Closed

When it comes to dating apps, Andrey Andreev is no neophyte. The Russian entrepreneur is the founder of Badoo, an investor and advisor for Bumble, and a key player in the growth of Blendr, Huggle, and Chappy. He may be the industry’s most prolific matchmaker, and he’s making headlines again with new venture for senior singles.

Andreev and co-founders Antoine Argouges and Charly Lester have announced the launch of Lumen, a dating app specifically designed for singles over 50. Though it’s not the first dating service to target the underserved mature market, it hopes to best competitors by providing a modern and fun experience that knows what the niche is missing.

“Do a search of the phrase ‘over 50s dating’. The results that come up are embarrassing for the industry,” Andreev commented. “The over-50s have been mistreated by the dating sites for years. I’m excited to see the Lumen team launching an app which finally listens to this audience and specifically targets their issues and needs.”

DateHookup.com on April 28, 2018

Well after waiting a bit and some more digging (and thanks to the Way Back Machine) it is official that DateHookup.com closed for good on May 9^th, 2018.

We initially reported at the beginning of May DateHookup was experiencing technical difficulties and by May 10^th the service was no longer accessible. We did find out that in the last 2 weeks of April, Datehookup.com did display a message (as seen in the photo) in bright red on their homepage stating:

Datehookup will discontinue services on May 9, 2018. Please contact support@datehookup.com for any questions.

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.

It’s the end of an era for denizens of the internet’s seedier side: Craigslist has axed its personal ads in the United States.

The popular classifieds website made the move after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) on Wednesday, March 21. The act makes it easier for prosecutors and victims of sex trafficking to sue websites that fail to keep exploitative content posted by traffickers off their websites.

In a brief statement posted to Craigslist, the company said:

Susie Lee and Katrina Hess co-founded Siren which launched 3 years ago in 2014 as a dating app designed for women where they could start the conversations they wanted. Women had the ability to view men’s profiles, ask them questions and find out who they like. They could also hide their profiles from unwanted views.

We have since learned that Siren closed their digital doors Friday April 7, 2017 due to financial reasons and obligations not met by investors. In the end Siren could not compete with other similar dating apps which had more funding and people to run the day to day operations.

For full details on the closure you can read the co-founders Good Bye post found on the Siren blog.

Even though we waiting more than a few weeks before posting the original story about Date.com and Matchmaker.com disappearing along with the website for their parent company Avalanche, it looks things migh be turning around for the company, at least partly anyways.

Matchmaker.com, Amor.com, GayDating.com, and Gk2Gk.com are all accessible again (confirmed last week from one of our visitors who commented on the original story). Date.com though now redirects to Matchmaker. A message on Date.com explains that it has become part of Matchmaker and all existing members have been moved over, including all of their profile information and messages. I was a little surprised of this since I thought the Date.com brand was stronger than the Matchmaker brand (though the Matchmaker brand is older).

Avalanche's corporate website (avalanchellc.com) is still down and all of their affiliate programs (at CJ, Flexoffers, etc.) have had their campaign paused. I am not sure what is going on at Avalanche where their websites disappeared for around 2 months. Maybe they had financial issues or the websites have been sold? I am not sure but when we know more, we will let you know.

We currently have all Avalanche dating sites listed as closed. Once we get a bit more information and see if things have stabilized we will update the reviews.