Online Dating

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.

A new study found that dating app users experienced higher rates of depression and hypersexuality, or sex addiction. Researchers said it could point to those who already struggle with mental health issues using dating apps as a coping mechanism.

According to Psy Post, researcher and author Giacomo Ciocca, an assistant professor at Sapienza, University of Rome, explored these two mental health challenges as they relate to dating apps, to see if there was a correlation. “Much evidence shows that the formation of couple relationships is often related to the use of dating apps. Also, sexual behavior is mediated by the use of these technological tools. Therefore, psychological research is called to study this contemporary phenomenon,” he said in the paper.

The research team surveyed 1,000 Italians between ages 18 and 60 via an online questionnaire. Participants answered questions about “relationship status, sexual orientation, contraceptive use, and whether they were currently in a stable or casual sexual relationship,” according to Psy Post. They were also asked whether they used dating apps.

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.

Match Group is bringing the free background checks feature on Tinder to two more of its dating apps: Match (its signature app) and Stir, an app geared toward single parents.

The feature allows users two free background checks on matches, and after that there’s a cost. Right now, premium users on Tinder get four free background checks, and the same will apply for users of Stir and Match, according to The Verge.

The background checks feature was implemented in partnership with security service Garbo which actually runs the background checks. According to The Verge, when a user is chatting with someone and suggests meeting, a box pops up to ask if they want to do a background check. If they tap on the link, they see some safety tips before being transferred to the Garbo platform where the report is accessed.

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.”