General News

Having survived its first quarter as a standalone public company, Match Group Inc. has released fourth quarter 2015 results.

"Match Group had a seminal fourth quarter, completing our initial public offering, the acquisition of PlentyOfFish, and the realignment of our management structure to better reflect our increasing global scale," commented Greg Blatt, Chairman and CEO of Match Group. "At the same time, we delivered solid revenue and profit growth and we head into 2016 with increasing momentum, which we expect will continue to build throughout the year."

Highlights of Q4 2015 include:

• Total revenue increased 12%, or 16% excluding the effects of foreign exchange, driven by a 14% increase in Dating revenue attributable to 30% higher Average PMC, which grew to over 4.6 million globally.
• Excluding both deferred revenue write-offs related to acquisitions and foreign exchange impacts, total Dating revenue would have been $259.4 million, or 22% higher than in Q4 2014.
• Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2015 was $99.3 million, an increase of 16% versus Q4 2014.
• ARPPU was $0.53 for Q4 2015, compared to $0.62 in Q4 2014, a decline of 14%. Excluding the effects of foreign exchange, which was approximately 400 basis points, and deferred revenue write-offs related to acquisitions, which was approximately 300 basis points, ARPPU declined 7%.
• The increase in Average PMC compared to Q4 2014 was driven primarily by significant growth at Tinder and the acquisition of PlentyOfFish, which closed on October 28, 2015.
• Net Income and GAAP Diluted EPS declined by 26% and 44%, respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to Q4 2014, driven primarily by an increase in stock-based compensation expense of $14.9 million and an increase in interest expense of $16.9 million, which includes $7.3 million of debt issuance costs. Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS, which exclude the impact of the stock-compensation expense, declined 2% and 26%, respectively, as a result of the increased interest expense.

Total revenue for the October-December period was $268 million, up 15% but short of the $278 million expected by Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The company reported a net income of $35.6 million, a 26% decrease from $48.3 million in the same quarter last year.

Tinder and Plenty Of Fish were behind the greatest growth in paid subscribers in the quarter. Tinder reported January 3 as the single busiest day in its three-year history, responsible for the highest volume of downloads and growth in active users.

Despite the existence of several major players in the dating app industry, Tinder is the clear leader. Deutsche Bank analyst Ross Sandler valued the company at $1.2 billion, and according to SEC filings from Match Group in November, Tinder boasts 9.6 million daily active users and 583,000 paid members.

Those solid numbers, along with Tinder’s commitment to regularly updating its product, mean the app is unlikely to be dethroned any time soon. Going forward into 2016, Match Group will likely continue to focus a substantial measure of its efforts into Tinder to maintain its top spot. For more information on Match Group dating services you can read our Match.com review, OkCupid review, and our Tinder dating app review.

Hinge doesn’t want to be another version of Tinder. Instead of focusing on the swiping game with attractive profiles, Hinge wants its users to engage, message and date – in other words, take the process of dating a bit more seriously.

Millennials are by far the biggest users of dating apps, and are less inclined to pay for a dating service. They also take dating less seriously than older daters. Tinder attracted the young market because the app was free, easy and accessible. But then apps like Hinge came along, who wanted to change the “hook-up” mentality many online daters have become accustomed to.

The majority of Hinge users are Tinder’s target market – Millennials. Hinge is betting on the fact that many young daters want to be more serious in their search, and not just use apps for that last-minute hook-up.

Hinge has done several things in trying to find its sweet spot, including launching a new feature this past November where users had to respond to a new match within 24 hours or they would disappear from their match list. Apparently, this didn’t go over well, because in February, the company announced that it was removing the feature.

In an email sent to its users, Hinge said: “You are busy, and 24 hours is sometimes not enough. At the end of the day, our job is about helping you find someone great, and timed matches didn’t do that. We want to make it right. So we’re turning off the clock. The 24 hour clock that is.”

Users still have to make contact with matches within a 14-day period, because the company maintains a time limit does increase communication and the likelihood of matches actually getting to the date.

