The GDI & Social Discovery Podcast

POM is a brand new dating app from London that uses music streaming data to match singles with a strong emotional compatibility. Standing for ‘The Power Of Music’, POM doesn’t simply connect users who have similar music tastes. It instead learns what feelings their favourite artists, songs and albums evoke, to connect them with people who compliment their unique emotional profile. Co-founder and C...

While the stigma around online dating has receded substantially over the past few years, there is still a lot of negative connotations associated with sex positive and polyamorous platforms. Feeld is one of the leading offerings in this category, providing a safe space for people to explore their identity, learn more about themselves and connect with similarly open-minded individuals and couples....

Luxy is colloquially known as a dating platform for millionaires, due to its strict verification process and desire to attract only the highest-quality singles. However, these values have seen the platform often come under scrutiny from several media publications that label it as “elitist”. These criticisms have not prevented Luxy from becoming a mainstay in the online dating industry. It’s been d...

Coupleness is a Swedish startup relationship platform that helps existing couples invest in their relationship and improve the way they communicate with each other. Long-term relationships can often lose their way if the couple fail to maintain open and honest communication. Coupleness provides several simple activities and features to set aside just a few minutes of dedicated connection every day...

A few years ago, CitySwoon started to develop its own technology to host speed dating and singles events in a virtual capacity. This decision turned out to be more than beneficial in March 2020, when the company was forced to cancel all of its offline gatherings. CitySwoon has always offered its users a hybrid product, with a traditional online dating platform alongside dedicated events to get the...

The GDI Podcast: Female Founders Discuss How They’ve Transformed The Dating Industry, Sponsored by RealMe! Like the majority of technology industries, the online dating industry is largely dominated by male executives, professionals and investors. However, there has been a significant number of female founders who overcame all the challenges and created popular products to ensure women feel empowe...

So Syncd is a London-based startup dating app that matches singles using the renowned ‘Myers-Briggs’ personality types. New members take a five-minute questionnaire to find out which personality category they fall into, out of a possible 16. The app’s algorithm then creates matches based on their results to forge stronger connections that could turn into something serious. Company data suggests th...

This special episode of The GDI Podcast welcomes three expert guests to talk about two of the biggest issues in the online dating industry: user safety and privacy. As the world ground to a halt and everyone was forced to use mobile devices as their only means of communication, the number of singles turning to online dating platforms increased rapidly. They used them to pass the time, go on virtua...

ExoClick is a leading online traffic network that helps advertisers and publishers to convert and monetize their content. It has a particularly large footprint in the online dating industry, sending billions of impressions to dating brands and their affiliates. To support this, the team recently produced ‘The Ultimate Guide to Dating’, a comprehensive document that is full of business intelligence...

While the majority of Match Group’s mainstream media attention goes to its biggest brands in Tinder, Hinge and Match, the umbrella company also offers a variety of more focused apps targeted at specific demographics. The Affinity team has worked to develop several popular platforms in recent years, including BLK for Black singles and Chispa for the Latino community. Its most recent venture is Upwa...

SALT is a Christian dating app that uses modern technology to help singles find a long-term relationship with someone who shares their faith. It was inspired by the variety of already available religious dating websites, but the founders identified a gap in the market for an app-based platform for the Millennial and Gen Z generations. However, it remains of the utmost importance that SALT adheres...

Kim Kaplan was one of the very first employees at Plenty Of Fish in 2009. Over the next ten years she helped turn the dating platform into the success that it is today, a place for millions of young adults to find a relationship. She has recently started working on creating her own dating app, something she only decided to pursue after encouragement from her friends and advisors. Snack was born, a...

Spark Networks is one of the online dating industry’s biggest publicly-traded companies and it specialises in serious platforms that are committed to forming long-term relationships. Along with mainstream offerings like Zoosk, and services for religious users like Christian Mingle and Jdate, the Berlin-based company also has a strong focus on older daters. Silver Singles is targeted at over 50s wh...

David Park spent two years as a member of Raya’s early engineering team and helped the small outfit create one of the industry’s most exclusive platforms. Dubbed by many as the ‘Tinder For Celebrities’, Raya is incredibly secretive about who is in the community and users can receive bans just for trying to take screenshots. There is also a lot of mystery about how the app actually operates and it...

Jigsaw was created by two university friends back in 2016 who were fed up with the dating platforms available to them at the time. This is a story that is behind a lot of the new apps on the market, but Jigsaw’s USP of messages before photos has remained popular with its members. Now anti-superical dating is one of the industry’s hottest trends, with some commentators saying it’s evidence of an ev...

Elate is a new startup that is designed for the slow dating trend. Singles are only allowed to talk to three different people at any given time, which prevents low quality conversations from continuing on unnecessarily. It also markets itself as an ‘anti-ghosting’ platform because in order to start talking to a new match, the users must first end an existing one. The app then automatically sends a...

LOVOO is The Meet Group’s leading subsidiary in Europe and, like the rest of the portfolio, offers members a hybrid dating and live streaming experience. The company reinvigorated its executive committee in November, after co-founders Florian Braunschweig and Tobias Börner stepped down from their positions to pursue new challenges. Anna Maria Wanninger was promoted to CEO and now leads a more yout...

Isodate is a speed dating platform that allows singles to replicate the excitement of meeting new people in an organic way from the comfort and safety of their home. It was launched in March at the beginning of the pandemic when the virtual dating trend was just about to take off. Participants can sign up for one of the multiple events every day for the opportunity to meet up to 15 other people in...

Cobble is creating its own space in the online dating industry. The app works for friends, first time matches and long-term relationships alike, and helps couples find unique date venues in their local area. It borrows the swipe technology from traditional mainstream dating apps and suggests numerous ideas to choose from. If both parties swipe right they make a match, and are then directed to book...

It may not seem like 2020 would be the best year to launch a dating app that aims to get people meeting face-to-face as soon as possible. However, the team behind The Round confronted the challenge head on and conducted the first release in Austin earlier this year. The Round aims to combat dating fatigue by getting users into a match and organising a date in less than 10 minutes. It also wants si...

Inner Circle appointed Sanneke Boesveldt as its first ever Chief Marketing Officer in February. It came at a time when the dating app was expanding its marketing, communications and PR departments to streamline its overall brand message. The first major impact was contributing to the company’s complete rebrand, which included a new name, logo and promotional tagline. Moving forward, all of Inner C...

It’s often difficult to navigate the world of online dating for singles who are suffering from HIV, for example knowing when is the best time to reveal their condition to their matches. Christian Mercer found this out when a close friend confided in him about the issues he was facing. Therefore, he set out to develop a brand new dating and social app so everyone can be open and upfront from the ve...

FTI Consulting and RealMe Research Dating’s ‘New Normal’ by The GDI & Social Discovery Podcast

At the beginning of the month, ProSiebenSat.1 Media officially completed its takeover of The Meet Group, in a deal which valued the dating and live streaming outfit at $500 million. The German broadcaster merged the company with Parship Group, its online dating arm that already housed Parship, eharmony and ElitePartner. In turn, a brand new umbrella was formed called ParshipMeet Group, which will...

HILY and TAIMI are two products that have taken the online dating industry by storm, and have significantly grown in popularity since they were both released at the beginning of 2017. Short for ‘Hey, I Like You’, HILY is a mainstream dating app that attributes its growth to an intelligent matching algorithm that prioritises compatibility ahead of any other factor. On the other hand, TAIMI has sinc...