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Bumble Boost with BeeLine, Rematch, and BusyBee.

Female-focused dating app Bumble has been available for free to its users, but now the company is offering a premium paid service for those who want to use its brand new features.

The paid version of the app includes three important features aimed at competing with other popular “tiered” dating apps like Tinder, which also offers optional paid features to help provide a premium matching experience.

Bumble’s first feature, named “Beeline,” will offer its members a line-up of users who have already “liked” them, so they can skip swiping and match with their likes by choosing “yes,” with the intention of making the process more efficient.

According to a recent article in Bloomberg News, Tinder expects its paid subscriber base will double by the end of the year.

The Tinder app is free to use, but about 1 million users are currently paying for its tiered service, which provides special features, such as the ability to “super-like” a profile. Super-like allows you to let the person know you think they are extra special, instead of just swiping right as usual. Other paid features include “Rewind” where users can return to a previous profile they swiped left on, or rejected, for the opportunity to choose differently.

Tinder announced recently that it will launch a new social feature to its app to connect groups of friends who share common interests. There is no news on whether that will be part of its free platform or a new paid feature, too.

Gary Swidler, chief financial officer of Tinder's parent company, Match Group Inc., described efforts to monetize the dating app as being "ahead of schedule."

Subscribers aren’t Tinder’s only source of income. The company originally started drawing revenue from ad sales.

Tinder’s huge database of more than 9 million daily users and its well-known brand, especially among the coveted Millennial age group, makes the app a great advertising vehicle for many companies looking to expand their brand awareness. Users of the service spend roughly 35 minutes per day on the app and swipe left or right 140 times, according to company executives. This means a captive audience, which is also appealing to marketers.

While Tinder will continue to sell advertising over its platform (one of the drawbacks of using the free app), they will also push forward with gaining more subscribers and developing more paid features. Tinder garnered criticism last year for charging more money to users over 30, but the company has not since changed its pricing policy.

Because of the growth in Tinder’s revenue, the management team told Bloomberg they feel confident in adding new features to the service and “taking some swings,” in terms of taking chances with the features. The company admitted it hasn’t made any significant changes to the app since adding the “Super-like” feature last November, though recently they were testing the social feature which links you through your Facebook friends to other friend groups and garnered criticism for its lack of privacy. (Users could see their Facebook friends’ Tinder profiles without their knowledge.)

Tinder is owned by Match Group, which also owns popular dating platforms Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish.

Are you tired of reading endless online dating profiles or answering questions about what kind of food you like to eat? How about messaging potential dates back and forth, hoping that maybe eventually you’ll get to meet in person?

Or perhaps you’re tired of swiping left and right on Tinder, messaging your matches back and forth, only to have them disappear before you’ve even met - such a waste of time!

Okay, maybe using Tinder is not the time drag that other online dating sites can be – like Match.com, eHarmony, or even OkCupid - where you peruse long profiles and can message endlessly without ever getting to the date. HowAboutWe thinks they can appeal to the embattled Tinder user by getting to the actual date much faster. This week, they announced a new “on-demand” feature called TONIGHT for the re-launch of their dating app.

With TONIGHT, users can choose to look for a date – to be specific, for tonight – pick a time, and HowAboutWe will search through potential matches for people who’ve also opted in for a date tonight. In about five minutes, according to the company, the service will send a push notification asking users to look at potential dates and double-tap on the ones that they’d like to go out with. Once everyone has made their selections, How About We matches them in couples (based on profile factors), and sends both users into a text conversation. Then they can accept the date.

While this might seem a little more complicated than choosing someone on Tinder, How About We is more focused on the date itself. When you sign up for HowAboutWe, the app asks you to share what you would like to do on a first date, as well as the usual info (age, location, orientation, etc). You can play it safe and choose “Get a coffee,” or opt for a more creative choice (i.e. “Get your Instagram on at a local antiques shop.”) Your profile isn’t the first thing everyone sees about you, it’s your date idea. HowAboutWe is experience-driven, although profile photos still figure prominently into the scenario.

HowAboutWe has always focused on the real-life meet-up more than the online back-and-forth, so this is a natural next step. The service’s re-launch also includes a “Pool,” or a swipe-based feed for matches similar to Tinder, and “Connections,” a highly targeted daily set of potential matches.

Depending on the length of subscription you choose, membership ranges from $10 to $20 per month. Messaging back and forth between mutual matches are free, but if you’re looking to score outside a match, you need to pay the upgrade. 

Recently, Gap came under fire from Tinder executives by posting fake profiles advertising their wares on the dating app, hoping people would swipe right to participate in a new campaign. The problem was that Gap didn’t get Tinder’s permission, so Tinder ordered Gap to take them down.

But Tinder isn't cracking down on fake profiles or spam-like ads for all companies looking to promote (though it did hire an agency who is cracking down on their spamming issue). Tinder only allows companies who are actually paying to post their fake “profiles” - and these companies are reaching their target audience of young consumers in a really big way.

Native advertising on Tinder works like this: the company creates a "profile" targeted to its audience, and uploads to Tinder. From there, users will come across the profile and swipe left or right, depending on if they like what they see. Companies that have done this recently include Starbucks and Dominos Pizza.

But now, it's not only companies looking to advertise - musicians are taking advantage of Tinder’s user base, using the service to promote new videos and album releases. Because musicians are constantly looking for new ways to reach their audiences and gather new fans, they have become more creative in their online promotions. Tinder is the latest tool, and recently did a campaign with singer Jason DeRulo.

