Hinge

Dating app Hinge has partnered with popular meditation app Headspace to help daters calm their nerves before going on a date. Plenty of Fish also announced their partnership with Shine, a popular self-care app designed by women of color, to help users take care of themselves during this stressful time. Both dating services are owned by Match Group.

The Hinge and Headspace partnership will offer pre-date meditations that Hinge users can access directly at hinge.co/headspace at no cost. Each meditation lasts about six to seven minutes and is intended to address a range of potential pre-date emotions, from “self-doubt” to “negative self-talk” according to Mashable.

The page to access the meditation also includes a link to Headspace’s website, where the company lists resources for help with mental illness through a variety of hotlines, accessible for users around the world. There is also a helpful “how to meditate” guide if you are new to the practice.

Match Group shared in an exclusive interview with Marketwatch that they expect its dating app Hinge to triple its revenue by the end of the year.

Analysts shared that they are optimistic about the dating app’s prospects too, with 6 million monthly active users and about 400,000 subscribers. Hinge has the opportunity to add more paid features and can raise subscription prices as ways of increasing revenue among its so-called “premium” customer base of high earners. According to Marketwatch, Morgan Stanley analyst Lauren Cassel said, “we believe Hinge is Match’s next major revenue and earnings growth driver.”  

A new study by dating app Hinge found that since coronavirus lockdowns began, people are dating more and ghosting less often than before.

The company surveyed users about their dating habits since they have been sheltering at home in the wake of the coronavirus spread, and found that 27% reported ghosting less often than they did before the pandemic. In contrast, a 63% majority of those surveyed admitted to ghosting people before the pandemic.

Popular dating app Hinge crashed on a Thursday late in August, and when users were once again able to log in, they found that some of their matches were gone. Many took to Twitter to voice their complaints.

The app crashed Thursday morning August 20th according to Insider, and the Hinge team worked to fix the problem and make it available again only 30 minutes later. However, when people began to log back in, some noticed problems – especially that their matches were no longer appearing in their queue.

The app industry saw revenue spike to $50.1 billion for the first two quarters of 2020, in part due to people isolating at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Dating app Tinder topped the list of non-game app revenue earners.

This marks a 23.4% increase from the first half of 2019 according to Tech Crunch, compared with a 20% increase for the same time period between 2018 and 2019. The data seems to also point to a growing new user base. First time app installs were up 26.1% in the first half of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, and reached a total of 71.5 billion downloads.

Topping the non-game app list was dating app Tinder, followed by YouTube, and popular social apps TikTok and Tencent. Netflix was the fifth-highest earner.

Dating apps like Grindr, Hinge and OkCupid have been weighing whether or not to keep an ethnicity filter on their apps in the wake of protests against police violence in the U.S. and around the world. 

According to Forbes, Grindr announced that it would be dropping the filter as an option from its app in its next update. The company posted a statement on Twitter, adding: “We will not be silent. Black Lives Mater.” But this decision created a backlash among many who saw this move as too little, too late. @guillotineshout responded: “In solidarity we are removing our racism button” is the most tech company thing I could imagine.”

Grindr had received criticism before for the ethnicity filter, but other dating apps like OkCupid and Hinge who also have them, have chosen to keep theirs.