Online dating company Match Group’s stock rose after details of its first quarter earnings report were announced. Shares were up 5.3 percent to $146.30 according to recent trading reports.

Barron’s reported that Match Group posted revenue of $668 million for the quarter, up significantly from original Wall Street forecasts of $650.7 million. And profits were also up 57 cents a share, higher than the expected 40 cents per share. Match Group owns a range of popular dating apps, including Tinder, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and Hinge as well as niche apps like BLK and OurTime.

Tinder is still the star of Match Group’s offerings and its main revenue stream, with 18 percent growth in revenue for the dating app. However, Match Group noted that it has seen 30 percent growth in the rest of its business. Notably, some of its lesser-known apps like Hinge are seeing a surge of growth as the company invests more in its other offerings, too.

Tinder announced the launch of Vibes, an all-new event feature that presents pop-up questions on the app for limited periods of time to drive user engagement.

According to The Verge, Vibes events will occur once a week for about 48 hours. During the event, users are asked a series of questions on a range of topics, from pop culture to personal habits. If they decide to participate by responding, their answers will populate their profiles for other participants to see and only for a limited time (about 72 hours) before they disappear. 

The questions are intended to be conversation starters as well as fun and a bit insightful, like: “are you always 20 minutes early or ten minutes late?” Or this one revealed in an article by Tech Crunch: “How do you feel about cooking?” Participants can choose answers like “a nicer Gordon Ramsay”, “Low-key would rather starve”, or “For survival only”.  

CEO Adam Cohen-Aslatei on S’More TV

Image: S'More

Dating app S’More is testing a new feature called S’more TV, offering users access to celebrity interviews and other videos the company has produced.

S’More TV was inspired by the company’s Instagram Live feed, where CEO Adam Cohen-Aslatei has been interviewing reality TV stars, WWE athletes and models about their dating lives and other dating-related topics. After gathering more than 50 hours of content according to Tech Crunch, he decided to launch the new feature and provide the content directly to users from the app as a “conversation-starter.”

To promote the new feature, S’More users will now receive prompts directing them to watch S’More TV, where they will be able to comment on the videos. Commenting is encouraged, because the feature is intended to help users attract potential matches as well as giving them a starting point for conversation.

Artificial intelligence is part of the dating app experience, but what most online daters don’t know is that it could be influencing your decisions about matches and who grabs your interest more than you know.

Researchers from the Universidad de Deusto in Spain conducted a study to find out how much of our current decision-making is driven by the information we are fed – specifically when it comes to AI. AI is the driver in matching algorithms on dating apps, monitoring your choices and preferences to better understand who you are, and then suggesting who might be a good match for you.  

According to the study’s press release, researchers provided participants with images of fictional potential dates as well as political candidates, and asked each person to choose, based on the images provided, who they would vote for or who they would consider dating, respectively. In some cases, AI would explicitly favor certain candidates by how accurate the match was – for example, offering that one candidate or potential date had 40 percent compatibility while another had 90 percent compatibility. 

NSW, Australia’s police force, was in talks with Match Group about new safety proposals to address sexual assault among daters that meet over the company’s apps, but Match Group has so far rejected implementing them.

The proposals from NSW could pose challenges regarding user privacy. The policing agency suggested using AI to scan conversations between users for potential red flags according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). NSW also proposed a portal for police to access any reports of sexual assault sent to Match Group’s dating apps. 

"We recognize we have an important role to play in helping prevent sexual assault and harassment in communities around the world,” Match Group said in a statement. "We are committed to ongoing discussions and collaboration with global partners in law enforcement and with leading sexual assault organizations like RAINN to help make our platforms and communities safer.”

Match Group testified in front of the U.S. Senate recently, arguing that tech giants Apple and Google are allowing underage users to access its dating apps.

Underage users have been able to download dating apps with age restrictions even while signed into their Apple or Google accounts, simply by clicking “yes” on a pop-up verification notice that asks if they are 18 or older. Neither Apple nor Google cross-checks the verification with their own data, and neither has set up a process to prevent these users from accessing the apps beyond the pop-up notice. 

Match Group’s chief legal officer Jared Sine testified on April 21st, according to Bloomberg News, saying that Apple and Google are allowing people under 18 years of age to download their dating apps despite the age restrictions. According to Sine, these companies are aware of the problem and ignoring it anyway; and they refuse to share personal user data with Match Group to address it.