Forbes reported that Jason Derulo became the first musician to use the Tinder promotional strategy to launch a new single. When users swiped right, they were given in link to a YouTube page where they could watch the brand new video for his new song, which was also getting a huge push via radio. The campaign was a success: over 1.1 million people swiped right (meaning they liked him) – in three days. The song became a top 40 hit, with 14% clicking through to purchase his song on iTunes.

Of course, it helped that the song was speaking to his target market – daters who are looking for a late-night hook-up, a la Tinder. In the video, DeRulo is shown fantasizing about a woman he had sex with, jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to go to her apartment, where she is of course fantasizing about him, too.

The success of the campaign will surely capture the attention of other musicians and companies who want to appeal to their target audience: young singles. These companies are also finding that effective advertising means meeting these people on their own turf – social media, rather than traditional stuffy ad campaigns. People are much more mobile, and looking at their phones more than looking up at a billboard.

One thing’s for sure, Tinder doesn’t have to worry about meeting revenue goals through subscriptions to its premium (and pricey) service. Companies will likely be more than willing to offer money for campaigns that have this type of success rate.

For more on this popular dating app you can read our review of Tinder.

Last month, Tinder rolled out its new and highly anticipated premium service Tinder Plus, which had been teased in the press with few details for months. But rather than praising its new features, Tinder has been criticized for discrimination. The company charges $9.99 per month for users in their twenties, but once you hit the magical age of 30, the price jumps to $19.99.

Compare this to the price daters pay for a service like eHarmony ($18.95 per month with a 12-month commitment as of this posting), which touts its match-making capabilities, and Tinder seems like a rip-off. After all, the monthly fee for eHarmony includes a lot of filters to help find a more "quality" match - an extensive questionnaire, a detailed profile, and a “communications process” - all aimed at helping you find a lasting relationship. While people do find good matches on Tinder, it's a lot more hit-or-miss.

Still, people seem to prefer the game-like swiping of Tinder. And according to experts, they will probably pay for it – even if they are 30 or older.

A recent article in The Washington Post claimed that there is a war among dating services like Tinder and eHarmony, who are categorizing daters and their behaviors according to their ages. Tinder assumes that younger daters are their target market (after all, the service began with heavy promoton on college campuses before it was unleashed on the greater population). eHarmony however, is going after the more “seasoned” dater, who has had enough with all the hook-ups and wants a real relationship.

The online dating industry is said to be worth about $2.2 billion, with one in ten adults averaging more than an hour a day on a dating site or app. This rise in popularity isn’t a coincidence – it’s gone hand-in-hand with the amount of time we spend on our phones – a near-constant accessory. Tinder appeared at the right time and made online dating seem like a game, and more importantly, removed its stigma.

The popularity of Tinder however has had a cost among daters. There is an assumption that the app is only for hooking up, and that people using dating apps aren’t serious daters. At least, this perception has been what traditional dating sites like eHarmony have been pushing. It founder Neil Clarke Warren told The Washington Post: “They put all their money on one variable: looks. That fills me with quite a few little chills… I have presided over the funerals of more marriages than any psychologist, and it is miserable.”

eHarmony isn't the only one speaking about Tinder's flaws. “There are limits to the percentage of single people who will become active Tinder users and repeating ‘casual daters,'” Morgan Stanley analysts told their clients in February. “And in our view, Tinder is reaching those limits.”

So what does this mean? Is Tinder trying to embrace their young daters as the future of dating, or does eHarmony recognize they will never have a service that’s so addictive and easy to use?

Both services offer very different ways of meeting people, and attract different types of users. But it will be interesting to see who will pay for them going forward.

To help promote the global launch of Tinder Plus, co-founder and soon-to-be former CEO Sean Rad has been in the news a lot lately. Recently, he hopped on Reddit to answer questions from the general public about Tinder, the launch of its new premium service, and what’s next for the company.

Because of the recent backlash about Tinder Plus, people were interested in the reasons behind the pricing of the new service - $9.99 for those under 30, and for those 30 and older, $19.99. According to Rad, “months of testing and thought went into the feature and price mix for Tinder Plus. We tested a broad range of prices and found that users that saw value in Tinder Plus were more than willing to pay at the existing price points.” He goes on to talk about Passport and Rewind, the two most-requested features offered in the new service, which allow you to check out people in other cities and also to reconsider someone you rejected before.

Rad also fielded questions on whether the app creates feelings of rejection – after all, you can be rejected with one swipe in less than a second on Tinder. Rad countered this question by explaining how Tinder works. People won’t know that you liked them unless they swipe right on your profile. “We call this the ‘double opt-in.’ Even if you don’t match with another user, there’s no certainty that they saw your profile.”

Tinder’s history holds a series of lucky accidents – for one, it was almost named Matchbox. The first version of the app didn’t even have swiping, Tinder’s signature feature. Co-Founder Jonathan Badeen explains: “I snuck it in a few weeks later and told everybody after it was released that they could swipe. The swipe was born out of a desire to mimic real life interactions with a card stack. When organizing cards you put them into piles. Swiping right fittingly throws the card in the direction of the matches…The swipe just made sense in this case and seems stupid simple in retrospect.”

One of the participants asked how the founders came up with the idea of Tinder, to which Rad replied: “…we had this obsession with breaking down the barriers in meeting people around you. We noticed that people grew closer to their small groups of friends but grew farther apart from the rest of the world in the process. We knew that if we could simply take the fear out of meeting someone, that we could bring the people closer together. And we've done just that.”

Please read our Tinder review for more information on this popular dating app.