Types (Niche)

Just as Tinder’s founder Sean Rad was at the top of his game, enjoying the enormous success of his dating app Tinder after two short years on the market - and about to announce the new features offered in the latest version of the app - the board has decided to take away his CEO title.

As reported originally in a cover story for Forbes Magazine, Rad has been demoted to President, his management power greatly reduced for a yet-to-be-determined CEO who will take the reins of Tinder from him. According to Forbes, IAC decided that the company needed a more seasoned CEO (“an Eric Schmidt-like person”) leading it and taking it to the next level of a viable, revenue-generating business, as opposed to the young and green entrepreneur who brought Tinder to its current success. And also, preferably not a CEO tainted with scandal.

When Rad first launched Tinder, he did so with a lot of help from his friend and social trendsetter Justin Mateen. By approaching social influencers at universities (such as fraternity leaders), Mateen managed to get a lot of people using the app quickly, so the user base only grew stronger with time and more than a little PR.

Mateen and Rad built up the company together, but the scandal started when Mateen started dating one of their employees. When that relationship went south, the employee decided to pursue a sexual harassment lawsuit based on angry and inappropriate texts she had received from Mateen, and sued the company. She reportedly walked away with a little over a million dollars, but Mateen and Rad seem to be paying a higher price. Rad was implicated because he was the one who stripped her of her VP title and later “wrongfully terminated” her, according to the lawsuit.

But will all this drama derail Tinder itself? Not likely. The company continues to grow, and the revenue plan for its new premium service – Tinder Plus – rolls out this month with two new features for paying customers. The basic Tinder app will remain free.

The new version includes a travel feature called Passport, which lets users journey around the globe, swiping through matches in various cities instead of having to choose one based on their GPS location. The second feature is something users have been requesting from the beginning – an “undo” button that lets them revisit profiles they’d already rejected. Everyone deserves a second chance, right?

The company plans to launch another feature in the near future called “Places,” which will allow users who frequent the same places to meet over the app.

Will Tinder maintain the enthusiasm of its investors and the public at large after Rad steps down? Will customers be willing to pay for the benefits of Tinder Plus? We’ll have to wait and see.

Let’s face it, we human beings are visual creatures. When you meet someone new in person, what’s the first thing you do? Most likely, you look at him and decide on how attractive he is. Would you pursue him if you had an opportunity?

This type of superficial behavior is pretty standard. Most of us assess and judge others according to their appearance. The soaring popularity of apps like Tinder give us evidence that even in the digital age when we can get more information on almost anybody we meet if we just took the time to Google them – we prefer to say yes or no based on their looks.

Case in point: in the two years Tinder has been on the market, smartphone sales have gone up dramatically, which means more people have access to the app. The statistics speak for themselves. Tinder processes more than a billion swipes daily, matches more than 12 million people in the same amount of time (only a fraction of the overall swipes are mutual however), and though the company won’t release information on the number of users, sources say it could be as large as 50 million active users.

More important than people signing up for Tinder is the fact that they use it – as regularly (if not more often) as other popular social media like Facebook or Pinterest. According to a recent article in The New York Times, on average, people log in to the app 11 times a day. Women spend as much as 8 and a half minutes on it, while men spend 7.2 minutes (sorry guys). If you add it up, that’s almost 90 minutes per day.

But is the phenomenon of Tinder purely based on our basic animal instincts? Are we really only looking for someone who is physically attractive, or who embodies a physical ideal of some sort?

Maybe not. Many of Tinder’s users (mostly men) are looking to rogue apps like Tinderoid that manipulate Tinder’s database so they can “swipe right” to multiple profiles at once without even looking at a single photo. They are looking to increase their odds of matching with a woman, rather than looking for someone they find physically appealing. But what is the goal - is it just to hook up with more women? Maybe, but that’s another matter.

Tinder is a vehicle for meeting more people, and works a lot faster than your traditional online dating process. Maybe it’s appeal is not just about the photos, but instead due to the vast quantity of people you can “pick and choose” anytime, anywhere - and how quickly you can match and meet up.

The real question is: does it improve the overall dating experience? The jury is still out on that one.

Somewhere along the line, every argument in favor of mobile dating apps claims they've made it easier than ever to find a relationship (even just a one-night relationship, if that's what you're looking for). Everyone loves the idea of a quick and easy matchmaking process, and why wouldn't they? In our era of short attention spans, we expect everything to be as fast and convenient as possible.

On the other hand, plenty have said that all that swiping left and right doesn't actually amount to much. Dating apps have taken a complex, time-consuming process and wrapped it up in a package that requires almost no thought or energy. Can something so easy accurately recreate the intricate experience of meeting and falling for someone? Can true, lasting romance ever come from a dating app?

Well, let's see.

When it comes to popularity, dating apps certainly aren't hurting. A current Radian 6 analysis shows that buzz surrounding dating apps is very high, with a total of 2,094,611 mentions. Breaking it down, Tinder comes out on top (1,383,012) followed by Badoo (505.611), Grindr (137,779) and Twoo (63,733). The vast majority of what is being said is positive, so users are clearly finding something of merit in this modern-day, digital approach to dating.

Looking deeper, we start to see another trend. The consensus amongst users seems to be that dating apps are primarily used for hooking up rather than serious romance. Search the keywords “love” and “lust” and you'll find that the latter is more closely associated with app-based interactions. Grindr, naturally, leads the pack with 86.3% “lust” to 13.7% “love” mentions. Tinder takes second place with 81.3% and 18.7%, respectively.

