Match Group

Market analysts have a fascination with Tinder and Bumble, the two fastest-growing dating apps in the online dating industry. Rumors have been persistent that Match Group and Tinder was interested in acquiring the female-friendly dating app for around $450 million as reported back in August of this year, but the company turned down the offer.

Now it seems that Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, is reportedly still in talks to acquire Bumble, but now for a much heftier price tag of one billion US dollars, according to a recent article in Forbes.

Currently, Match Group has only $500 million in cash and a market cap of under $8 billion, according to website TechCrunch. So potential options would be to fund Bumble with some debt, or to do a cash/ stock combination deal, or even to acquire a portion of the company rather than all of it.

Dating sites regularly add new features to help users find love and stay competitive in an increasingly crowded market.

Over the years we’ve seen Coffee Meets Bagel partner with Yelp and Spotify, Tinder ramp up its famous swipe with Super Like, The League copy it with Power Play, Bumble introduce a time limit for responding to matches, and that’s barely the tip of the updates iceberg.

OkCupid, too, is no stranger to launching new features. Back in 2009, the site debuted its A-List premium paid subscription. In 2013, it experimented with (and quickly ditched) a sister app called Crazy Blind Date. In 2014 and 2015 came expanded options for gender self-identification and the Identity Project. In 2016, OkCupid released an update for nonmonogamous daters, and most recently, users were introduced to a Member Pledge and photo commenting.

But not every update makes the cut.

Tinder’s new CTO Maria Zhang has her work cut out for her: she’s tasked with making the popular dating app Tinder more engaging for users around the world, and moving away from the mindless swipe the app introduced. She also wants to create a better user experience specifically for female Tinder users.

According to a feature in PC Magazine, Zhang hired a team of female developers to help her craft new premium features and make Tinder more inclusive for users in other countries, who don’t meet or date people in the same way Americans do. She also opened a satellite tech office in Silicon Valley in addition to hiring staff for the L.A. headquarters.

Online dating algorithms have gotten a lot of attention (and criticism) because they’re the basis of how matchmaking works. Many dating apps are secretive about their matching process, but traditionally, algorithms match people on the basis of profile information, questionnaires, and user preferences.

But according to a recent article by Gizmodo, online dating companies can collect more information about their customers through analyzing user behavior, which includes what users do on social media as well as on the dating app. Companies are now starting to use this behavioral data for matchmaking purposes rather than relying on profiles and user preferences.

eHarmony, Match and OkCupid are known for their long surveys and profile questions, which they maintain helps them more accurately assess potential matches. But dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and LoveFlutter prefer mining users’ social media streams, bypassing questions and looking to online behavior.

It’s been a big year for The League. The members-only dating app for “high-achieving” singles launched for Android in January, and has expanded to more than 20 cities including London, Toronto, Miami, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and Portland.

Only a lucky few are accepted onto the app, after passing through a strict screening process that now requires applicants to be “attractive enough to at least look good in black-and-white photos.”

That’s right, The League is going monochrome.

The company announced Monochrome View in a blog post on October 24. The new feature displays every profile’s first picture in black and white, requiring users to swipe through all the pictures if they wish to see the same photo in full color. The question is: why?

Save traveling to an untouched tribe in the Amazonian rainforest, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Match Group.

The company was a pioneer in the industry, becoming the first major dating site to register a domain in 1995. Today Match Group offers dating products in 38 languages across more than 190 countries, and boasts a portfolio of over 45 brands including Match, OkCupid, Tinder, PlentyOfFish and Our Time.

So what keeps Match Group on top, more than two decades later?