Facebook Dating is now clear oppressed for Tinder

The waning threat of the social media giant has become a crosswind for Match. The company's shares have already risen sharply this year and hit an all-time high last week after a solid earnings report. The company said it added 384,000 subscribers to its Tinder dating app, which now has 4.7 million paid subscribers.

Match has accomplished a rare feat in the world of social networks: persuading people to pay for the service. Match discovered that people are willing to spend to find the right person and that they risk balking in front of a tech giant – with his privacy issues – trying to help them find love at home. best price.

With its free dating product, Facebook doubles its existing social networks. Users of a new Secret Crush tool can add friends to a private list. If two friends are on the "crush" list, Facebook will warn them of the match. This is a "similar" notification on steroids.

The problem is that Facebook must persuade its users to provide the company with their most personal data. A data breach becomes even more disturbing when it can reveal the deepest secrets of an individual. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on Facebook Dating's security policies.

Match understands that he has a length ahead in the arena of trust. "I think people need to be very comfortable trusting Facebook with the nine people in their group of friends they have a crush on," said Match Director Mandy Ginsberg . Barron.

She adds that Match has observed Facebook's movements "like a hawk" in markets such as Canada, Colombia and Thailand, where the company has offered a dating service that introduces litigators outside the group. user's friends. Match claims that Facebook's entry into these regions had no noticeable impact. "The issue of privacy is very important in the meetings," says Jefferies analyst Brent Thill, who says Facebook has shown "more barking than bite" with its dating ambitions. He adds that even if Facebook ended up gaining ground, its success could ease the stigma associated with online dating in Asia, where Match's Tinder is also trying to gain ground.

A win for Facebook would not necessarily be a loss for Match, said Thill. The idea is that the daters want to improve their chances by being on several applications at once, even if they all contain the same contenders.

Match sees a major opportunity in Asia, which has some 300 million singles considered part of the company's addressable market. As a reminder, only 8.6 million people in the world pay for one of Match's properties, including its power plant, Tinder, which popularized the concept of face scanning to find matches.

The company is making special efforts to develop Tinder in South Korea, Japan and India. These countries helped Tinder accelerate the growth of paying subscribers during the last quarter of Match. Tinder's Gold members pay different amounts, but the app offered me a monthly fee of $ 15 this week. The gold, in part, gives users the opportunity to see who has already liked them about the application. Tinder also has a free version, but Match hopes that improvements to its algorithm will encourage more users to pay.

Wall Street analysts first asked how many people would pay for Tinder, but the audience continues to grow. Tinder added more subscribers in the last quarter than in the same period last year, and the company expects an even bigger increase in the month of June.

Wall Street has become strongly bullish on Tinder, but the company's latest results have still sent shares up 12% higher on Wednesday. The stock more than made up for Facebook-induced losses last year, trading recently at $ 67.27. Jefferies' Thill sees more leeway when the Tinder engine goes overseas and Match expands brands like Hinge, which puts more emphasis on long-term relationships than Tinder.

Match's revenues were $ 465 million and adjusted Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, of $ 155 million in the first quarter, up 14% and 13%, respectively.

These profits could have a significant boost if Match won an extra win over Big Tech, taking this time
Apple

(AAPL) and
Alphabet
of the
(GOOGL) Google addressing the application store fees, a major hurdle for application developers.

Apart from the game, Match could be the first contributor to the so-called app store tax, says Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie, referring to the 30% discount Apple and Google are making on in-app purchases.

Match's chief financial officer, Gary Swidler, said during the February call for results that the company was "extremely focused" on app store fees. "To the extent that we can use tools, whether it's new stores or something else, to reduce the overall 30%, we will definitely focus and try to pull benefit from that, "he continued.

Apple's royalties have also attracted the attention of European regulators, who would have opened a formal investigation to determine whether the company's app store practices create an anti-competitive environment for competitors.
Spotify technology

(SPOT), according to the Financial Times. Macquarie's Schachter is "quite optimistic" that app store store fees will eventually drop, given "regulatory, legal and competitive pressures."

Any fee reduction would actually come directly to Match's bottom line, which would give investors one more reason to fall in love.

Write to Emily Bary at [email protected]