3 Online dating revelations

TechCrunch Disrupt Europe: Berlin 2013 (Day 2)

A few things have come out in the open recently which I thought I’d share…

  1. Bill Dobbie is stepping down as chief executive of online dating company Cupid following a year which has seen its share price slump amid allegations it used fake messages to attract subscribers.
    Cupid is not OkCupid first up and being based in the UK, you can imagine the pressure which Cupid.com are under. No surprise the CEO stood down.
  2. A Florida woman has filed a $1.5 billion class-action lawsuit against online dating site Match.com, alleging the website allowed photos of her and thousands of others to be used illegally to create phony profiles intended to dupe romantic hopefuls out of money.
    The website “conspired with criminals operating from locations including Internet cafes in Nigeria, Ghana and Russia” who created fake profiles for romance “scams,” according to the lawsuit which was filed last week.The suit also says that Match.com, owned by media mogul Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, was aware of the fake profiles as the company approves, edits and posts each profile.
  3. The “hook-up” app market is booming. Tinder is ruling the roost while everyone tries to catch up and cash in on the hookup market. Maybe they should have a look at my presentation and dating idea from 2009! Rad, CEO of Tinder recently spoke at Techcrunch Distrupt conference.

    Rad said he couldn’t share user counts, but he did reveal that the app sees 3.5 million matches and 350 million swipes a day. (About 30 percent of those are the right swipes that indicate interest.) And the app has seen 30 billion swipes and 300 million matches total.