Types (Niche)

There have been a lot of breakthroughs recently for the LGBTQ community. The Supreme Court ruled on the legality of gay marriage across America, overriding state laws that made it illegal. Caitlyn Jenner disclosed her transition from male to female in an interview with Diane Sawyer, and later showed off her new body in Vanity Fair to a public that embraced her. Celebrities like Ruby Rose and Miley Cyrus have recently stated that they identify as “gender-fluid,” or as both male and female, bringing gender identity conversations into the spotlight.

It only makes sense that in this moment of time where people feel more free than ever to live their truth – there is also a dating app that helps you find that special someone, no matter how you identify. At least, that is what OneGoodCrush aims to do.

Launched this week, OneGoodCrush aims to help people in the LGBTQ community find long-term relationships. But they aren’t limiting their potential user base. Founder Frank Mastronuzzi wants everyone to feel they can find someone special using the app, including those who identify as heterosexual, or who do not define themselves as male or female.

"We wanted to be inclusive of everyone -- even heterosexual people can use our app," he told USA Today. "Letters on LGBTQ keep adding over time, but wherever you fall on this spectrum, you have a place on this app."

OneGoodCrush connects users through their Facebook and Instagram accounts to pull photos and profile information. The app works like Tinder and other dating apps, where each user is presented with photos and profiles, allowing them to swipe left and right to reject or accept a match. But while other dating apps like Tinder and Grindr offer same-sex dating options, they are limited when it comes to allowing users to communicate their own gender identity. The big difference between OneGoodCrush and other dating apps is that its members can claim their own gender identity -- man, woman, transgender man, transgender woman, or queer -- and then choose the gender(s) they are seeking.

According to the company’s records, the app has so far attracted about 100,000 users since its soft launch three months ago. Of the users that have signed onto the app, 57% identify as gay, 37% identify as lesbian, 4% have identify as transgender, 1% identify as queer, and less than 1% identify as straight.

Having the ability to identify as a transgender seems obvious in online dating, but it hasn’t been the case. As Trish McDermott, Strategic Advisor for OneGoodCrush states: "It seems online dating is one of the last bastions separating people, and that is kind of mind blowing. I think the industry has a responsibility to invite everyone."

Life's short. Have an affair. Get hacked.

It's not Ashley Madison's new slogan, but it could be.

The biggest story in the online dating world right now is the news that the infamous dating site for adulterers has been attacked by hackers. A group calling themselves The Impact Team claims to have complete access to Ashley Madison’s database of more than 37 million members. They say they're in possession of financial records, addresses, and other personal information, and are threatening to publish it online unless the site closes.

In addition to Ashley Madison, the same group has compromised two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men. All three are owned by the same parent company, Avid Life Media (ALM).

The hackers said in a statement: “Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online.”

The issue that prompted the attack appears to be the leavers’ fee that Ashley Madison charges users. Should a member choose to leave the service permanently, Ashley Madison offers a “full delete” of their profile and all associated data for a $19 fee.

However, The Impact Team claims no data is ever deleted. "Full Delete netted [Avid Life Media] $1.7 million in revenue in 2014. It's also a complete lie," the hackers said in their statement. "Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real names and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed."

So far Avid Life Media has defended the service and offered to stop charging for it in the future. Their own statement says: “We apologise for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. The current business world has proven to be one in which no company’s online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism, with Avid Life Media being only the latest among many companies to have been attacked, despite investing in the latest privacy and security technologies.”

For now, ALM has positive words for concerned users. “At this time,” reads the statement, “we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorised access points.” The company is working with law enforcement agencies to investigate the hack and plans to prosecute all parties responsible for what they're calling “an act of cyber-terrorism.”

For more on this developing story you can check out CNN.

Have you been to a music festival like Coachella or Firefly and wondered who that hot guy was standing ten feet away, singing along to every word of your favorite band’s favorite song? Maybe you chose not to go up and introduce yourself. But perhaps you pulled out your Tinder app and swiped left through a bunch of potential matches trying to locate his photo.

If you felt frustrated at not being able to hook up, or your nerves got the best of you, don’t worry. A Dutch-based company has created an event-based dating app for the festival-attendee market – so you can meet those people you spotted in person but didn’t actually get a chance to chat with.

Glance is the latest gimmick-driven dating app to hit the test market, and is currently in beta only in the Netherlands. However, the company has its sights set on worldwide release.

Glance allows you not only to locate people you might be attracted to at festivals, but if you plan on going, it can hook you up over the app in advance, so you can arrange to meet and hang out in person when you get there.

Hendrik van Benthem, founder of Glance, calls this “event­-driven dating.” In a statement he explains: “We live in a society in which users of products and services demand relevance. Why would you adjust your plans to a date that will probably turn into nothing, if your date can also come the place where you’ll be anyway, surrounded by people you feel comfortable with?”

Glance is not just for festival-goers. The app aims to get people introduced who plan to be at the same night club at the same time, too.

