Marketing

Since 1987, South by Southwest's annual film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences in Austin have become an increasingly bigger deal. These days it's one of the biggest festivals in America, and with that comes all the exciting excesses you would expect.

It's no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to expect that online dating explodes in Austin during that time, particularly location-based services like Tinder. This year's SXSW has indeed seen a flurry of activity related to online dating, but it isn't making a splash in the ways you'd think.

Meet Ava, a seemingly normal 25-year-old who turned out not to be normal after all. In fact, she simply turned out not to be. Ava was a Tinder bot created to promote a sci-fi thriller, Ex Machina, that premiered at the festival. An Adweek staff member wrote about his encounter with Ava in an intriguingly named piece called Tinder Users at SXSW Are Falling for This Woman, but She's Not What She Appears.

Ava was capable of having a conversation via the app, but as soon as she directed users to her Instagram, it was clear that something was off. There was just one photo and one video, both promoting Ex Machina. The link in her bio went to the movie's website. And the woman in the photo is a Swedish actress, who just happens to play a role in the film.

On one hand, it's pretty invasive and – yes – pretty spammy. No doubt “Ava” pissed plenty of SXSW-goers off. On the other hand, it's also kind of brilliant. It ties in perfectly with the concept of the film - “she's a bot in the movie, so of course she's a bot on Tinder.”

And that's not the only example of online dating being a big news story at SXSW. Dating app Quiver turned heads with a “Stop The Robot” protest at the festival. On most online dating sites, users are matched via some kind of algorithm. On Quiver, on the other hand, humans help by matching users they think would be good fits.

“Since the idea behind Quiver is to rely on users rather than artificial intelligence,” writes International Business Times, the team behind it held a fake protest outside the Austin Convention Center to “highlight the dangers of tech – and get some good PR, of course.”

Protesters at the faux-demonstration sported shirts promoting Stop The Robots, an alleged organization (but in fact just a website) raising awareness about the dangers artificial intelligence and other advanced tech could pose to humans. They carried signs with slogans like “Stop the AI threat,” “Robots won't care” and “Humans are the future.”

Who knows whether these publicity stunts convert into actual business, but they're certainly fun for the spectator.

IAC, the company who is the majority stakeholder in popular dating app Tinder, no longer wants Sean Rad in the driver’s seat. As of late March, the company has named the new CEO who will be taking his place: Christopher Payne.

Payne previously worked for eBay as a senior vice president in the company’s marketplaces division, where he was responsible for the North American market. He also founded Positronic, a search technology company, which eBay acquired in 2008. Before that, he worked for 13 years at Microsoft, including heading its search unit, which was then called Windows Search Live.

“Christopher brings invaluable experience running consumer technology businesses that operate at massive scale,” Mr. Rad said in a statement.

But the change might not be completely embraced by Rad, who was embroiled in a very public sexual harassment lawsuit brought about by former employee Whitney Wolfe. They settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and she has now launched a new dating app of her own that directly competes with Tinder. Rad will remain President of Tinder and retains a seat on the company’s board. According to reports, he will still be in charge of product and marketing, but Payne will take over everything else.

The spotlight that has been on Rad the past few years has not been flattering, and the most recent scrutiny has come as a result of the new premium service Tinder Plus, which is costing as much as $19.99 US per month for two additional features. Users have asked to be able to use Tinder in multiple cities, as well as to “go back” and swipe right on matches they’d previously turned down. The new service offers these features for a price – but if you want to just keep the basic free service, the company has also put limits on the amount of swiping you can do in a 24-hour period. This caused controversy when it launched in the UK, and the app’s rating in the iTunes store went down to one and a half stars as a result.

Another controversial decision was pricing for the new service, which is based on age. For users under 30, Tinder Plus costs $9.99 per month, but for those 30 and older, it goes up to $19.99, and even more in European countries. Rad says a lot of research went into the pricing, and he stands by what he says customers are willing to pay.

Tinder also plans to launch an ad product, but has not disclosed how this will affect the service or user’s experience. Until now, advertising revenue has come from product placement, but the app has a lot of valuable user information for marketing departments to tap into.

IAC hopes that Payne can refocus Tinder’s business goals and help it grow into a more profitable as well as popular company.

