Online Dating

In Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s new book Modern Romance, they discuss the disconnect of online dating in Japanese culture. Despite Japan’s adoption of and love for technology, single people still stigmatize online dating.

The reasons are part cultural and part historical. Japanese singles haven’t had a good experience with online dating, historically speaking. In the 1990’s when online dating first hit the singles scene, online dating companies had male members pay per message and also used their female employees as bait, posting their profiles on the dating sites to attract more male users. More recently, fake dating sites have been exposed, with companies using male employees to pose as girls on the sites and charging their male members to talk to them – (obviously, those members never get to the date).

It’s easy to see why Japanese singles are skeptical. But now dating apps have made things a little easier to verify. First, like most dating apps all over the world, users are verified through their Facebook profile, so it’s not easy to create fake accounts. And Japan is really embracing social media, especially after both LinkedIn and Facebook helped families find each other after the 2011 earthquake.

But another interesting trend is happening with Japanese online daters. The culture is rather conservative when it comes to dating – and guys don’t want to be thought of as players. Since dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups, Japanese - and men especially - are weary to sign up for fearing like they will come across as insincere. So people aren’t really embracing online dating.

In fact, they aren’t dating much at all. Most Japanese singles are much more focused on work, which means working long hours and delaying starting a family. This is also taking a toll on their social lives. A 2014 survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all. On top of this, they face a serious population decline.  According to Business Insider, a 2012 report by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows the number of Japanese people will fall from 127 million to around 87 million by 2060.

Still not everyone is averse to online dating. The country has seen some interesting trends.

Selfies tend to be popular with online dating in most countries, but are looked upon as narcissistic in Japan. Even a photo showing an online dater by herself is frowned upon because Japanese tend to view this as self-centered. Most daters either post photos with a group of friends (so you can’t really identify the person you are meeting), or they post photos of their cats or random objects. One of the weirdest trends among online daters is posting photos of their rice cookers in their profiles, according to Modern Love.

There are definite cultural and practical barriers to get beyond when it comes to online dating in Japan. But as time goes on and it becomes more trust-worthy and mainstream, hopefully singles will embrace it.

MeetMe is a smaller player in the social networking space, but it has undertaken a number of initiatives to boost its customer base. Looking at the company's financial results for the second quarter of 2015, they appear to be paying off.

Highlights of Q2 include:

• Mobile revenue was $8.3 million, up 47% from the second quarter of 2014
• Mobile revenue represented 75% of total revenue, the highest in MeetMe's history
• Total revenue was $11.1 million, up 4% from the second quarter of 2014
• Cash and Cash Equivalents totaled $16.2 million at June 30, 2015
• Net income was $1.2 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million for the second quarter of 2014

Younger daters are really into dating apps – they helped bring Tinder into the mainstream, and now there are a slew of new dating apps hitting the market, allowing you to do everything from set your Instagram feed to music (Raya) and obtain the dating profile of that girl at the coffee shop you just couldn’t bring yourself to talk to (Happn). While younger daters are active on these apps, as it turns out, the fastest-growing group of online daters is 60 and older.

But do younger and older online daters date differently? University of Texas researchers Eden Davis and Karen Fingerman suspected that their were contrasts between their motivations for online dating, but wanted to determine this through the content of their profiles, so they conducted a study published this month about the differences in profile language and motivation each age group has when it comes to dating.

While we know people using dating websites and apps are typically motivated to find a partner and to date, we know little about the differences of what motivates them to use dating sites, what exactly they are looking for, or how they present themselves to different partners. Gathering 4000 online dating profiles from men and women across the United States, the researchers sampled profiles evenly by gender and from four age groups (18 to 29; 30 to 49; 50 to 64; and 65 or over). The final sample ranged in age from 18 to 95.

First, the researchers studied the most common words used in profiles by all age groups, which included: like, love, music, good, enjoy and fun. But they also discovered different age groups used different words in common when crafting their online dating profiles. For younger daters, these most frequently included the words: go, get, work, school, laugh, movies, much, find, think, try and anything.

Older daters seemed to be more focused on building connection. Their profiles most frequently included words like: man, woman, share, relationship, humor, travel, years, honest, important, well, sense, and family.

Eden said in her report: “Notably, older adults used more positive emotion words such as “sweet,” “kind,” and “nice,” more first person plural pronouns such as “we,” “us,” and “our,” and more words in the ‘friends’ category. These findings suggest that when they present themselves to potential partners, older adults focus on positivity and connectedness to others. Not surprisingly, older adults were also more likely to use health-related words such as “ache,” “doctor,” and “exercise.”

Younger adults tended to enhance their profiles, using mostly first-person singular pronouns like “I” and “me.” They also tended to focus on work and achievement.

The researchers concluded that adults of all ages were looking for love and a partner to enjoy life with, but that younger adults focus more on themselves and their own attributes, while older daters focused on positivity and connection to others.

We're halfway through 2015 and IAC has good news to share. The company's profit in Q2 2015 exceeded expectations, thanks in large part to the overwhelming success of the paid version of its mobile app Tinder.