And last month, Hinge launched a feature called Story Cards that helps users initiate conversation by letting them answer yes or no to “life experience” questions. According to website Global Dating Insights, the app’s CEO Justin McLeod revealed that during beta testing, Story Cards “generated a 20% increase in two-way messages between users, as well as more phone numbers exchanged.”  

News website Tech Crunch has suspicions that the next Hinge announcement will be a paid service, since Tinder is the only app that can really make money solely on advertising spend. 

In the article, writer Jordan Crook says: “Hinge is undergoing a huge makeover, ditching the swipe mechanic and adding a paid subscription layer to ensure folks who use it are there for the right reasons.”

Hinge also provided the following statement, causing more raised eyebrows:

“We are continually focused on helping our users find meaningful relationships. To that end, we’re always working with our users to test new concepts. However, at this point nothing is confirmed – everything from friend endorsements to concierge matchmaking has been on table. What we do know is that each global release continues to be the result of enormous amounts of work alongside our community in an effort to understand what sparks online connections that have the power to become lasting offline relationships.”

One thing seems clear: Hinge wants to focus on the sweet spot that is missing in popular dating apps – building real, lasting relationships. To find out more about this dating app you can read our review about Hinge.

When Pew Research Center first studied online dating in 2005, few Americans had ventured into that uncharted territory. More than a decade later, digital technology - especially smartphones - has drastically transformed all aspects of our society, including our love lives. Today 15% of American adults say they have used online dating sites or mobile dating apps.

Pew Research Center continues to produce some of the most comprehensive and interesting data on online dating, most recently with the release of five facts about online dating in 2016:

1. Online dating has lost much of the stigma that once plagued it. In 2005, most Americans had little exposure to online dating. It was viewed as a poor way to meet people and those who used it were considered desperate. These days, nearly half of the public knows someone who has met a partner using a dating service. Attitudes have shifted significantly, making it much more culturally acceptable to find a romantic partner online. Nearly half of US adults agree that online dating is a good way to meet people.
2. Online dating is increasingly popular with singles under 25, as well as those in their late 50s and early 60s. Between 2013 and today, the share of 18- to 24-year olds who use online dating has roughly tripled from 10% to 27%. Usage amongst 55- to 64-year-olds has also risen substantially. Only 6% of adults in that age bracket reported using dating services in 2013. Today that number is 12%.
3. One-third of people who have tried online dating have never actually gone on a date with someone they met using those services. Two thirds (66%) of online daters told Pew Research Center that they’ve gone on a date with someone they met through a dating site or app. That’s a large increase from the 43% percent who answered the same in 2005, but it still means that one-third of online daters have never turned their online activities into offline romance.
4. One-in-five online daters have sought help with their profile. Online daters recruit friends to help them put their best digital foot forward. Around 22% have asked someone to review or help create their profile. Women are especially likely to seek outside advice - 30% of female online daters have done this, compared to 16% of men.
5. 5% of Americans who are in a marriage or committed relationship say they met their significant other online. Online dating plays a larger role in modern romance than ever before, but the vast majority of relationships still begin offline. Even newer relationships are more likely to start in traditional ways. Eighty-eight percent of Americans who have been with their partner for five years or less say they met their partner without the help of a dating site.

For more statistics from Pew Research Center, click here. For our own information on the subject you can visit our Dating Statistics and Facts page.

Who amongst us can honestly say they have never agonized over an online dating photo? It's a rite of passage in 2016: take a photo, edit it, post it, rethink it, delete it, start again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

If you've ever struggled to determine which of your many (many) selfies belong on your dating profile, Coffee Meets Bagel now offers a solution. From now on, CMB users can A/B test photos by uploading two options and letting other users vote for the best one.

The new feature is called Photo Lab. When clicked, a screen that says “Put your best face forward” is shown. Hit the “+” button to add two photos from your profile, from Facebook, or from your smartphone’s photo gallery. When other users have had time to vote and your report is ready, you’ll receive a notification. The report is unlocked by using “beans,” Coffee Meets Bagel’s in-app currency.  

