Communication

Image: Stir

Actress Busy Phillips is starring in her latest project – a new holiday promotion for dating app Stir, which caters to single parents.

The campaign MILF on the SHILF campaign satirizes the popular Christmas tradition in many households with kids of “Elf on a Shelf,” but now with an adult twist. The goal is to help single parents have a little fun this holiday season and embrace their inner MILF or DILF (Mother or Father I’d like Fireside, according to the campaign).

The campaign features a video of Phillips in elf attire posing on a mantel, luxuriating in costume in a bath, and advocating for parents to take care of themselves this holiday season – instead of focusing all their attention on making sure the kids have a great holiday.

Grindr has become the most popular dating app in the U.K. among singles aged 54 and older, according to a recent study from Ofcom, the country’s communications regulator.

According to The Pink News, Tinder was still the most-downloaded dating app in the UK, with 2.5 million users, followed by Bumble at 1.7 million U.K. users. Grindr has grown in 2023, but it still captures only about 1.9 percent of the U.K. adult population, or 924,000 users. But as far as time spent on the apps per user, Grindr wins hands-down.

In fact, the average user of the gay dating app spent seven hours on it in May of 2023, according to Ofcom, compared to only one hour on Tinder, and a bit more than two hours for each Bumble and Hinge.

Tinder just announced a host of new features for its app, along with its “Rizz-First” redesign, an obvious move to court the coveted Gen Z market.

While adopting the popular Gen Z slang for “charisma” was widely seen as a cringeworthy move for the dating app company, experts also agree that trying to appeal to the Gen Z market is important for dating apps, especially as subscriber bases and revenue are falling. The new Rizz-First look includes enhanced and updated animations, a new “It’s a Match!” screen, and prompts and quizzes that younger daters prefer when getting to know someone over an app.

According to the company’s announcement, the team saw a growing need to provide a more engaging experience. In fact, Tinder’s recent Future of Dating Report found that 69 percent of Gen Z daters say that dating standards need “refreshing” to fit a modern and diverse society. Overall, daters need a bit more than a photo, a brief bio, and a swipe to feel connected to someone.

Peter English, who founded popular travel site Kayak.com, has turned to a new venture. He and his partner Rachel Cohen are launching an app called Lola Dating.

According to a feature in The Boston Globe, Lola is designed to get people to meet IRL. The app offers users a calendar up front, and invites them to look for openings over the next four days (the sooner they can schedule a date, the better it seems). Lola users can mark the times and dates they are free, and the app takes it from there, matching them only with people available on the same night. The app will only be available for residents of Boston at launch.

According to its founders, meeting in real life quickly is key. They met after connecting on Bumble and instead of messaging back and forth, scheduled to meet in person right away. They were both convinced that endless messaging without getting to know each other in real life was a real problem among dating app users.

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.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has passed The Online Dating Safety Act. It is now eligible to be brought to a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, though the timing of the vote remains unclear.

According to The Washington Examiner, the Act would require dating app services to provide a “fraud ban notification” to users who have been in contact with a user who had previously been removed from the platform for fraudulent activity. Additionally, the notification would have to include a statement that the banned member may have been using a false identity or attempting to defraud other users.

Bill H.R. 6125 also requires the notification to include a warning that the user being targeted by the fraudulent actor should not send money or personal information to another member, as well as a link to resources on fraud prevention and tips on how to avoid online fraud, according to The Ripon Advance. The bill stipulates that the dating platforms must provide a customer service number that is attached to the warning so that users have someone to speak with if they have questions or concerns.