Online Dating

Bumble has a lot on its plate these days, including a potential IPO, expanding its service to India, and becoming a content creator as well as building a “kind social network.”

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd about the female-friendly dating app, which has recently styled itself as a social media platform that promotes safety and helping women build relationships.

Bumble has been in the news lately because it’s rumored to be eyeing an IPO before the end of the year, with a $1.5 billion valuation. This could mean big news for the app, which competes with behemoths Tinder and more recently Facebook. Still, Bumble has managed to grow to 40 million users, up from 12.5 million in February 2017, which is significant growth compared to its competitors.

Dating apps have taught us to be discerning and to not waste time on matches who don’t meet our requirements. After all, there are so many choices! But Gen Z is about to change things with a different attitude and approach.

Dating app Zoosk analyzed more than 5.7 million of its profiles and surveyed over 4,000 daters on the site to see where the differences between the generations lie when it comes to dating preferences. As it turns out, Generation Z (the youngest group of dating app users) tend to have a much healthier approach to dating than Millennials, Gen X and baby boomers.

According to an article in Marketwatch outlining the study, Gen Z are the least picky daters, and swipe yes to 33% of potential matches. This is 15% more than millennials and 20% more than Gen X and baby boomers. This increases the odds of meeting in person and having more dates, but younger daters are also typically less interested in more serious relationships and opt to meet more people instead.

Countless singles have professed their love for pizza on their dating profiles. But would they trust a purveyor of pizza to find their perfect romantic match? That may soon be an option for singles in the Netherlands, where Domino’s Pizza has revealed plans to launch a branded dating app.

Domino’s chief executive Don Meij announced the upcoming app, which will match customers according to their favorite toppings, at the company's general meeting in Brisbane in early November 2018.

“Simply swipe your favourite pizza and the Domino's dating app will connect you to other pizza lovers, find a match, and go on a date,” he said. “Domino's provides the meal, and even the conversation starters. What better to bond over than your shared love of pineapple on pizzas?”

Bumble has made experiential marketing a core part of its strategy to expand its user base. Last year, the company launched a series of roving pop-up spaces that debuted in New York City and has since made stops in London, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. Earlier this year, Bumble teamed up with HBO on a "Stay Home To The Movies" activation set in a New York City brownstone that aimed to recreate the experience of a romantic night in.

Bumble’s latest move to bring the dating experience offline is a partnership with Marriott International's Moxy Hotels. Certain Moxy locations will host "BumbleSpot #attheMoxy” events where Bumble users can bring their connections from the digital sphere to real life. BumbleSpots are places that have been verified by Bumble as inclusive environments in which to meet connections from Bumble’s dating, friendship and professional networking services.

“At Bumble, we’re more than just a dating app – we’re a mission-driven platform that connects people across the most important relationships in their lives in love, friendship and business. We’ve worked so hard to cultivate a safe and empowering community online and we’re always looking for opportunities to help our users bring those connections to life,” said Andee Olson, director of partnerships at Bumble. “The idea for BumbleSpot is to create a network of physical locations across the US and Canada that support our mission to end misogyny and empower women in their relationships across all aspects of life.”

Online dating company eHarmony will be introducing a new feature to try and prevent its members from ghosting each other on the site.

According to an exclusive in Yahoo! Finance, the anti-ghosting feature is a chat bot which uses A.I. technology to assess activity between members, as well as pulling information from profiles to help encourage conversation. If the feature notes that you and a match were messaging for several days or weeks and then stopped, it will prompt each of you with a message like “hey, this person stopped talking to you. Say something.”

The chat bot also provides specific questions based on the information it can gather from each of your profiles. For instance, if the chat bot notices your match likes certain TV shows, or old school jazz music, the chat bot will prompt you to ask her about her interests. For example, it might say “ask her about Game of Thrones,” encouraging you to not only message your match but provide you with a conversation starter.

Brian Norgard, who has reigned as Tinder’s chief of product the past two years, announced his resignation.

According to website Tech Crunch, Norgard says he is exiting on a positive note and plans to get back to his entrepreneurial roots. Before he joined Tinder, he founded startup messaging app Tappy, which was acquired in 2014, along with Facebook messaging app Chill, another successful startup with 30 million users. When Norgard first joined Tinder, he was head of revenue and moved on to his chief of product role.

Norgard cites Keith Rabois of PayPal as his inspiration for leaving to pursue something new.

“It’s been a great ride but my strength has always been in the early-stage game,” Norgard told TechCrunch. “What I’m trying to do now is take all the learnings from that wonderful experience and bring them into my investing.”