Match Group

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. A dating app is teaming up with a voice-activated digital assistant to help tech-savvy singles find love hands-free.

Earlier this month, eHarmony announced a partnership with Amazon to bring a branded skill to Alexa. Enabling it allows eHarmony users to hear their matches and messages by voice, ask for more details about their dating prospects, and have photos of their connections sent to their smartphones.

This time around, it’s not eHarmony or Alexa that’s in the news. Plenty Of Fish has announced an integration with the Google Assistant on Google Home, as well as eligible Android and iOS phones. Same premise, different devices.

How Hinge Matchmaker Works

We normally frown upon butting into the love lives of others, but Hinge has launched a new app that hopes to make it socially acceptable to hook up your friends.

Hinge Matchmaker is designed to let you pair up your pals who are already on the dating app. After downloading the app and logging in, Matchmaker will scan your Facebook friends list for people who have Hinge profiles. The app then presents two of your single Facebook friends at a time, leaving it up to you to decide whether you think they’d be a solid match.

If the answer is yes, you can suggest the match and even add an icebreaker message to get the ball rolling. Your suggested match will see each other on the regular Hinge app, along with your note, and can choose whether to continue the conversation or not. There’s also the option to focus on a specific friend’s dating life by locking their profile, which allows the matchmaker to rotate through the available matches for that person alone.

A woman from Canberra, Australia has been suspended by dating app Tinder for asking too many matches whether or not they registered to vote, so they could receive a ballot to vote on marriage equality.

She originally started asking friends and followers to register to vote over social media, and after many of them did, she took to Tinder to try and engage more people.

According to website Junkee, the woman, known as “Lizzy” reported that a lot of men thanked her for the reminder and were glad she reached out to them to advocate for a worthy cause. One man even shared her message along with the link to the voter registration site to all of his matches.

The divide between dating and politics is getting smaller, especially since the 2016 election. Many American daters are opting to put the political beliefs of potential partners front and center when it comes to seeing if there’s a spark. And dating apps are noticing this trend, too.

In September, OkCupid announced its alliance with Planned Parenthood Federation of America to allow its customers to show their political leanings when it comes to female reproductive health. OkCupid is offering an #IStandWithPP badge that shows up on the profile of anyone who has publicly answered “no” to the question “should the government defund Planned Parenthood?” The app’s algorithms will also consider the badge when matching you with potential partners.

But users can choose to keep their feelings to themselves. “When you answer a question on OkCupid, you have the option to make your answer public or private,” Melissa Hobley, CMO of OkCupid, told website Bustle. “Only if you publicly answered that you support Planned Parenthood, then you receive the badge automatically. If you don't want the badge on your profile, then you can mark your answer as private.”

Meet up on Facebook

Facebook has never made a secret of its desire to dominate almost every aspect of daily life in the digital age.

The company has blatantly swiped features from Twitter, Snapchat, Foursquare, Periscope, and more. It’s also experimented with workplace collaboration tools, the ability to call Lyft and Uber rides in Messenger, and a food delivery feature.

Now the social networking giant has plans to capitalize on the massive online dating market and “borrow” from a Millennial-favourite brand: Tinder.

The new feature is for Messenger and was spotted by Motherboard’s Jacob Dubé, who noted that it was also available to some of his friends in Canada but none of his colleagues so far.

Remember when people wondered if Tinder would ever successfully monetize? Those days seem like a lifetime ago.

The company has released a string of money-making features since its 2012 launch, ranging from Super Like to the premium Tinder Plus membership. The latest to join the line-up is Tinder Gold - an optional, upgradeable tier that allows users to see who swiped right on their profile without swiping right back.

Tinder Gold was released in the United States in late August following testing in select markets around the world. The members-only service offers the app’s most popular exclusive features, including Passport, Rewind, Unlimited Likes, five Super Likes per day, one Boost per month, and more profile controls. It also includes the new Likes You feature, which reveals who’s into you before you swipe.