Tinder

Dating app Tinder continues to lose paying subscribers according to Match Group’s latest earnings report. Match Group’s overall revenue for Q1 has been impacted by Tinder’s ongoing struggles, but it continues to hold strong in the dating app market overall.

According to Fast Company, Match Group said that Tinder’s paying user base for the first quarter fell 9 percent from the same quarter last year. The company’s CEO Bernard Kim remained optimistic, saying that they expect to slow user declines in the second half of the year.

However, Match Group’s revenue is up, with net income at $123.2 million for the first quarter of 2024 compared to $120.8 million this time last year, according to Marketwatch. Revenue rose 9 percent for the company to $859.6 million, compared to $787.1 million the same time last year. (Match Group revenue also beat overall analyst expectations of $855.8 million.)

Tinder and Hinge announced new features to ramp up safety for their users, including sharing date details with family and friends and filtering unwanted language from comments and messages.

Tinder’s new safety feature Share My Date allows users to share date plans they make with their family and friends for additional safety, including details like location, date and time along with their match's photo. They can do this using the feature up to 30 days in advance, according to USA Today.

While Tinder says about 30 percent of its users already share this information with close friends or family, it makes it much more convenient and top-of-mind to be able to share via the app.

A new study from the research team at Mozilla has found that dating apps are collecting and selling more information than its users might be aware of.

According to The Washington Post, Mozilla found that 80 percent of the dating apps they reviewed – which include popular apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge among others – may share the personal data of users with their advertisers. In fact, the privacy policies that users must agree with to use these platforms make it clear that their personal information could be sold. But how many are reading the fine print?

Spark Networks’ privacy policy was particularly specific and alarming for its apps JDate, Christian Mingle and Elite Singles. It stated that the apps might collect “sensitive information” including political affiliation, union memberships, and your “sexual preferences and experiences,” according to the Post.

A new report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has found that people are using apps like Facebook, TikTok and dating app Tinder to traffic guns.

The report released in early April found that between 2017 and 2021, a larger percentage of guns were trafficked over online platforms like these than were sold at gun shows, according to The Washington Times.

The ATF investigation found a number of illegal ways people could obtain firearms, including 3.6 percent of illicit sales from online marketplaces like eBay, Craigslist, and OfferUp, 2.7 percent via social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and 1 percent through social apps like WhatsApp, TikTok and Tinder.

LinkedIn is having a moment with romance. In a recent study, more than half of singles are turning to the career networking platform to find dates.

According to Dating News, a majority of 61 percent of singles aged 35 to 40 found dates on LinkedIn. Overall, 52 percent of all respondents ages 20 to 40 have found their dates on the business networking platform, highlighting its unexpected new role.

Interestingly, the second-best way that people say they are finding dates (48 percent) is through being set up on blind dates. Only 45 percent of respondents reported finding luck on online dating sites in comparison.

Older daters are more apt to have successfully met people via dating sites – half of respondents between 35 and 40 years old said they have met people on dating sites compared to only 33 percent of people between 20 and 24 years old, according to Dating News. Gen Z appears more open to meeting people outside of dating sites than Millennials, who came of age when dating apps launched and tend to gravitate to those platforms.

Yoel Roth, former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, has now accepted a position as vice president of trust and safety at Match Group.

According to Tech Crunch, Roth will be responsible for developing policies and standards concerning safety across all Match Group apps.

The new VP made the announcement on his LinkedIn page: “As they say… some personal news! I swiped right on Match Group! 15 years ago, I started studying what we now call ‘trust and safety’ because the then-new world of dating apps felt like the Wild West; it’s truly a dream come true to get to roll up my sleeves and work to protect the millions of people making connections on our apps worldwide.”