Bumble Inc

Badoo and Mel B Partners with a Podcast

Badoo is the latest dating service to venture into the world of podcasting with a new show that takes an honest look at the highs and lows of modern romance. “The Truth Flirts” is an eight-episode series hosted by Melanie Brown, aka Mel B or the Spice Girl formerly known as Scary.

Speaking to the British newspaper The Independent, Brown revealed that she doesn’t currently use dating apps because she is “perfectly happily single” but that she finds the concept “fascinating.”

“I was on a dating app a couple of years ago but that was because my friend set my profile up as a joke,” she said. “It was a picture of me and my friend and I would scroll through it on a Thursday or Friday night and see how people reacted. It was fun at the time. I understand why people find it quite addictive.”

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has secured a 4 million pound dividend payout from parent company Magic Lab, who saw record earnings thanks to its star dating app.

According to The Telegraph, the Bumble windfall is the result of a dividend payout of 20 million pounds from its parent company, and Herd owns about 20% of Bumble. Magic Lab saw earnings skyrocket at the end of 2018 to about 270 million pounds, up 51 percent from the year before. This quarter, the company reported a loss of about 4.8 million pounds.

Bumble’s revenue made up about 48 percent of Magic Lab’s overall business.

Popular beauty brand Urban Decay has partnered with dating app Bumble in its latest marketing campaign launch to promote its new line of Naked Honey makeup products.

Urban Decay will give away 1,000 of its new eye makeup palettes over Bumble’s app. The campaign will target users across all three of Bumble’s services – BumbleDate, BumbleBFF and BumbleBiz - to reach the app’s 63 million users. Bumble will also cross-promote the campaign on Instagram.

Urban Decay’s partnership with a female-forward dating app is an extension of its existing Instagram campaign, which featured megastar singer and body-positive advocate Lizzo wearing the new makeup line.

Lauren Daigle

Grammy-winning Christian singer Lauren Daigle has partnered with Bumble BFF to help promote its “Asking for a Friend” campaign.

The star joins other celebrities such as Jameela Jamil and celebrity gamer Kristen Valnicek, who have joined forces with Bumble to encourage its users to build friendships and support networks to counter the growing problem of loneliness and isolation around the world, especially among young women. According to studies, social media is part of the problem, with one in five people saying browsing through their feeds makes them feel lonely.

“At its core, music is about connecting with others - whether sharing a favorite song or hanging at a concert (with a couple thousand friends),” Daigle told The Christian Beat. “Bumble BFF is similar in a way, in that people can find comfort and connect to others through conversation.”

Dating services have collaborated with fashion labels, food brands, artists, candlemakers, musicians, movies, television networks, sports teams and charities - but a new crop of partnership deals may be the most surprising yet. According to a recent report by the Houston Chronicle, Tinder and Bumble are hosting parties with fraternities on college campuses. In return, the fraternities are signing contracts declaring that they are exclusively a Tinder house or a Bumble house.

“Simply scan to enroll!,” read a sign posted outside a University of Texas party earlier this year, referring to a scannable QR code printed below. “Must: be within five miles of campus, be ages 18-22, have an existing Tinder profile, have UT Austin in your profile.”

Study on Access to Personal Info by Dating Apps

Image: datingroo

Dating app users often don’t realize how much personal information they are giving away just by signing up. But Datingroo, a U.K.-based online dating research company, has released a new study that shows exactly how little privacy most dating app users have.

Datingroo studied the ten most popular dating apps from Tinder to PlentyofFish to eHarmony, examining 45 personal data access points in 13 categories such as precise location, other accounts on the device, network connections, and modification or deletion of the contents on USB storage, and found some surprising results.

Among all the apps, Badoo and PlentyofFish have access to the most data in user’s devices (92% of all access points studied). Combined, they have more than 522 million users worldwide, which means they have access to an enormous amount of information. Coffee Meets Bagel has the fewest users (7 million), as well as the least data access.