Types (Niche)

Grindr employees got approval from the National Labor Relations Board for holding an election to form a union. The ballots will become available November 22nd, and voting will end on December 13th.

According to Bloomberg Law, the government agency ruled in November that a group of about 100 employees can vote on whether they want to be represented by the Communications Workers of America, which guided the employees through its first round of voting earlier this year.

NLRB Regional Director Mori Rubi made the decision to allow Grindr employees to move forward with unionizing. According to Bloomberg, she countered arguments by the company’s management team that product managers should be considered supervisors and therefore be unable to unionize under the current labor laws. Instead, she argued that product managers don’t hold enough power in directing other employees, according to the report.

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, will be expanded to include a dating app feature.

According to Fox Business, Musk recently held a company-wide meeting on the anniversary of his acquisition of Twitter to announce where he sees the platform headed. At the meeting, employees report that he said that X will become a “fully fledged” dating app in 2024, according to Business Insider.

At the meeting, he also mentioned that banking and transaction features will be added to the app in the near future, referring to these two major moves as being part of the new “everything app” he envisions for X.

College students are turning away from dating apps and prefer to meet others in person, according to a new study by Axios and Generation Lab.

The study polled almost 1,000 college students across the U.S. and found that an overwhelming majority of 79 percent do not go on dating apps or use them less than once per month. According to Axios, Tinder is still the favorite among young daters. Twelve percent of college students use Tinder at least once a month, with Bumble and Hinge close behind at 8 percent of students logging on at least monthly.

A caveat for the study: 55 percent of respondents said they were in a relationship already, so they didn’t need to use a dating app. But at least 64 percent of those met their partners outside of a dating app – either through classes, a party, or an introduction from a friend to name a few. Only 15 percent said they’d met through a dating app, according to PC Magazine UK.

Dating app company Match Group announced it had settled a lawsuit with Google concerning the tech giant’s payment requirements for its Play Store.

Under the terms of the settlement, $40 million currently in escrow will be returned to Match, according to The Verge. Interestingly, Match Group also agreed to Google’s “user choice billing system,” which still allows for Google to get a cut of all transactions, even if Match users pay via Match Group’s payment systems.

Specifically, the settlement notes that by the end of March 2024, Match’s apps will implement the user choice billing system, which means that when dating app members opt to pay using Match’s payment systems, the company will give Google an 11 percent cut of its subscription fees and a 26 percent cut of all purchases. Or for users that go through Google’s in-app purchase system, Match Group will pay Google its standard fees (15 percent and 30 percent, respectively) for transactions.

Blued, China’s most popular gay dating app, plans to expand in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. while the Chinese government clamps down on LGBTQIA content.

According to Rest of World, Blued’s new parent company New Town wants to make the platform “the world’s largest social network for the LGBTQIA community,” and part of its strategy is to encourage user participation and community interaction, especially outside of China.

New Town’s CEO Li Ping sees enormous potential in the LGBTQIA market, and intends to grow the platform by targeting markets in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and North America. “The growth of the LGBTQ population in Southeast Asia and North America is particularly evident,” a spokesperson told Rest of World.

Tinder has unveiled a new feature that lets friends and family choose your matches for you.

According to The Verge, Tinder Matchmaker lets users invite their loved ones and trusted friends to view and recommend potential matches, regardless of whether they are on Tinder themselves. How it works: users can start a Matchmaker session via a profile card or in the settings of the app, where they can create a link to share with up to 15 friends and family members. Matchmakers can either login if they are Tinder users themselves, or continue as a guest.

There is a time limit for sharing opinions! The invited matchmakers have only 24 hours to recommend profiles before the link expires. Then the Tinder user can look through the match list, where profiles will be marked as a “recommendation” for those who liked a particular match. (Those rejected profiles won’t be marked at all, and will remain in the running for the user to ultimately decide if they are interested.)