Read our review of Tinder to find out more about this popular dating app.

eHarmony has weathered more than a few storms in its fourteen-year history, and has recently shared its trials and tribulations with The Wall Street Journal. The company has redefined itself as a “matchmaking site” as opposed to an online dating site, putting the emphasis back into long-term relationships.

The strategy seems to have worked – according to figures revealed by eHarmony founder Neil Clark Warren and COO Armen Avedissian, the company has more subscribers than ever before – 778,000 – and they make up to 15 million matches per day. But this is after the company almost collapsed. In 2012, after a few ousted CEOs and some advice from a board member, Dr. Warren made the decision to take back the reigns of the company and get it back on track. He came out of retirement at 78 years old to reclaim his spot as CEO and turn the company around – about the time when Tinder hit the market.

Before Warren took over, eHarmony was struggling to figure out its market, delving into new technology instead of focusing on its branding, leaving it vulnerable to the explosion of new dating sites and apps that came along. As Dr. Warren told the Wall Street Journal, “I think under CEO Greg Waldorf, users started seeing us more like the other dating sites Match and Zoosk, when we’re really a social science site. We were never meant to be a dating site. We were meant to be a matchmaking site. I think our leadership lost sight of that, too. We want good technology, but what we’re really, really interested in is long-term relationships.”

For its rebranding campaign, Dr. Warren returned to the television commercials, emphasizing the long-term matchmaking aspect of the technology. The company has also focused on its mobile app, something that has become a necessity for traditional dating sites since Tinder hit the market. When asked about Tinder, Dr. Warren emphasized that the app is actually helping bring more awareness and acceptance of online dating as a whole, which has been good for all online dating sites. According to Warren, eHarmony’s marketshare has stayed even despite the competition – Tinder claims to match about 22 million people a day.

Not to mention, Tinder’s reputation for being a hook-up app has helped differentiate more “serious” dating websites like eHarmony.

Warren told The Wall Street Journal: “People who are eHarmony customers probably aren’t going to be lured away by Tinder. We’re a serious bunch when it comes to matching for long-term relationships. We’re really not interested in short-term relationships.”

Tinder hasn’t been the only thorn in eHarmony’s side. The company came under fire when it didn’t include gay and lesbian relationships in their matching services – only creating “Compatible Partners” after a high-profile lawsuit. And now, eHarmony plans to launch a whole new matchmaking service called “Elevated Careers” – which will match job candidates with potential employers, based on factors like company culture and personality profiles in addition to skill sets. The new service will be available in June.

For more on this matchmaking service you can read our review of eHarmony.

PlentyofFish might not be making headlines the way Tinder has in the past few months, but its growth continues to be one of the online dating industry’s biggest successes. The company has announced that it hit the 100 million user milestone recently, and also revealed that it’s been a profitable company from its beginning, now with a $100 million run rate predicted for 2015.

POF has relied on a mixture of ads and premium subscriptions for revenue since 2008 (prior to this, ads only). In the last three years however, the company’s user base has shifted from primarily desktop computers to 80-85% using their mobile devices to access their accounts. Other traditional online dating sites have noticed the same trend of their user bases from desktop to mobile.

CEO Marcus Frind admits to website Business Vancouver that “finding love on a desktop computer is quickly vanishing.” Really, the appeal and ease of online dating makes more sense on a mobile device, which can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Mobile access means more users logging in and engaging with each other, a necessity for the longevity of any online dating service.

Frind said: “Since our shift to mobile we’ve seen rapid growth both in terms of users and revenue...Our revenue model has also evolved from one driven by advertising to one driven by paid membership, indicating that, now more than ever, singles are willing to pay for an enhanced user experience.”

For POF, that means their source of revenue has shifted to the mobile space and its premium service. An upgraded membership includes features like detecting when another user views a profile or when a personal message has been checked.

According to Frind, the user milestone and financial state of the company is significant in and of itself - and is no indication of his future plans, though he's never revealed this kind of data before. He’s not looking to take the company public, since he is the sole owner of POF. In recent years, the company also acquired speed dating service Fast Company to complement its offerings, but the main revenue source seems to be POF’s premium dating service.

POF has hit some bumps in the road since its launch back in 2003. For one, Frind refocused the dating site’s image, which had garnered a reputation of being primarily a hook-up site. With the facelift – which included focusing on the mobile app technology and re-branding the dating service for long-term relationships, not hook-ups - Frind seems to have found a winning formula.

