Dating Services

Did you eat at a new neighborhood cafe for lunch? Do you want to share this over Tinder? There’s a new feature the dating app is testing called “Places,” which lets potential matches know where you’ve been.

Website The Verge broke the story with screenshots of the new feature, showing how GPS tracking can now be used as a way to connect with your dates. The idea behind Places is similar to dating app Happn, where users can see if they had any missed connections during the day, depending on where they’d been. Let’s say you stopped for morning coffee at your local shop and one of your potential matches also happened to be there. Places will alert you so that you can message your match to let her know you were there too, and start a conversation.

Image: Verge

A concerning issue with the new feature is that Tinder is in charge of documenting and revealing your locations to other users. Instead of allowing users to “check in” when they want to share their location, Tinder automatically chooses to reveal or hide the location. For example, you might go to your dentist appointment and then stop for coffee on the way back to work. Tinder won’t report that you’ve been to the dentist, but it might choose to reveal the coffee shop you visited.

Image: bumble

Bumble announced the launch of its new creative endeavor: granting five female filmmakers and screenwriters in the U.K. $27,000 each to make a short film. This marks the company’s first official move into the original content space, following in the steps of Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes.

Bumble’s content shingle, dubbed The Female Film Force, came to fruition after the 2018 awards season, where only 15% of Oscar winners and 20% of BAFTA winners were female. Bumble wanted to ensure more women’s voices were heard and reflected in film, so its executives decided to launch this initiative.

Bumble writes on its website:

What’s a bigger turn off: a sloppy kiss or sloppy grammar? According to the second annual “Conversation Nation” study from Plenty of Fish, adult singles consider lackluster conversation a greater offense than lousy sex.

POF took a deep dive into the communication habits of daters across the U.S. for Conversation Nation 2018, surveying 2,000 men and women over 18 years of age to discover how singles connect in the digital era.

“Singles are prioritizing conversations over physical attraction,” dating expert Shannon Smith told Metro. “We’re seeing again and again from user testimonials and data that relationships start with a great conversation.”

Datehookup.com in October, 2017

At the beginning of May someone in our forums noted that the SSL security certificate had expired for the domain DateHookup.com. With the expiry all interent browsers would present someone who visits DateHookup.com with an error message explaining that the certificate is invalid. At this point the visitor has the option to continue on to the site or not. A SSL certificate allows the use of the https protocol and any information that passes from the internet browser to the DateHookup web server would be encrypted. If the certificate is invalid or the website uses only http protocol then the information traveling between the web browser and the server could be retrieved by a hacker with the right tools.

Updating your SSL certificate usually is an easy process and I am surprised to see that it was not done.

Spark Networks SE, the platform behind dating brands including EliteSingles, Jdate, Christian Mingle, and Silversingles, has released its second half and full year 2017 financial results.

The report comes nearly six months after Affinitas and Spark Networks Inc. merged to form Spark Networks SE. The companies’ combined portfolios position Spark Networks SE as a leader in the serious segment of the dating market with a global network of nearly half a million monthly paying subscribers across 29 countries.

"With the close of the merger between Affinitas GmbH ("Affinitas") and Spark Networks, Inc. ("Spark") in November 2017, we have created a pure-play leader in the dating industry with increased scale and a portfolio of well-known brands," said Jeronimo Folgueira, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks SE, in a statement. "We have only just begun to realize the benefits of the merger, as the results we reported today include just two months of Spark's performance.”

A Facebook engineer was fired for exploiting his position and access to personal information of Facebook users, according to website Tech Crunch. It’s reported that the firing resulted after the engineer’s messages with a match on Tinder were shared with company executives.

Over Twitter, Spyglass Security Founder Jackie Stokes revealed that someone she knew received “creepy messages” over Tinder, and she had confirmed it was an engineer employed by Facebook.

Stokes then posted a screenshot of the offender’s message, where he called himself a “professional stalker” and claimed to have access to the user’s personal data. He also shared private information about the user via their messages, information that she hadn’t shared publicly on social media.