When another sentiment analysis is performed, it's revealed that negative sentiment is higher for lust-related interactions and a higher positive sentiment is associated with interactions focused on finding true love.

So is there any grounding to the perception that dating services are just for hookups? Seeing as there's strong negative sentiment attached to the lust angle, most seem to be opposed to using dating apps for casual sex. Sure, it's out there, but more singles using mobile dating services are looking for a happily ever after that lasts longer than one night.

Admittedly, it might not be something you find right away, but hey – when is it? Sorting through the weirdo's takes plenty of time online too, and just as much time in person, so embrace it. It's all part of the process and once you have what you're looking for, it won't matter where you found it.

Consumers aren't the only ones excited about iOS 8. Apple launched several new features with the operating system that expand the capabilities of third-party apps, and app developers are keen to take advantage of them.

Most excitingly, iOS 8 lets devs use the Touch ID fingerprint sensor included in the iPhone 5s and the new iPhone 6 models. This means apps that would ordinarily use the Passcode feature can now include the fingerprint sensor instead, bypassing the need for a traditional password once a user's account has been verified.

Developers have jumped on the new opportunity and, left and right, are updating their apps. Here's a round-up of some of the apps that have adopted Touch ID:

• LastPass: The popular password management app now uses Touch ID to secure a user's password vault.
• Amazon: Where would any of us be without Amazon.com making our lives 101% easier? And now that the Amazon iPhone app includes Touch ID, it's even easier than that.
• Mint: Users can now log in to this money management app with Touch ID rather than their password.
• Day One: An award-winning journaling app. Users can lock their journals with Touch ID instead of a passcode.
• Evernote: Evernote is a modern workspace that helps you be your most productive self. Now it makes your life even easier by allowing premium users to use Touch ID to secure their accounts.
• YPlan: What are you up to tonight? YPlan is an event discovery app designed to help you answer that question by discovering and booking the best events in your area. Touch ID is now used for purchase authorization.
• eHarmony: You didn't think I'd forget to include a dating app, did you? Say goodbye to the days of user logins... if eHarmony is your dating service of choice, you can now use Touch ID instead.

Let's here it for iOS 8. Logging in to many of your favorite accounts is now as easy as resting your finger on that shiny new Touch ID sensor. Not only does it make sign-ins easier and provide another layer of security, it does so in a way that keeps with the overall Apple aesthetic and ethos. If you use any of these mobile services, take advantage of the Touch ID improvements and update your apps ASAP.

There was a time when Plenty of Fish was squarely at the top of the online dating heap. Founder Markus Frind attributes the site's explosive success to a surprisingly simple formula: in 2003, when rival dating sites paywalled, POF kept things free. Instead of charging customers, POF relied entirely on advertising for revenue.

The model worked like a charm. Frind famously claimed he spent only an hour a day working, while POF blew past the competition to become one of the world's most popular dating sites.

These days, things aren't quite so simple. Five years ago POF had just 3 people on its payroll; today it has 80. No longer does Frind devote only an hour a day to work; now he works half-days. Revenue has grown alongside both of those changes, but not without challenges. Namely, the smartphone.

POF's iPhone and Android apps are incredible popular – second only to Tinder – but they aren't compatible with the revenue model that made the company a success in the first place. Advertising just doesn't work well on the smaller screens of mobile phones, and now POF is faced with a decision: evolve or go extinct.

Frind says that 90% of POF's visits from people under the age of 35 now come from phones rather than web browsers, so it's clear which option the company must choose. Most of its developers are now focused on improving the mobile apps, although Frind says up to 60% of the company's “tens of millions of EBITDA” still comes from the website.

POF's app revenue comes instead from upgraded memberships. Users can pay a monthly fee for extra features, like the ability to add more photos, but the new business model for monetization on mobile is still in its infancy. And while revenue overall is reaching an all-time high for the company, this year also marks the first time the number of people visiting the website is declining. According to web data firm Alexa, OkCupid has now caught up to POF on desktop in the free dating site market.

Can POF hold its own against a site backed by IAC? Mark Brooks, a consultant for the online dating industry, acknowledges that POF lacks the financial resources of IAC, but believes POF's mobile numbers are promising. What's left now is for POF to figure out how to make those mobile visitors as valuable as their desktop counterparts.

POF must now find ways to increase the number of users who upgrade to paid accounts. Exactly what those ways will be remains to be seen.

IAC has released third quarter 2014 results. Revenue for the quarter totaled $782.2 million, up from $756.9 million in Q3 2013.

In the third quarter of 2014, consolidated revenue for IAC increased 3% year-over-year driven by solid growth at The Match Group and strong growth at Vimeo and HomeAdvisor. The Match Group revenue increased 12%, driven by 9% growth in paid subscribers to its dating websites. They now number over 3.6 million globally. Contributions from The Princeton Review and FriendScout24 – acquired on August 1, 2014 and August 31, 2014, respectively – also played large roles in The Match Group's success in Q3 2014.

Several other important segments also ended in the green, making Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA the dark spot in an otherwise-bright quarter. Third quarter adjusted-EBITDA was $135 million, down 18% from the third quarter of 2013. However, it was down only 1% when excluding approximately $14 million in net gains related to asset sales and the impact of around $13 million of acquisition-related differed revenue write-downs for the Princeton Review, FriendScout 24, and Slimwear.