The company, which used to employ only Frind, now has 75 employees, and doesn’t seem to be daunted by its mobile competition. POF is holding its own, despite a fickle online dating market.

For more information on this online dating service you can read our POF review.

Are you excited about the new Tinder Plus service that has rolled out in the U.S.? Don't get too carried away – turns out, if you’re 30 or older, you’ll have to pay more than your younger single counterparts.

Tinder is charging users of its premium service only $9.99 if they are under 30, but those 30 and older have to pay $19.99 per month for the same service. In the U.K., the pay gap is even larger.

Tinder has been testing pricing and features of Tinder Plus in various markets prior to its U.S. roll out, which is expected to happen in late March. Reports have been mixed – while Tinder claims that its users have responded favorably to the premium service and its features (as well as pricing), the app’s ratings have declined in the U.K. app store thanks to several harsh reviews.

The success of the new service is important to Tinder, who has yet to capitalize on the sheer number of users of the free service. The company has struggled to come up with viable revenue streams that don’t take away from the user experience (they have tried to avoid in-app advertising), in order to maintain their growing user base. Offering a tiered premium service like Tinder Plus seems the best answer, adding some popular features based on users’ requests - such as the ability to go back and see rejected profiles, or to meet matches in different cities.

But along with these improvements, there are reports that Tinder is placing limits on the number of swipes any user can do per day for the free service (which sparked outrage in the U.K. app stores), prompting users to buy the premium service if they want to continue swiping.

And the latest controversy appears to be age discrimination. In a statement to defend its unusual pricing technique, Tinder said this to NPR: "Over the past few months, we've tested Tinder Plus extensively in several countries…Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, like Spotify does for students, for example. Tinder is no different; during our testing we've learned, not surprisingly, that younger users are just as excited about Tinder Plus but are more budget constrained and need a lower price to pull the trigger." 

Not everyone is buying Tinder’s explanation. As website Engadget pointed out, this “sleazy” move by Tinder will likely cause more people to lie about their ages on Facebook.

The real test will has come now since Tinder Plus made its U.S. debut this month. Perhaps this is the move that will make room for other competitors in the crowded dating app market.

There’s been an uproar lately with the launch of dating app Tinder’s new premium service, Tinder Plus. The problem? The company is charging users in their twenties $9.99 in the U.S., compared to those 30 and older, who will have to pay $19.99 (and even more in the U.K.).

This has notably sparked some outrage from product reviewers and bloggers, who note the enduring problem of age discrimination when it comes to online dating – especially towards women. According to studies released by sites like OkCupid, young women are more sought-after by men, no matter how old the guy is. According to dating site Plenty of Fish, the ideal age of a single woman is 25 for most of their male daters. And according to OkCupid, that number skews even younger – with the ideal age being 21 or 22, even if the men wanting to date them are in their forties. Once female online daters hit the magic age of 30, they are blocked out from opportunities – some reports pointing to as much as an 80% decrease in messages and matches - as the majority of men prefer to meet women in their twenties.

This isn’t new. And it does explain why many people post old photos and lie about their ages (much to the frustration of the online daters who meet them). So what will these daters 30 and above do with Tinder – will they opt in and pay for Tinder Plus, or will we see more of a dating revolt?

According to Tinder, the company’s move to differentiate pricing based on age really comes down to economics. The company has tested pricing, and discovered that older singles are willing to pay more because they have more income. (The company likens it to services like Spotify which offer discounted rates to “students.”)

The problem with this “economic” view, as some reviewers have pointed out, is that older online daters already have a shrunken dating pool to choose from. (And online dating is a bit different than streaming music – with streaming, you have access to everything offered in exchange for your payment; with online dating, you only have access to those who haven’t filtered you out of their searches, which means fewer options for more money.)

As the Washington Post says: “The [age] problem is so urgent, and so severe, that several sites have spoken out against ageism in online dating in recent years. In 2010, OkCupid’s Christian Rudder wrote an entire blog post dedicated to convincing men that the 30-somethings on his site were just as cool and attractive as recent college grads. On JDate — a paid dating site for Jewish singles — the site’s official relationship blogger, Tamar Caspi, went on a full-blown rant over age.”

The latest move by Tinder might affect its user base, but the problem of ageism in dating still remains. If people are looking to meet someone special, then letting go of superficial restrictions like age only helps open the dating pool – and don’t we all want more choices?