Online Dating

Despite strong showings from the likes of Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel, Tinder is still on top as the most popular dating app for young, tech-savvy singles. But can it continue to crush the competition in a space that becomes increasingly crowded?

Tinder is determined not to slip or stagnate. A series of new features are planned for 2018, parent company Match Group revealed during its Q4 2017 earnings call, with a focus on location.

Though the company has been tight-lipped about exactly what’s in the works, it has previously described its strategy as blurring the “distinction between digital and real-life dating, and dating and simply engaging in your social life.” Tinder has also said that its upcoming location features will pull in “a new audience” and “expand the definition of dating.”

Gay dating and social networking app Hornet ushered in 2018 in grand style, launching a not-for-profit organization and plans for an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in the first quarter of the year.

The LGBT Foundation aims to harness the potential of technological innovations like blockchain for the good of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals around the world. Through its initiatives, the Foundation will empower the LGBT community to exert its economic influence, protect vulnerable community members, encourage greater acceptance, and drive positive social change on a global scale.

Resources from the LGBT Foundation will be allocated on an ongoing basis to actively support members of the LGBT community in instances where they are vulnerable, distressed, or suffering from repression or inequality – this could include financial assistance to support political activism as well as logistical and operational support, depending on the particular requirements.

Do dating apps kill the romance of dating, or are they actually helping bring more people together? A lively debate on this topic was held the night of February 6^th in New York, with a panel of experts arguing for and against the motion: Dating Apps Have Killed Romance.

Let’s face it, if you’ve tried online dating, or had a friend who’s dabbled in it (more than 49 million Americans have), chances are you’ve heard a few horror stories. This was the focus of the argument from Eric Klinenberg, co-author with Aziz Ansari of the book Modern Romance, and Manoush Zamoroti, podcast host and journalist who argued for the motion. Citing stories of dates and relationships gone wrong, they argued that not only have dating apps killed romance, they have killed civility among daters. Ultimately, apps have changed the dating culture, and not for the better.

They argued that online dating specifically breeds bad behavior, because people are able to hide behind a screen – or worse, they have stopped interacting or knowing how to interact in real life. Zamoroti gave an example of one of her podcast listeners walking into a bar and seeing a line of single men ordering drinks and swiping on Tinder, ignoring the people around them completely. Plus, some online daters have become emboldened to send lude messages online, which makes the experience even more painful and depressing for other daters.

Image: Ditto

Fans of online dating cite access to a massive pool of potential matches as one of its best features. Detractors, on the other hand, call choice overload one of online dating’s greatest failures. If you fall into the latter camp, a new app is here to help ease the woes of overwhelm.

Ditto starts out like any other Tinder copycat. Users swipe through profiles until they spot one that catches their eye. They swipe right to indicate interest, and a right swipe in return makes a match.

That’s where things get interesting. On Ditto, matches are mutually exclusive until someone unmatches. Think of it as the dating app version of monogamy. A match can only be made with one person at a time, and swiping through other users is disabled until someone decides to end their current match.

Tinder’s premium service has been controversial since its debut in 2015. The company started off on the wrong foot by setting higher prices for users who were older than 30, and a sliding scale to younger users. Now, a California appeals court has found the company’s pricing model to be discriminatory to older users.

Judges with the California 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed the decision made by a previous judge, and has ordered Tinder to stop charging older customers more for its premium service, according to reports.

Tinder was charging users 30 and older $19.99 to use the premium service as opposed to those in their twenties, who were only charged $14.99 or $9.99. For the extra funds, users got to “superlike” their favorite matches, swipe as much as they wanted, change their decision on a match even after they swiped left, and avoid those pesky ads that pop up in the free version.

Are you watching the Winter Olympics? Maybe you’ve fantasized about what it would be like to meet one of the athletes, especially because they are competing at peak physical fitness – what’s not to love?

Some Tinder users are taking it a step further and actually changing their locations to match with Olympic athletes.

Tinder users with a premium service such as Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold have the option to use the “Passport” feature, which allows them to change their location so they can swipe left and right on matches from any other city in the world. This feature was created for those who travel and want to connect with people in more than one place.