COURTLAND BROOKS - Jan 27 - Each year we review press hits to see who got the most and the best and worst coverage. Here's the Online Personals Watch press rankings for 2016.
1. TINDER - 122 posts on OPW (in 2016)
And Tinder is the winner again, it's safe to say, not just on OPW but in general when it comes to press coverage. Again, some negative news were covered during the year, i.e. they were sued over the "Super Like" feature, experienced a global outage in November, also the lawsuit against 3nder got some quite negative mentions. But overall, Tinder did well in the press. A few more examples: they bought contact management startup Humin in March, launched Tinder Social, first in Australia in April, than worldwide in July, invested in Hey! Vina app in September, launched "Tinder Boost" feature first in Australia in September and a month later worldwide, and Tinder was recognized as the strongest part of Match Group. Tinder also lost Sean Rad as CEO again last year, but on the other hand made some interesting hires - see the news here and here.
2. MATCH GROUP: 46 posts on OPW (last year, we didn't have separate categories for Match Group and Match.com yet, and Match got 70 press hits that made OPW. Match.com got just 26 in 2016!).
Also Match Group got good and bad press coverage during last year. Financial results got a lot of coverage last year, and were analyzed by multiple experts, along with predictions for Match Group's future. Mandy Ginsberg returned to Match as CEO of Match US, and safety concerns were discussed on multiple occasions, Match Group got sued by their investors, and launched their Fresh app in June. Some major stock sales and changes in company management were also covered, i.e. the company got new CEOs for OkCupid and Twoo, but also lost some people, i.e. their CFO of Dating.
3. eHARMONY - 32 posts on OPW
eHarmony's news coverage was positive overall during last year. The company finally launched Elevated Careers. eHarmony's founder Dr. Warren stepped down and Grant Langston became new CEO and this change got a a lot of mentions in the press, along with numerous interviews with the new CEO talking about what's next for eHarmony. On the other hand eHarmony lost it's COO, Armen Avedissian in August. Eventually, in December, big changes were announced.
Joint 4. and 5. BUMBLE and GRINDR - 29 posts on OPW
We ran 29 posts each about Bumble and Grindr, so they share the 4th and 5th place. Bumble had more actual news to share though, as it seems. See the following overviews:
Bumble
Started the year with the news about an uncomfortable glitch in the app, but that's basically the only really negative news about the app we intercepted. Bumble launched BFF feature in March, the same month the news came out that 79% of Bumble is actually owned by Badoo. Bumble formed a partnership with Spotify in June, introduced BumbleBizz in July, and paid features in August, followed by photo verification feature in September, and eventually invested in gay dating Chappy in December. Busy year!
Grindr
Got $93M investment in exchange for majority ownership from Kunlun in January, but was criticized for security issues, then added fields for HIV status in the profiles in November, and that's just a few of last year's Grindr news.
6. HAPPN - 21 posts on OPW
Happn got positive overall press coverage in 2016. Happn reached 10M users & added voice feature in January, then hired Serge Gojkovich as new their US C.M.O. in March. They launched the "See You There" Feature and launched in India in May. Happn wasn't so frequently seen in the news in the second half of the year though.
7. SPARK NETWORKS - 20 posts on OPW
Spark Networks appeared in the news more often than in previous years. Various stock deals were covered. Crosspaths launched on Android in June, ChristianMingle partnered with 15 new churches in August, and Spark got $7.8M of new funding from PEAK8 and that meant major changes in company management. However, a lot of news hits were quite negative, saying that the company was in trouble, there were layoffs & no more TV ads in order to save money, and JDate closed it's office in Israel. The company was hit by a discrimination lawsuit but they eventually agreed to allow gay users to search for the same sex partners and the lawsuit was settled.
8. ASHLEY MADISON - 18 posts on OPW
After a terrible news year in 2015 that actually continued through the beginning of 2016 as well (the hack, using spam bots, lack of security, additional lawsuits) AshleyMadison went quite quiet. There wasn't much press coverage in the first half of 2016. That all changed in July, when the company once again appeared all over the press, with news that they hired Rob Segal to be it's new CEO and AM parent company rebranded as Ruby Life. The new management says the company will do better in the future, especially when it comes to privacy. Also, there's no more fem bots and despite all the problems, AM is actually doing quite well. The latest news said that AM settled with FTC and agreed to pay a reduced fine.
9. HINGE - 17 posts on OPW
Hinge got heavy press coverage mostly thanks to the launch of an entirely new version of the app, focused on serious relationships. The new service was meant to be all paid, but after only a month Hinge returned to the freemium model.
10. OKCUPID - 16 posts on OPW
OkCupid got 16 mentions on OPW last year, but only a few were actual news about the dating site - here are some of them: in Jan they launched a feature for the polyamorous, got a new CEO in May. No new posts about OkCupid on OPW since July though.
Some other companies, that deserve a mention for sharing some big news with us are MeetMe, a public company that acquired Skout last year and is doing very well since the deal, Paktor and Hornet, two companies that managed to raise substantial amounts of money in 2016. DateTix bought Lovestruck in July, Noonswoon in November and also managed to raise $1.75M in December. Parship and ElitePartner were sold again, this time to ProSiebenSat1, in September.
Meanwhile, analyst and OPW co-editor Mark Brooks got 16 press quotes, including in the New York Times about changes to the dating industry. We track all this stuff, so you don't have to. If you'd like to add Courtland Brooks to your marketing and PR team, please email [email protected] to learn more.
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