Of course, Photo Lab also allows you take the opposite role and give other users photo feedback. You'll see a familiar Hot Or Not-style interface and can vote by clicking on the photo you prefer. After you’ve voted, you’ll see a percentage that indicates how other users rated the same two pictures and will earn beans for your efforts.

It will come as a shock to no online dater that pictures are one of the most important parts of your profile. Coffee Meets Bagel polled singles and found that 54% pass on prospective dates for picture-related reasons. The most common offenses include blurry images and the so-called “Where’s Waldo” pics that feature so many people that the profile owner is unidentifiable.

“Surprisingly, a large percentage of online daters have a hard time when it comes to choosing which photo to use on their profile,” Dawoon Kang, co-founder of Coffee Meets Bagel, told TechCrunch. Yet they “get no feedback whatsoever on which profile photo actually works best.”  

This isn't the first time Coffee Meets Bagel has tried to give its users a leg up in the search for love. The site and mobile app already offer premium features to help singles determine whether their profile is working. CMB members with enough beans can find out how they rank on the site and get feedback on the reasons matches say yes.  

Coffee Meets Bagel hopes the new feature will further cement its reputation as a platform for serious dating. CMBl is for “singles looking for real relationships – not browsing, not entertainment, not hook ups,” said Kang.

Watch a quick video on Photo Lab here.

Just when you get comfortable with the Internet again, a new story about a hacking disaster makes headlines. This time, a hacker on a dark web forum called “Hell” claims to have sold the email addresses and plaintext passwords of over 27 million users of dating site Mate1.com.

Last year, Hell made headlines when a hacker posted the personal details and sexual preferences of almost 4 million users of the hookup site Adult Friend Finder. The data dump was discovered months after the hack actually happened, forcing Adult Friend Finder to fess up about the breach.

Motherboard obtained a small sample of the stolen email addresses and passwords. Out of 500 addresses, 498 were linked to accounts on Mate1.com. According to its website, Mate1 has over 36.5 million users.

“Their server was compromised and the MySQL database was dumped,” the anonymous hacker told Motherboard. “I had shell/command access to their server.” The hacker claims to have obtained 40 million accounts initially, then whittled that number down by weeding out the bot logins. “They all had a common password pattern,” they said.

The database of poached user info was offered for 20 bitcoin on Hell (around $8,700) although it’s not clear if that was the actual selling price.

How did it happen? Motherboard found that Mate1 was shockingly open to such an attack. A reporter for the site clicked “forgotten password” on the login page and was sent a full, plaintext password via email. Mate1 made no attempt to conceal the password in any way.

The threat here isn't just that users’ dating accounts may now be compromised. A second danger comes from the fact that victims may have used the same passwords across multiple websites, potentially leaving accounts on Gmail, Amazon - anything, really - now open to attack. Anyone who purchased the database could test their newly-acquired passwords on more valuable accounts, and given the high number of credentials the hacker claims to have obtained, there’s a real chance that a significant number will indeed compromise accounts on other websites.  

The first step, if you have an account with Mate1.com, is to change your password there. You’ll also want to update any accounts that share the same password and check to make sure they haven’t been tampered with.  

This hack won’t make news the way the Ashley Madison hack did (catch up here, here, and here if you missed that story), but it serves as yet another reminder that digital security is a subject to be taken seriously.

For more information on this dating service you can read our full review of Mate1.

Update 2019-05-19: Please note that these coupons have expired and there are currently no coupon codes available for the Jewish dating service JDate.

What JDate is now offering is up to 25% off a 3 and 6 month subscription (as of the last time we checked which is January 16, 2018).

Depending on the subscription term length, JDate subscriptions are as low as $19.99 a month. This sale could expiry at any time so act soon if you are thinking of joining. When you decide to upgrade your free JDate account the sale prices will be presented to you at that time.

JDate does offer extra promotions every now and then. When these discounts are available, this post will be updated with more information on how to use them. To find out more about this popular Jewish dating service you can read our review of JDate. User reviews and comments of JDate are also accessible from this page.