The courting game positive is tough to handle. Zurich-based relationship app Blinq has been acquired through a Swiss outdoor promotion firmSGA, with the latter coveting the team’s experience in rolling out beacon networks for a brand new division a good way to be creating interactive advertisements to work along side the Bluetooth comms tech.
the price of the acquisition has not been disclosed, though given Blinq’s restricted traction it’s not likely to be a lot of a multiple. The startup had raised round $ 1M in seed funding on account that being founded back in 2013, including from local angel traders and the founders’ own cash.
The Blinq dating app — and another project the startup developed: an algorithm to judge bodily beauty — will both be closed within two weeks, in step with co-founder and CTO Jan Berchtold.
“we’re constructing a big scale beacon network to connect out of home and cell media,” he says of the staff’s new role at APGadvert firm is 30 per cent owned with the aid of world out of residence media large, JCDecaux.
The outside advert firm is on the lookout for tips on how to extend its digital playbook with information-centered commercials, flagging the exchange in media consumption habits powered by smartphone use. “cell technologies make it that you can think of to mix the advantages of huge-protection Out of residence merchandising with the added value of digital content material. The smartphone or pill is in this case being dependent as a roughly “Out of house medium”, which is also becoming increasingly important for advertising consumers,” it writes in a press unencumber about its plans.
“precise vicinity knowledge in real time is crucial in an effort to usefully link Out of dwelling and mobile media. this is whySGA is presently growing its own focused on resolution. In future, this must allow advertisers to display related merchandising messages on a particular person’s smartphone in actual time in accordance with their vicinity.”
It’s now not clear how huge APGplanned beacon network will probably be, nor when it is going to launch. We’ve asked for more details and can replace this publish with any response. replace: “we’re planning to deploy 20,000 beacons inside the first 12 months. The beacons might be positioned on our billboards and in cooperation with shops and public transportation companies. There will probably be a strong focal point on the urban areas,” says Berchtold.
in the case of how the beacon advert tech will work, he says they are going to offer an SDK for iOS and Android to enable beacon detection for publisher apps. “there is not any different choose-in [from users] essential on the grounds that we depend on the standard location opt-in,” he adds.
It’s now not clear what number of active customers Blinq’s dating app has at this level — a 12 months in the past it used to be claiming 200,000 month-to-month active customers — although Google Play lists the Android app as only having garnered between 100,000 and 500,000 downloads, so it’s conceivable 200k was height activity. (As some degree of comparison, Tinder’s Android app has had between 50M and 100M downloads on Google Play.) Berchtold provides they’ve four hundred,000 “registered users”.
We first covered Blinq again in December 2014 when it was hoping to face out within the Tinder-dominated relationship area via incorporating beacon proximity expertise into the swipe-to-like mix — and kitting out choose venues (corresponding to ski hotels) with Estimote iBeacons. An in-app feature called InstaConnect then enabled Blinq customers to opt in to be notified of possible dates striking out at the identical region.
Even setting the social unease/creepiness factor aside, i.e. of having ambient notifications when a stranger that might wish to pick you up is striking out in the identical bar, the idea seemed very challenging to get off the bottom, given a double layer of community results being in impact. i.e. Blinq each desiring a whole lot of customers to power a hyperlocal area-based totally courting state of affairs; and a whole lot of venues to be kitted out with the related beacon tech — at the least to supply anything greater than pre-packaged singles dating ski vacation novelty (at which point beacon-based notifications would be lovely redundant anyway, as the entire holidaying singles can be in the identical après-ski bar… ).
while their beacon-powered relationship idea used to be clearly a stretch, the pilots Blinq ran had been at the least a way for the crew to gain expertise — which will now be put to work for APGnetwork “within the close to future”.
As for the Blinq app, whereas there are positive comments about its design, consumer critiques skew in opposition to complaints concerning the time it took to get tested (its singles neighborhood was once intended to be ‘curated’, reasonably than a free-for-all); and — for those who had been eventually ready to get admission to the app — disappointment about the lack of doable dates after they obtained there.
“as soon as you’re allowed full get right of entry to to the apps performance, you appreciate that there’s no one to do so with, aside from for perhaps two or three folks living as a minimum one hundred sixty km away,” writes one reviewer. “whilst you’re accomplished saying ‘hi’ and ‘bye ‘to them, the one thing that remains is you and your damaged dreams.”
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Fundings & Exits – TechCrunch
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