Online Dating

Dating app Bumble announced that it will be sponsoring the seventh annual Prohibition NYE in downtown Los Angeles. The popular New Year’s Eve party has a “Roaring Twenties” theme against the backdrop of the historic Union Station.

The event is organized by McCullough and Ross in partnership with KCRW, and features world-class DJs, a live jazz ensemble, burlesque, and an open bar for guests. Live acts include local artist Classixx and Lyndsay and the All Nighters, according to the event’s PR. To help guests ring in the New Year with appropriate festivity, a ball will drop from the famous art deco ceiling of the train station.

Bumble users will be able to get into the event by showing an active profile on their phones, so if you’re interested in attending, be sure to download the app and set it up before arriving to the yellow-carpeted entrance. There will also be a photo booth, so it’s encouraged to dress for the occasion.

Tinder has fired a group of employees who brought a lawsuit against parent company Match Group and its controlling shareholder IAC, according to website The Verge who broke the story. Tinder did not reveal how many people were fired, but former communications VP Rosette Pambakian was notably among them.

Tinder employees who brought the lawsuit against Match Group alleged that the company had manipulated financial data in order to lower the company’s valuation, forcing former co-founder and CEO Sean Rad among others to accept less money than they claim their shares were worth.

In addition, the lawsuit includes Pambakian’s allegation that former CEO Greg Blatt also sexually harassed her at a company holiday party.

MeetMe Battles

The Meet Group, a portfolio of brands in the mobile social networking and entertainment space, is rolling out a new feature called Battles on its MeetMe and Skout apps.

“Battles brings an exciting competitive dynamic to Live, and we are thrilled to bring this new feature to our users,” said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group. “We believe that the addition of Battles will contribute to our growing video revenue run-rate, which exceeded $62 million annualized, based on the month of November, up from the $55 million number we reported in October. Momentum in video revenue has continued into December, and this past weekend we achieved the highest video revenue day in our history.”

Battles is The Meet Group’s latest bid to harness the power of streaming video. The feature brings together two livestreamers and their audiences for a live showdown. The competitors can challenge each other in a variety of categories ranging from music, to dance, to comedy and more. Each battle lasts only a few minutes. The winner is the streamer who earns the most diamonds by receiving gifts from viewers during the battle.

Match has just launched a new feature called the Super Match Badge (currently in the UK only), allowing women to award men who check off all parts of Match’s profile and behavior requirements. The purpose of the badge is for women to immediately identify great candidates who they might want to meet.

Match is making an effort to appeal to women who have had to deal with less-than-tolerable behavior from men over dating apps. Many online daters have complained about ghosting and sending inappropriate messages and photos, and this is Match’s way of addressing the issue.

It’s also a good strategy for men who use dating apps – you can set yourself apart from the crowd.

These so-called Match Heroes who receive the Super Match Badge have to complete many steps in the process, including:

Facebook is closing out a troubling year with even more bad news. On December 14, the company revealed that a software bug had exposed the photos of millions of users to outside developers. This latest privacy misstep reportedly involves up to 1500 apps by 876 developers and may have affected as many as 6.8 million users.

For an app to be affected by the bug, it had to have been approved by Facebook to access the photos API as well as authorized by users to access their photos. A spokeswoman declined to provide a list of developers who had access to the photos to The Guardian, saying only that Facebook does not think all of them took advantage of that access while it was available.

Tomer Bar, an engineering director at Facebook, explained the details of the bug in a post on the company’s developer blog.

Dating app Hinge wants its users to meet in person over cuffing season, specifically over burritos from Chipotle.

Hinge partnered with the popular Mexican food chain to offer free burritos for its users from December 13-31, the height of cuffing season when people tend to hook up during the cold days of winter. What better time to share a hot, delicious meal with someone you met over a dating app?

Hinge users get a buy one/ get one free deal for burritos, salad, or an order of tacos, according to website Bustle.