Match Group, the star of the conglomerate, has driven consistently strong results for the last few quarters, and this one has been particularly momentous. IAC announced its intent to pursue an initial public offering of less than 20% of the common stock of the Match Group. The IPO is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2015.

“The IPO positions The Match Group for continued success with an independent currency, and allows us to focus our attention and capital on growing the rest of IAC’s assets,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin in a statement.

The Match Group also announced plans to purchase PlentyOfFish for $575 million on July 14, 2015. The transaction is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The paid version of Tinder, launched in March, has garnered good responses from users, despite concerns from many that the model would fail.

"Monetization continues to perform at or above our expectations on key metrics like renewal, conversion and resubscription rates,” said Match Group Chairman Greg Blatt. “We’ve seen no discernible negative correlation between monetization and growth."

IAC reported that the number of paid subscribers for its dating services grew 18% to 4.1 million in the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue at Match Group, which accounts for about a third of total revenue, rose 19%.

Outside of IAC's dating businesses, the company has other successes to report. Within Search & Applications, Applications queries increased 8% driven by 20% B2C growth. B2C revenue increased 18% versus prior year. In the Media segment, Vimeo grew paid subscribers 25% to nearly 630,000. In the eCommerce segment, HomeAdvisor revenue grew 26%.

On the downside, Websites revenue decreased 20% due primarily to a decline in revenue at Ask.com and certain legacy businesses. Applications revenue decreased 2% due to lower revenue in B2B. Revenue in Media was down 1% versus last year, despite the strong growth at Vimeo. Operating income for the match Group in the current year period was negatively impacted by a $4.2 million year-over-year increase in amortization of intangibles.

All in all, revenue growth clocked in at 2% for a total of $771.1 million. IAC's net income was $59.3 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $18 million, or 22 cents per share.

There is a free communication going on at eHarmony this weekend in both the United States and Canada. It starts today (Friday, Aug 14th) and runs till the end of the day on Monday (Aug 17th)

It is getting close to the end of summer and this might be the last free event before the fall. With the event, new and existing members get to communicate for no cost on the eHarmony website and app for 4 days. The dating app is available on iTunes and Google Play for both phones and tablets.

For new members all you need to do is signup for a free membership (no credit card required) and then fill out eHarmony's profile questionnaire. eHarmony is all about the matchmaking so the profile contains a number of questions that will probably take you about 30 minutes to complete. This is for your benefit as how you answer the questions determines who you will be matched with. eHarmony has over a decade worth of research going into their matchmaking algorithms and this has resulted with them matching a large number of men and women together. eHarmony's goal is to create long-term quality relationships. Free communication events at eHarmony do not include the viewing of profile photos, secure call (phone service), or skipping the guided communication process.

Our review of eHarmony contains lots of information about the dating site and app. If you would like to find out more before you signup this is a good place to start.

By now, we’ve all heard of the latest in cyber attacks; personal information from infidelity dating website Ashley Madison was stolen by hackers who have since threatened to expose its 37 million users.

However, information about what exactly was stolen – such as credit card information or social security numbers – is still a bit hazy. Ashley Madison customer service has, according to news website Inquisitr, provided customers with conflicting information about what was subject to the hack, namely because they don’t know what was stolen and sold or given to third parties. Some customers have been told that credit card numbers weren’t hacked, but others were told that third party credit card data was indeed hacked.

A few websites have emerged to help customers see if their personal data has been leaked, including a site “Was he on Ashley Madison,” (WasHeOnAshleyMadison.com). Customers of Ashley Madison and also of hacked website Adult Friend Finder could search through emails to see if theirs were compromised. However, as of July 31, that website was put up for sale, and quickly bought by someone looking to make a statement to users of Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder. Hours later, what appears to be a former Ashley Madison user posted a statement lashing out against the company, including this paragraph to those who were hacked:

“You have been through enough pain and anger and anxiety about their hack without having some opportunistic scammer buy this domain and charge you money for data they do not have.

I have decided that I am going to fight the AM people so I can keep this domain. They have refused to offer any of their customers any kind of solace or at least a year of identity theft protection which is standard practice when your data is hacked. They prefer to sit in their ivory tower and hide behind their lawyers.

This is not OK with me and it should not be OK with you.”

According to Inquisitr, there have been many sites claiming to provide information for those who feel their personal information could have been hacked, but many of these sites have been nothing but spam themselves. According to an investigation by BBC, Ashley Madison users were sent emails providing links to third party websites, supposedly with information about the hack. Some included the recipient’s Ashley Madison user name, giving more credence to the email, but worrying customers that their information was indeed sold to a third party. However, when people clicked on the links, they were sent to spam sites that were booby-trapped with malware and, in some cases, graphic images and videos of adulterers ‘burning in hell.’

Now Ashley Madison users are turning to Reddit to provide current information about the hack to other users in an attempt to gain information.

One Reddit user claimed that Ashley Madison sold user information to third party sites from the beginning, because that user began getting spam emails as soon as he/she signed up on the website. While it's difficult to tell where exactly information has gone, it has been compromised. We'll see what Ashley Madison does next to address the issue.