Online Dating

On Wednesday March 13, Facebook and its popular group of apps including Instagram and WhatsApp were unavailable to many users across the globe. While the company struggled to address what was happening, people were turning to other social media outlets like Twitter to express their frustration with the hashtag #FacebookDown.

Ironically, Facebook also had to turn to rival Twitter for help in communicating the issues as the problem persisted.

Instead of being able to post status updates and selfies, users were getting error messages. Advertisers who spent large amounts of money on promotions via Facebook apps were especially concerned by the length of the outage.

Countries affected by the outage included users in the United States, Europe, and Central and South America. Outages in the U.K. were especially widespread. Reports of outages in Asia began several hours later.

The Unicode Consortium, otherwise known as the gatekeeper of emojis, has introduced interracial couple emojis to their growing lexicon of inclusive choices. The new emojis will debut later in 2019, in large part thanks to dating app Tinder.

According to Mashable, when the new emojis debut, you can choose from a mix of different skin color and gender combinations, including interracial same-sex couples, depending on your preference. The combinations provide a total of 71 new couple variations. Until now, the only couple or group emojis available has been the default yellow emojis.

Tinder advocated for interracial couple emojis back in early 2018 with its #representlove campaign. The company had already made efforts to be more inclusive by offering a range of gender and sexuality preferences people could include in their dating profiles, so the emoji campaign was another way to advocate for and appeal to its userbase. Tinder introduced a petition to Unicode after gathering 50,000 signatures, making a case to add the new emojis.

Not content with being one of the most well-known names in the dating space - as well as a facilitator for friendships and a growing power in the world of business networking - Bumble has set its sights on conquering the entertainment industry.

The company recently announced the return of the Female Film Force, a UK-based initiative launched last year to fund short films from aspiring women filmmakers in the UK and Ireland. The inaugural 2018 competition yielded 1,100 pitches and awarded five filmmakers (writer, directors or producers) £20,000 each to make a film embodying Bumble’s values of female empowerment, equality and kindness.

With the launch of Match.com in 1995, the search for a partner was irrevocably changed. Technology, business and society have radically transformed the ways we meet, communicate, date, fall in love, get married and break up. The dating industry has experienced tremendous growth as an increasing number of consumers use the internet to seek love and the social stigma for doing so disappears. There are now around 2,000 dating services in North America and an estimated 8,000 around the world.

According to the market research firm IBISWorld, the dating sector grew by 11.9 percent over a five-year period to reach revenue of $3 billion in 2018. In the same timeframe, the number of businesses has grown by 1.0 percent and the number of employees has grown by 5.6 percent. Mobile dating applications now account for nearly a quarter of industry revenue, and their growth has rapidly outpaced that of other dating services.

Match Group - parent to Match.com, Tinder, OkCupid and others - remains a dominant force in the industry. The company brought in $1.7 billion in revenue in 2018. Tinder contributed nearly half of that ($805 million) thanks to the incredible success of its premium subscriptions. As of January 2018, Statista listed Tinder as the most popular dating service for US singles in the coveted 18-29 age range. Plenty of Fish (also owned by Match Group), Match.com, and OkCupid followed.

Computers and smartphones have drastically changed the way we start relationships, so it should come as no surprise that our digital devices are also changing the way we end them. A handful of enterprising entrepreneurs are hoping our obsession with dating apps can last beyond the thrill of swiping right on a new match - all the way to the day that match breaks your heart. Enter: the breakup app.

Think of these apps as a pocket life coach, or a personal trainer for heartbreak, or a beloved BFF who wants to help you get back on your feet. While they can’t do the hard work of healing from heartbreak for you, they can ease the process. Meet three apps currently shaking things up in the digital breakup market.

Popular dating app Bumble has launched a new filtering tool for its career networking app Bumble Bizz, which allows users to exclude men from their searches.

The new tool is a filter that can be turned on or off in the app settings. When it is activated, the filter excludes men from searches. The reason for the new tool is to help women find opportunities in careers where they’ve been traditionally underrepresented, such as the tech industry.

The idea is to help women build a strong network of contacts to support their career growth and shrink the gender gap. Bumble Bizz is often used by employers to find new hires, as well as job seekers looking for something new. This could give women more visibility in industries where they’ve traditionally been overlooked.