Dating Services

INTO, the online LGBTQ publication owned and operated by Grindr, is no more. The company ended the digital magazine’s 14-month run by terminating its editorial staff on January 15 and announcing a pivot to video.

Grindr launched INTO in August 2017. The website featured news articles, op-eds, lifestyle content and advice columns for a modern LGBTQ audience. The launch was part of a larger effort to reframe Grindr as a lifestyle brand, not “just” a dating app, but the outlet’s journalism was praised and went on to win awards from The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In a statement shared with NBC News, a Grindr spokesperson called the decision to dismiss INTO's staff a "strategic shift in focus."

Recipient
Match.com

For 2019 Match is the Editor's Top Pick - Paid award recipient. Since its inception Match has always been a paid dating service. It is free to look at profiles and search but a subscription is required to send messages to other members. While "Free" dating services are the latest craze their low bar of entry (i.e. no credit card required) means that scammers and bots tend to be much more prevalent. Match is very good at blocking scammers from even joining their service, thereby protecting their members. Being a paid service also means Match.com has the money to invest in the latest technology and hire some of the best trained developers.

Bumble confirmed that a new ad featuring its latest celebrity partner Serena Williams will debut during the first half of the SuperBowl.

According to AdWeek, Bumble teased a new campaign with the tennis star, admitting that it would coordinate with the SuperBowl, though it wasn’t clear if they were planning to air an ad during the game, one of the most-watched annual events in the U.S. (and one of the most expensive ad buys). Bumble has now confirmed their first SuperBowl ad will feature Serena Williams and their new campaign “The Ball is in Her Court.”

Bumble, a female-friendly dating app, is serious about its female-empowerment mission. Over the past few years, the brand has debuted offerings that appeal specifically to women, such as partnering with Moxy Hotels to offer BumbleSpot – verified locations where Bumble users can meet for dates, career networking, or potential new friendships - in an effort to create safe spaces for women.

Tech Crunch broke the news that popular dating app Tinder is teaming up with Spotify to test a new feature that allows users to share songs with each other.

The website reported that users could select songs from their own Spotify playlists to be shared via the in-app messenger, to engage users and get people to connect. Last year, the company unveiled another new feature allowing users to share Bitmoji and GIFs over the app’s messenger service, a move to increase engagement among social media savvy members.

The Spotify testing is currently taking place in different cities around the globe, but only with Spotify and no other streaming music service, according to Tech Crunch. The new feature was originally spotted by the blog MSPoweruser.

Black Mirror, the twisted British sci-fi anthology series turned Netflix smash hit, is one of the last things you’d want to inspire a real-life business. The show is notoriously dark, dystopian and disturbing to watch, with an outlook on human behavior and technological advancement that’s designed to leave viewers devastated. Despite its bleakness, Black Mirror is consistently praised by critics and has become a cult favorite for fans - and now, against all odds, it has inspired an enterprising Reddit user to launch a dating app based on a popular episode from season four.

Twenty-four year old programmer and entrepreneur Julian Alexander introduced his fellow redditors to Juliet, an AI matchmaker, in a post to the popular AMA subreddit.

Recipient
Plenty of Fish

The 2019 Editor's Top Pick - Free award winner is Plenty of Fish (POF). This is one of the harder categories to figure out. The top 3 free dating apps have lots of members but it is the combination of features and user feedback that in the end helped us make the decision. POF does not lack the features which make it easy to use and allow its members to find matches and start conversations quickly. In fact every day on the service on average 2.5 million users message each other. If you are in your thirties to forties then you will feel right at home on POF as a large portion of members are in this age range. Remember within a month of using the service, 30% of POF members report that they have found a partner, so it does not take long before you see results.