Matching

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble will offer a real-life Bantr on its platform, the fictional dating app made famous on hit TV series Ted Lasso.

Starting October 13th and through the end of the year on Thursdays at 7pm, Bumble is offering Bantr Live, and operates much like the fictional app, according to the company’s blog post. When you decide to play, you won’t be able to see or swipe on other daters’ profiles. Instead, you will be paired at random to strike up a text chat with someone who matches your location, age and gender preferences, but you won’t be able to see photos or their profile (just their name). Much like Bantr on Ted Lasso, these events are meant to spark conversation ahead of seeing what someone looks like to make for a more genuine match from the start.

Participants get three minutes to decide if they want to keep chatting, and then they are matched with the next participant to see if a connection can be made. At the end of the event, users can see who matched with them. At this point, they will be able to see the profiles and photos of these matches.

Bumble is testing a new speed dating feature in the U.K. to see how effective it is in getting users to engage with each other over the app.

According to Tech Crunch, the company has been alerting U.K. users to a specific date and time when the virtual speed dating event happens, so they can choose to join. When they do, they are not shown their dates’ photos up front – instead, they briefly chat before photos are revealed.

Tech Crunch did share how the feature worked, and that it’s being presented as a game rather than an event (referring to attendees as “players” who click a “play game” button to start). Participants must agree to some rules (similar to Facebook’s speed dating app Sparked), where they are asked to “keep it respectful” before they can play. They also must agree to not ask about their date’s looks – the reveal comes later, after the two have decided there’s a connection. Each couple is given three minutes to chat before they can see each other’s photos.

Dating app Hinge is targeting Gen Z daters with new video and polling features which are popular tools on social media apps.

Video Prompts and Prompt Polls help users strike up conversations in a more organic and playful way. Gen Z daters are looking for something more engaging than swiping, so Hinge and other dating apps are turning to game-like and video features to entertain and draw them in.

A video feature already exists in the Hinge app, but with Video Prompts, users are limited to recording within the app instead of posting something from their camera rolls, making for a more spontaneous and less polished introduction. Hinge says that this “encourages a filterless and authentic interaction between users,” according to Tech Crunch.

Smitten, a new dating app designed for Gen Z daters, has raised $10 million in its latest round of Series A funding.

According to Venture Beat, investors of the app include Makers Fund, Possible Ventures, and Wonder Invest.

Smitten has gotten attention, thanks to a new study that found it had a post-match success rate of 60 percent, compared to Tinder’s 11 percent – a huge difference to online daters. It is currently the most popular dating app in Iceland and second most popular in Europe, so the new round of funding is in part to help the app expand into new territories and grow its user base.

Smitten has a new take on matching – in addition to sifting through profiles, it has added games to help young daters interact in more engaging ways. If you are interested in someone’s profile, you can start with a questionnaire game called Guessary, where you can guess how the other person answered a series of yes and no questions and get immediate feedback on whether they are correct. If you like how they answered, you can like and match with them and take it from there.

Filteroff, a new dating app that targets communities of singles, offers virtual speed dating events to set itself apart from traditional swiping apps like Tinder.

The app launched a series of speed dating events specifically for Orthodox Jewish singles starting August 30th, where participants can join from the comfort of their own couches. Each couple is given three minutes to chat over the app, with the option to keep chatting if they connect, or move on to the next.

Other Filteroff virtual speed dating events have been targeted towards vegans, dog lovers, or even Yankee fans, providing services to concentrated communities of singles who have specific needs for matchmaking, according to news site Forward. Events for Jewish singles are meant to compete directly for users of popular Jewish dating app JDate, along with other niche apps.

New dating app Desti puts TikTok-style videos front and center, with a focus on local places to meet up IRL.

Desti is short for “destination,” and the app gives users a chance to match with others based on preferred date destinations. When scrolling through the app, users see videos of venues with the poster’s profile in the corner, according to Tech Crunch.

“We decided to bet on short-form video being the future,” Nick Dominguez, COO and lead designer/developer of Desti said in an interview with TechCrunch.