General News

Tinder swiping sessions are more secure than ever and there’s an unlikely hero to thank: 69-year-old U.S. Senator Rob Wyden.

Wyden made news earlier this year when he released a letter demanding that Tinder resolve security issues exposed by a report from Checkmarx, a Tel Aviv-based security firm. Months later, Tinder has responded with good news for both singles and the senator, revealing recent changes to the app’s handling of images and swipe data that make it harder for sensitive information to fall into criminal hands.

Checkmarx noted two “disturbing vulnerabilities” in its original report, dated January 23, 2018:

Dating app Hinge has launched a new feature called “Most Compatible” which uses machine learning to generate better matches for its users.

Most Compatible employs the Nobel prize-winning Gale-Shapley algorithm to find the most likely matches, also known as SMP or “Stable Marriage Problem.” It works like this: groups of people are pooled together, and based on their individual likes and passes (including which parts of profiles they liked or didn’t like), the pool is narrowed down so that each person is matched with one other person from the pool who seems most compatible, until everyone in the pool is matched. According to website The Verge, the AI technology “breaks people down based on who has liked them,” then tries to find patterns in the likes. If one person likes another person, then they might like another based on what the user liked about the first person.

Hinge will then recommend this “most compatible” match (you and your match will both receive the same recommendation of each other on the same day), and you will have 24 hours to message each other before the match expires. This match will appear at the top of your Discover page each day.

The singles cruise is getting a millennial-friendly makeover this August, thanks to a new partnership between up-and-coming cruise operator U by Uniworld and exclusive dating app The League.

"A lot of our users on the app are saying that they're really sick of the first date," said Brianna Haag, The League's head of events and partnerships. "People want different types of experiences. They don't want the interview plus cocktail at a bar."

The League’s answer to bar fatigue is a weeklong adventure that will take place along France's Seine River. The itinerary includes stops at Rouen, Honfleur, Vernon and Paris, with excursions like biking along the Seine and touring the Palace of Versailles. While aboard the ship, guests can experience a spa, silent discos, farm-to-table cuisine, wine tastings and (we assume) plenty of opportunities to live out their sexy sailor fantasies.

Dating app Tinder announced the rollout of a new feature called Tinder Loops, which allows users to create looping GIFs for their profiles.

Tinder users can upload short videos (two seconds in length) to their profiles so they can “show more personality” than with photos alone, according to Tinder. When the company tested the feature earlier this year in Japan, Tech Crunch noted that people who added the Loops feature to their profiles were 10% more likely to receive a right swipe.

The feature also seems to increase the likelihood that people will communicate over the app. Tech Crunch also reported that users testing the feature saw their average conversation length increase by 20%.

Happn - the dating app that matches you with people who have crossed your path IRL - has always raised eyebrows. Despite assurances to the contrary from Didier Rappaport, the app’s co-founder and CEO, concerned singles continue to fear its location-tracking functionality could be misused by suitors with creepy, or possibly dangerous, intentions.

Happn remains undeterred from its mission, and starting next month, will offer users yet another way to identify their missed connections.

The new interactive map allows users to discover people they’ve crossed paths with over the past week. Tap locations you visited over the last seven days to reveal the profiles of others who hit the same spots. This is different from Happn’s standard functionality in that it allows users to travel back in time by retracing other users' steps, rather than being limited solely to current data.

Whether or not the teams score, the fans certainly will. Around two million of them have flocked to Moscow to see soccer’s brightest stars do battle during the 2018 World Cup, causing a massive surge of traffic for Tinder in the Russian capital.

The phenomenon is a familiar one. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Tinder reported a 50% spike in usage in the country over the course of the tournament. During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Tinder founder Sean Rad told the Wall Street Journal the app experienced a 400% day-on-day increase in new users. And during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Tinder noted a 1,850% hike in users taking advantage of the Passport feature to change their location to South Korea.