Milestones

Match Group, the company who brought online dating into the mainstream first with iconic dating site Match.com and then with its acquisition of Tinder, is looking for new business opportunities outside the dating industry. This week at CES, the company announced the new app Ripple for those wanting to network for career opportunities.

The app is positioned to be a direct competitor of LinkedIn, a popular career building and networking site. According to Ripple executives, LinkedIn’s framework is too stagnant for users to effectively network, and ends up being primarily a database of resumes. LinkedIn also doesn’t do much to create stickiness for people to update their profiles and check in regularly, unless they are actively seeking clients or trying to find a job.

Ripple borrows the matching game from Tinder to help with its stickiness. When you launch the app, Ripple presents you with people who might be a good professional match, based on interests, people you are connected to, events you’re attending, and groups you are part of. Ripple also includes your social networks like Twitter and Medium, so potential employers or work colleagues can see what you’re posting and what is most current (encouraging you to be more active). Users are able to decide whether someone is a good fit, and then connect with them.

eHarmony just notified us that they are now offering an eHarmony Guarantee (for eHarmony US members only for now). The guarantee reads:

We guarantee you will be satisfied with the matches we introduce to you at eharmony.




If you are not satisfied with your matches in 3 months, we’ll give you an additional 3 months free.

eHarmony members that are eligible for this guarantee are ones who have subscribed to at least a 3 month membership or higher. A profile with at least 3 approved photos must be completed along with the Relationship Questionnaire. An eligible member also must have communicated with at least 5 other members (sent or replied to messages).

If you think you qualify for the eHarmony guarantee and would like to receive it then all you need to do is contact customer service via chat, email or phone before the expiration or renewal date of your membership. For more information about this dating service you can read our eHarmony review.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of female-friendly dating app Bumble, was just named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list, and is featured on its December 2017 cover. This is no small feat – her dating app has amassed a large following with 70% year-on-year growth, according to the article, and has 22 million registered users. In comparison Tinder has 46 million registered users and last year saw growth at 10%.

The company is also being eyed by Match Group, owner of dating app rival Tinder, and is said to be in talks for over a billion dollars as an asking price. Herd turned down the company’s original offer of $450 million, according to recent reports.

Match Group LLC stock got a boost in early October, thanks to the success of Tinder Gold. The new premium app was among the top apps in the Apple Store, not just among dating apps, but alongside Netflix and Pandora. Match shares were up 3.6% Wednesday October 11, and the stock has jumped more than 50% since the start of the year.

But one question on investors’ minds is: what should we expect from Match Group’s other dating apps?

Match Group owns four of the five most popular dating sites, including Match, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and Tinder, along with several niche dating sites. The problem for investors despite the good news is that these older sites have gotten less attention in Match Group’s overall valuation, because they aren’t generating the users or attention that Tinder does on an ongoing basis, despite their longevity in the online dating market.

How Chemistry looked before the update.

It looks like on May 3^rd 2017 Chemistry.com was completely redesigned and switched over to a new version of the service. This redesign not only affect the look of Chemistry but the features as well.

Chemistry which is part of the Match Group of online dating services was originally designed as a personality matchmaking service similar to eHarmony. With the original version of Chemistry you could not search through all members of the service using your own search parameters, you could only search through and communicate with the matches Chemistry assigns to you based on their matchmaking algorithm. The matchmaking algorithm used was very complex and designed in part by the relationship expert Dr. Helen Fisher.

Unfortunately Chemistry.com had seen it's popularity wan over the past few years which is why we assume they decided to do a complete service overhaul.

The new version of the online dating service Chemistry.com appears now to be run by People Media (which is owned by Match Group).

Tinder Online now Available!

Some would argue that Tinder is the app that started it all. Though it wasn’t the first dating or social networking application to launch, it’s the one that rocketed mobile matchmaking into the public consciousness and made the swipe an iconic part of pop culture. News outlets called it “the next Facebook.”

In the years following its 2012 launch, Tinder has spread to 190 countries, grown to 1.6 billion swipes per day, inspired 1.5 billion dates per week, and racked up more than 20 billion total matches. Yet in all that time, despite all those impressive decimal places, there was one thing it never did: go online.

Tinder remained a mobile-only service until March 2017, when it made an announcement many had been waiting for. Tinder Online had arrived, allowing users to swipe from any browser, on any device, anywhere in the world - whether or not they had 4G or enough memory free on their smartphones.

Well, not quite anywhere.