Glance launched in May 2015 in Amsterdam together with “leading partners from the event and entertainment industry.” The entrepreneurs behind Glance did not have any start-up investors, and are funding the company themselves. Says van Benthem: “We talked to different VC’s from the States and the Netherlands. Really cool to talk with those people. They operate on a different level and we learned a lot. The best experience was a meeting in the private jet of Dan Bilzerian. Crazy. But there never was a match...”

Glance is available in the App store for iOS and Play Store for Android, and information is available on its website. It is currently only available for events in the Netherlands but the company plans to launch internationally shortly.

Plenty of Fish announced on July 1st that POF.com now is a responsive website. With regards to websites, the term “responsive” refers to the websites ability to change the layout of the site on the fly to better accommodate the screen size the person is using to view the website. For example someone viewing a website on a laptop could see a site that has multiple columns with a lot of text and images. When someone views the same website on their phone it most likely would be one column with less images and a bigger text font used to make reading easier. There is more to responsive but that is the basics of what it does.

Before it was responsive POF.com would serve the same webpages for mobile as desktop. This wasn’t bad on a tablet as the dating site is very usable on this size of screen. On a phone though a user would have to scroll around the screen to see different parts of the page. Going responsive allows mobile users to have a more app like experience when using POF.com.

For more on this very popular dating service please read our POF review.

On Sunday June 14^th, people across America were acknowledging Flag Day, an annual tradition, over social media. Coincidentally, it was also the annual celebration of the LGBTQ community – an event known as Pride. So when Coffee Meets Bagel reached out via social media to announce its support of Flag Day, the online dating service mistakenly caused an uproar because of a typo.

The now-infamous tweet which was widely criticized over social media and the subject of a story in the Washington Post, said: “It’s Fag Day. Hoist your colors and don’t forget to LIKE today’s Bagel.”

People on the East Coast were the first to catch the mistake, but many didn’t realize it was a typo and immediately took to Twitter to denounce the dating service, with one person posting: “Got a notification from @coffeeMbagel saying today was "fag day." I'm disgusted at the audacity to say that during pride. #coffeemeetsbagel.”

Many people weren’t aware of Flag Day, but they were aware of Pride celebrations, which made the typo even worse. They thought the company had posted the tweet on purpose.

Coffee Meets Bagel took down the post after they realized the typo. But thanks to the speed at which social media can influence a story, and the incredibly bad timing that the typo happened during Pride, the company had little chance to correct the error. They have since been apologizing and repeating that it was just a simple mistake.

About three hours after the notification went out, users received an e-mail from the company’s head of customer experience apologizing for the misspelling. It reads, in part:

“I would like to apologize wholeheartedly for the message you received this afternoon. The misspelling of Flag Day was a mistake and a complete oversight. We’re updating our process to ensure something like this does not happen again…Coffee Meets Bagel, as a company and as individual employees, celebrates the LGBTQ community and would never use such a word.”

While it might just be a simple oversight, the bigger question is: will it hurt CMB in the long-run, if people associate their brand with a lack of support of the LGBTQ community?

We have all sent emails and social media posts with typos – this isn’t uncommon. What is a shame in this instance is that a company sent an official tweet meant to show support of both Flag Day and the LGBTQ community, and yet, ended up alienating their customers and potential customers in the process.

After two years together, POF has ended its relationship with speed dating and singles event company FastLife.

POF CEO Marcus Frind saw a bright future for the union in 2013. "The direction of online dating is undeniably headed towards a merging of the online and offline worlds,” he said. “Currently our users host over 300 events worldwide each month. Now more than ever, we understand the importance of offering singles innovative, new ways of connecting face to face."

The plan was for POF to invest $30 million into live events over a period of 12 months. Competition in the arena was ramping up. Mega-companies like Match had introduced live events. Services like HowAboutWe were focused on getting online daters off their computers and into the real world. Location-based apps that linked nearby singles for insta-dates were becoming increasingly popular.

The time seemed right for POF to team up with FastLife, a company that held around 2,400 events a year in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. FastLife's exceptional service and venues generated annual revenue of ~$2.5 million. Could rounding out its offerings be what POF needed to take things to the next level?

The answer turned out to be 'no.' POF dropped FastLife in June 2015, 21 months after acquiring the company and 2 months after closing eVow. eVow had been launched to compete with dating sites focused on long-term relationships, but proved unsustainable after 5 years.

Now that POF has lightened its load, what's next for the dating site?

Like many of its competitors, POF is focused strongly on mobile. Frind told an interviewer at the 2015 Traction Conference in Vancouver that 90% of POF's business is now conducted on smartphones. POF is concentrating on keeping its brand strong, so mobile users will continue to choose it over other options in the app store.

POF is also concentrating on maximizing messaging. The more messages a user sends, the more likely they are to get a response. The more responses they get, the more likely they are to go on dates. The more dates they go on, the more likely they are to enter a relationship and have a successful online dating experience. Currently, around 30 million messages are sent each day on POF.

As far as revenue is concerned, POF has opted for a “freemium” model. Rather than a traditional subscription service, POF offers its basic features for free. Users can then choose to upgrade or add features for additional fees. With more than 100 million users and a rumoured $100+ million in annual revenue, it's hard to argue with the POF approach.