General News

Match Group has agreed to pay $441 million in a settlement with some of Tinder’s former employees, shutting down the lengthy trial before closing arguments, according to Reuters.

The plaintiffs included Tinder co-founder Sean Rad among other former employees, and the trial got heated between Rad and former IAC CEO Barry Dillard. Prior to the trial, emails from former Match Group CEO Gregg Blatt were released to the public, showing that he tried to woo talented people into key roles at the company with a higher stock valuation compared to what he told the Tinder employees who had options to exercise.

According to The Daily Mail, emails revealed that Blatt valued the dating app at nearly $12 billion in 2016, more than a year before Match Group valued Tinder at only $3 billion as Sean Rad and other employees were forced to exit the company. Rad and the other plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit claim Blatt purposefully devalued the stock in their negotiations, citing the emails as evidence. 

Atraf Dating App Message to Users about Hack

A group of hackers called Black Shadow threatened to expose the personal information of more than a million users of Israel’s leading gay dating app unless they were paid a million U.S. dollars within a 48-hour period. 

The dating site Atraf became a target after Black Shadow hacked an Israeli internet service provider CyberServe, according to Agence-France Press (AFP). The hackers dropped tens of thousands of personal data records online as proof of making good on the threat, which were stolen from various websites that included public transportation firms, museums, and a travel company in addition to Atraf. About 1,000 user profiles were exposed from Atraf, according to the report, with the hackers saying more exposures were to come if they did not get paid.

These exposed records included HIV status, sexual orientation, and even some passwords. According to AFP, cyber security officials link the hackers to Iran.

The dating app industry is expected to grow to over $11 billion by 2028, thanks to the increased use of smartphones and people turning to them for connection during the pandemic.

A new report by Grand View Research found that the industry is doing better than ever and will only continue to grow at a rate of 5.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2028. The increasing global reach of smartphones and internet access has helped to propel the industry forward, as well as pandemic lockdowns and the increased interest in virtual dating.

The study also found that the 18- to 25-year-old market is expected to register the second largest CAGR of 5.8 percent over the same period. Dating apps have their eyes on Gen Z daters who are looking for something more engaging than the typical routine of swiping through profiles on an app, as they have grown up with smartphones and virtual experiences. Many of the new offerings that apps like Tinder are unveiling include interactive content. Tinder and Bumble have both recently announced that they will be offering experiences in the metaverse where daters can create avatars and meet in virtual spaces to date.

Match’s latest Singles In America study found that a majority of daters are looking for maturity and stability in a relationship, a result of people feeling lonely and isolated from the pandemic and longing for deeper connection.

According to the study, only 11 percent of singles want to date casually, while 62 percent say they seek more meaningful, committed relationships. And 65 percent are eager to find a relationship within the next year, particularly younger singles – 81 percent of Gen Z daters and 76 percent of Millennials.

Match also found that 83 percent of singles said they want a partner who is emotionally mature, and 76 percent said they want a partner who is looking to get married. This is up from 58 percent just two years ago, and interestingly, younger adults and men are most interested in marriage.

Shares for Bumble Inc, which owns the popular dating apps Bumble and Badoo, fell more than twenty percent after the company’s third quarter earnings call in November. 

The dating app went public earlier this year, with shares taking off out of the gate. In recent weeks however, investors have cooled on the stock, and Bumble has pointed to pandemic lockdowns in strong markets like Japan which have cut into the company’s overall revenue. The latest dip after the earnings call was the stock’s lowest point yet. 

According to Forbes, for the first time since its IPO, Bumble posted a decline in overall user growth, with total paying users dropping to 2.87 million through September, down from 2.93 million in the second quarter.

Match Group’s dating app Match will offer a hand-picked matchmaking service to app users for $4.99 per week, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

The company hired and trained 50 dating coaches who will be selecting two matches per week for participating users. However, the Journal notes that the matchmakers will be choosing matches from the same dating pool that the algorithm already provides, and will filter choices based on members’ answers to four basic questions, such as what a person would change about their dating life and what kind of person they gravitate towards.

The new service is being touted as a human matchmaking offering, aiming to disrupt the traditional matchmaking industry where experts charge thousands of dollars to hand pick potential matches for their clients and to better prepare them for dating. Match is offering a bit of human curation for far less money (but without all the handholding), which could have an impact.