algorithms will also consider the badge when matching you with potential partners.

But users can choose to keep their feelings to themselves. “When you answer a question on OkCupid, you have the option to make your answer public or private,” Melissa Hobley, CMO of OkCupid, told website Bustle. “Only if you publicly answered that you support Planned Parenthood, then you receive the badge automatically. If you don't want the badge on your profile, then you can mark your answer as private.”

eHarmony New Skill for Amazons Alexa

There’s no shortage of apps and websites to help lonely hearts find love, but there’s only one voice-activated digital assistant playing matchmaker for tech-savvy singles.

Amazon is teaming up with online dating platform eHarmony to launch a new skill for its AI-equipped, hands-free Alexa speaker. eHarmony users who enable the skill will be able to hear their matches and messages by voice, and ask Alexa for more details about their dating prospects.

The ability to access eHarmony matches through Alexa is the latest move by eHarmony to make it easier for people to connect and date in a fast paced world. "Alexa provides a unique, human element to eHarmony," said Grant Langston, chief executive officer of eHarmony, in a statement. "The eHarmony skill for Alexa advises singles on matches who are compatible and sent messages. The eHarmony skill for Alexa also surfaces pertinent information, like location and occupation that some people might gloss over if they are just quickly swiping at attractive pictures. With the eHarmony skill for Alexa, people can focus more on the other elements of a profile by listening to her."

Are you single and do you love to travel? Delta Airlines is hoping so, because it just launched a marketing campaign with Tinder to promote its worldwide destinations to adventure-loving singles.

Delta commissioned artist Andrew Rae and advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy New York to create photo murals of several enviable travel destinations for people to use as backdrops for taking selfies. Rae painted funny and hip illustrations alongside each exotic scene. (The airline commissioned this project specifically in New York.)

The vibrant and colorful backdrops are on a brick building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, so singles can take pictures with their phones, upload the pics to their Tinder profiles, and declare themselves jetsetters without actually traveling to the destinations. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek and offers daters a new way of promoting themselves over the dating app.

Office romance? What could go wrong? Dating co-workers is a notoriously risky proposition, and yet, one dating app thought playing cupid in the workplace could be its next big move.

Feeld, a service originally created for threesomes, made the bold decision to launch ‘Feeld for Slack’ - a bot designed to allow employees to share their office crushes in the popular team messaging platform.

To be used, a designated administrator at a company has to install the app. Once it's downloaded, anyone on the Slack team can direct message @Feeld and enter the name of their crush. If the feeling is mutual, both people receive a notification. If not, no one is ever the wiser.