Match Group

The Federal Trade Commission announced it is suing Match Group for using fake notifications to trick users into paying for subscriptions to Match.com. The FTC also alleges that Match Group unfairly exposed consumers to the risk of fraud and engaged in other allegedly deceptive and unfair practices to induce users to subscribe and keep them subscribed to the dating service.

Match.com allows users to create a profile and use some of the platform’s features for free. However, users are prohibited from responding to messages from admirers unless they upgrade to a higher membership tier with a subscription fee. According to the FTC’s complaint, Match sent misleading advertisements to users with free accounts stating that someone had expressed interest in them and encouraging them to subscribe to the service to view the message and the identity of its sender. Many users purchased subscriptions as a result of these deceptive ads, believing they were going to communicate with a real user who could be “the one.”

In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create Match.com. Only 5 percent of Americans were using the internet at the time - and even fewer were using it to find love - but Match.com became the world’s first online dating service. More than 20 years later, it’s still one of the industry’s biggest and most dynamic players.

Though Kremen’s name may not be as famous as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, his influence on the internet is immense. Author and award-winning journalist David Kushner chronicled the rise of Kremen and Match.com in The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise. Less than six months after Kushner’s book was released, it’s set to get the Hollywood treatment with a small screen adaptation.

Tinder's New Series is called Swipe Night

Tinder will be releasing an original six-episode video series over its app, according to an exclusive report in Variety Magazine.

The new series will be a “choose your own adventure” story available to users when they log into the app. It’s interactive content, so users are able to swipe left and right to continue to different versions of the story. The basic premise involves the apocalypse, and asks the question: “Who would you spend your last night alive with?”

Update 2019-11-18: The POF Singles Events App has since been removed from Google Play.

We thought we would write about the POF Singles Event app after POF closed the forums at the beginning of the summer.

For the past number of years the forums were still being used by a lot of POF users as a way to organize single events. On the leadup to the closure, POF disabled regular forum posting in May. Users could still read all forum posts but that functionality would disappear by the end of June according to the message on the forums. For the forums, POF also still allowed Event Hosts to create and promote events while a promised new event creation service was being worked on. At first I though this might be something integrated into the website and existing POF dating apps. I then found the POF Singles Events app on both iTunes and Google Play and then realized they may be referring to this app.

It was about 7 weeks late but by August 23rd the POF forums were closed for good.

New Design

A few weeks ago POF banned face filters and it appears soon after on Sept 17 the Plenty of Fish website, blog and dating apps received a facelift. The dating service has moved from an all light blue fish logo and theme to a layered multi color almost neon look. The light blue color is still there but the brightness has been turned up along with the addition of pink and dark blue. The interface itself has changed to reflect these colors with a few tweaks here and there to the layout. As far as we can tell no new features have been added and none removed.

You can also see the new look reflected in the Google Play and Apple App stores POF app install pages. One thing I notice on the App store is that POF is pushing a new statistic of 17 million conversations are exchanged everyday on the service. They still list the same stat of 4 million visitors everyday from 2017 (among others like 150 million registered users and 57 million new connections every week) so it looks like the dating service POF growth has stagnated. This is in part probably the result of Tinder becoming so popular and is also probably responsible in part of the updated design (which I am still getting use to).

POF bans Face Filters

Image: POF

Plenty of Fish is demanding users put their best, and filter-free, faces forward. In a blog post, the dating service announced that it is implementing an immediate face filter ban across the platform. All images that contain filters will be now be removed by the POF moderation team.

In a statement released by POF, clinical psychologist Dr. Cortney Warren said: “Singles today are craving greater transparency in dating, with the large majority of singles wanting honest, straight-forward information from potential partners as well as in their own self-presentation.

POF made the bold decision to ban face filters after conducting a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. single adults. The research reveals that singles are embellishing more and more aspects of their lives, primarily due to self-induced pressure to be appealing on dating platforms and interesting on dates. Singles feel the current dating climate is so competitive that it requires them to embellish their interests, hobbies, appearance, income, career and education in order to find a romantic partner.