Industry

Executives at Baihe Jiayuan Network Group, an online dating subsidiary of conglomerate Fosun International, a pharmaceutical giant in China, were arrested on charges of embezzlement.

According to the South China Morning Post, the executives were found missing which led to reports of their “disappearance,” sparking rumors across social media platforms. Fosun’s anti-graft department had discovered evidence during routine online checks of the company that the executives had abused their positions to commit the crime. The department alerted Fosun which reported the executives to Chinese authorities.

The report of the missing executives initially surfaced on Weibo, with a post sharing that the company’s top executives, including its CEO, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer, along with a number of vice presidents, had disappeared according to South China Morning Post. Local news picked up the story, so Baihe Jiayuan released a statement saying the executives were in custody and cooperating with authorities.

Google has brought a lawsuit against Match Group, announcing its intention to remove dating apps like Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge from its Play Store.

The move is part of a countersuit, according to Bloomberg. The dating app conglomerate joined other app developers in bringing a lawsuit against Google’s parent company Alphabet, citing unfair practices in Google’s Play Store, specifically the requirement that developers pay commission for every in-app purchase made by its users. Google settled with the developers to pay them $90 million to compensate for lost revenue over the years.

Match Group has filed lawsuits and complaints against Apple for similar reasons.

Match Group has acquired The League, a dating app known for its exclusivity because you have to apply to join.

The news about the members-only dating app was disclosed by a Tinder spokesperson to Tech Crunch. The League has become popular among ambitious, career-focused people looking for a more exclusive dating app experience, and as a result the app grew a long waiting list with people vying for a place. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Match Group’s new CEO Bernard Kim sent an email to employees, sharing the news: “We have just closed our acquisition of The League, a premium, niche dating app with a curated member base focused on matching career-oriented users looking for a serious relationship,” Kim wrote.

Researchers from the University of Texas in Dallas, Stanford and Columbia Universities have developed a new dating app algorithm that they say can improve match rates up to 45 percent.

Their study was published in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management by authors Dr. Ignacio Rios from the Naveen Jindal School of Management at UT Dallas, along with Dr. Daniela Saban of Stanford University and Dr. Fanyin Zheng of Columbia University.

“One of the biggest issues is how to decide which profiles to show to each user in order to ensure that they will get meaningful matches,” Rios told the University of Texas Dallas news. “In many dating apps, we see a lot of frustrated users because they struggle to find a match that leads to a longer-term relationship. This is partly because of inefficiencies in how these apps work.”

Dating Group has made several high-profile acquisitions in the past year, thanks to a new round of seed funding and rising user numbers. The moves indicate the dating conglomerate is one of the main players in the fast-growing industry, expanding its competitive advantage by offering more niche dating apps.

In the fall of 2021, the company added Cupid Media to its growing portfolio, and now oversees more than 33 dating platforms, making it one of the world’s largest dating conglomerates along with Match Group, according to DatingNews.com. This acquisition also grew the company’s annual revenue to $300 million, which was already growing in the wake of the pandemic. Cupid Media owns dating apps AsianDating, LatinAmericanCupid, Muslima, FilipinoCupid, and ThaiCupid among others.

Dating Group has also acquired Dil Mil, a fast-growing dating app specifically for South Asian singles. At the time of acquisition, the app was growing at a rate of around 50% in overall downloads, with a 38% increase in active users, according to a press release from Dating Group. Dil Mil has become increasingly popular among South Asians in the U.S. and other countries who want a more targeted dating app experience. Dil Mil offers a diverse array of regional preferences with multiple language and religious options, something that the larger apps like Tinder can’t provide.

Metaverse dating apps have become popular among singles in China, and now one of the most popular - Soul - intends to go public in the Hong Kong market. It is backed by tech giant Tencent, with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and CICC serving as co-sponsors.

Soul lets users create and use avatars (often resembling Japanese anime) to interact over the app, and rivals TikTok for time spent engaging on the app – an average of about 40 minutes per user, according to South China Morning Post. It currently has over 32 million users.

Downloads and engagement have grown in part due to recurring lockdowns across the country from Covid-19 outbreaks. Between 2019 and 2021, Soul’s monthly active users went from 11.5 million to 31.6 million, according to parent company Soulgate.