Online Dating

For heterosexual, cisgender singles, online dating offers a mind-boggling number of opportunities to swipe your way to your next date. There are apps for vegetarians, vegans and bacon enthusiasts, apps for farmers, apps for sea captains, apps for geeks, apps for dog lovers, apps for affairs, apps for hooking up on airplanes, apps for spiritual singles and members of different faiths, apps based on political leanings, exclusive apps for A-listers — and that’s on top of Tinder, Bumble, Match, Hinge, OkCupid and the other general dating apps that dominate the market.

For queer singles, the landscape looks different. Grindr changed the game for men seeking men, but no app for anyone else on the queer spectrum has reached the same level of success. That may change with Lex — a new app that grew out of a missed connections Instagram page. Lex describes itself as a dating and social platform for lesbian, bisexual, asexual, womxn, non-binary, trans, genderqueer, intersex, two spirit and queer people. In other words, almost anyone but cisgender men.

And that’s not all that sets Lex apart. The original Instagram account was inspired by the personal ads found in On Our Backs, a women-run erotica magazine published in the 1980s and 1990s. In a similar vein, Lex profiles are text-only personal ads. There are no photos unless a user elects to link their Instagram account to their profile. Although it’s an old school approach, it feels brazen and modern in an era when profiles are getting shorter and swiping through images is the preferred method of connection for millions of singles.

Image: Heartbeat Blog

Dating apps are getting serious about user safety. Following last month’s announcement that new safety features are coming to Tinder, another major dating platform owned by Match Group is adding safety features of its own. Match.com’s latest release is Date Check-In, a communication tool that allows users to keep selected friends and family members informed while they’re on a date.

Going on a date with someone you met online can be intimidating — not just because any first date comes with its fair share of nerves, but also because of the potential to wind up entangled with a con artist, creep or other unsavory character. With Date Check-In, Match users can easily send out an SOS if they feel unsafe. The feature lets users designate three emergency contacts who will receive an automated notification in case of emergency.

We might be social distancing, but rest assured - singles are looking to dating apps to keep their love lives going during the coronavirus pandemic. 

A recent survey conducted by Dating.com found that there was a spike in dating app activity among users in countries around the world as the coronavirus becomes widespread. As many as 82 percent of singles are turning online as they self-quarantine in their homes.

From those surveyed, more than 50 percent of daters said that they would be interested in conducting online dates to get to know people they’ve met online to avoid spreading or catching the virus. Thirty percent of those surveyed said that they are going to just stick with messaging and chatting with matches using their dating apps until they are able to meet up in person. Notably, only 5 percent of singles reported that they are going to stop dating altogether until the virus passes.

Bumble is shutting down gay dating app Chappy, part of the suite of dating apps under parent company Magic Lab. Bumble will integrate the service into its own app, effective February 28th.

According to Culture Map Austin, Bumble is encouraging Chappy users to download Bumble and try it out, offering them a week of its premium service for free. Chappy is no longer displaying profiles so essentially the search function is turned off. By the end of February, all of Chappy’s user information will disappear from the app.

Chappy posted an FAQ about the closure on its website, stating: “We’re joining Bumble because we have the opportunity to take what we’ve built together here to the next level by creating a space for healthy and safe connections across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Bumble is committed to fighting all kinds of inequality, and we’re excited to land our spaceship safely in the Bumble Hive.”

Grindr's Descreet App Icons

Image: grindr

Grindr is upping its privacy practices by giving users the option of hiding the app on their phones.

The Discreet App Icon allows users the option of replacing the Grindr app icon on their phone with another symbol, effectively to hide the fact that they are using Grindr if someone else gets hold of their phone. The feature is accessible in the security section of the app’s settings. Grindr first made the Discreet App Icon available in countries where gay, bi and trans people are in the most danger, and now is launching the feature for all users no matter where they reside.

According to a company press release, the feature was developed with London-based human rights organization Article 19, The Guardian Project, and Grindr for Equality to help keep users safe, not only within countries where gay rights are not sanctioned, but anywhere that people are threatened due to their LGBTQ or gender status. This is especially timely as gay, trans and non-binary rights are being threatened around the world.

MeetMe 3D Face Verification

Can you ever know, with complete certainty, that a match you’ve only communicated with online is who they say they are? Although the number of real singles using dating apps continues to grow, so does the number of bots, scammers, catfishers and other imposters of the digital world. The Meet Group hopes to thwart these scourges in 2020 by introducing ways to enhance authenticity across its portfolio of dating apps, starting with 3D face verification.

The idea of using images to verify a user’s identity is nothing new. Current incarnations of this concept often rely on users submitting selfies in certain poses or holding up a piece of paper that displays a specific code. Once these photos are submitted, a human employee compares the selfie to the uploaded profile photo to confirm the owner’s identity. This method is time-consuming and labor-intensive (and, as The Meet Group CEO Geoff Cook noted in a blog post, “not exactly foolproof”).