Online Dating

The concept of a blind date is nothing new, but you haven’t seen it quite like this before.

Taffy is a new app that attacks the problem of superficiality in dating by blurring a potential match’s photos until you’ve gotten to know each other better. Users initially see the hazy images with a catchy headline superimposed on top (something like “Looking for a guy with a sense of adventure,” suggests the app, though calling that “catchy” seems like a stretch). Only after initiating communication are the clear images revealed.

“Taffy is a new way to meet people that puts personality on the same level as physical attraction by putting conversation first,” explains the website. “Photos are blurry until you start chatting. The more you chat the more you see!”

The swipe has become the symbol of a generation. To the right, it’s shorthand for like, lust, and if you’re lucky, love. To the left, it signifies dislike, disgust, and disappointment. It seems shocking that a simple gesture has come to mean so much, but it was no accident.

Tinder’s creators worked tirelessly to create a fun physical mechanism for the app, tapping UX designer Loren Brichter (who created the familiar pull-to-refresh feature now used by most apps) to design their own iconic gesture. The groundbreaking swiping interface turned dating into a game - and an addictive one at that.

Sean Rad, one of Tinder’s two co-founders, once told TIME, “Nobody joins Tinder because they’re looking for something. They join because they want to have fun. It doesn’t even matter if you match because swiping is so fun.”

Henry Badenhorst, founder of the groundbreaking dating site Gaydar, has died in his native South Africa at age 51 following a fall from a tower block. His tragic passing comes a decade after his co-founder and former partner Gary Frisch fell to his death in a similar fashion in London.

According to BuzzFeed News, Badenhorst fell from the 23rd floor of the Michaelangelo Towers, a hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, on 11 November 2017. Initial reports suggest he took his own life, though the exact details surrounding his death remain unclear.

“Eighteen years ago, Henry and his partner Gary revolutionised the way that gay men meet and in doing so created a safer environment for LGBT people everywhere,” said Gaydar’s current managing director, Rob Curtis. “We are shocked and saddened to hear of Henry’s passing and send our sincerest sympathies to Henry’s friends and family.”

The duo launched Gaydar in 1999, after a friend complained that he was too busy to find a partner.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, dating services have released a flood of updates and new features to close 2017 on a high note.

Coffee Meets Bagel Updates

Coffee Meets Bagel took a cue from Snapchat and introduced ephemeral video in the form of a ‘question of the day’. Users may record up to eight seconds of video answering the question, which then appears in the video section for other users to browse. The section is wiped clean every 24 hours to make room for a new question.

“We learned that people don’t really feel a connection to each other until they meet, which makes any dating app feel like a lot of work,” said cofounder and COO Dawoon Kang. “We wanted to figure out a way for users to make a genuine connection from right within the app, and so we decided on video.”

Market analysts have a fascination with Tinder and Bumble, the two fastest-growing dating apps in the online dating industry. Rumors have been persistent that Match Group and Tinder was interested in acquiring the female-friendly dating app for around $450 million as reported back in August of this year, but the company turned down the offer.

Now it seems that Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, is reportedly still in talks to acquire Bumble, but now for a much heftier price tag of one billion US dollars, according to a recent article in Forbes.

Currently, Match Group has only $500 million in cash and a market cap of under $8 billion, according to website TechCrunch. So potential options would be to fund Bumble with some debt, or to do a cash/ stock combination deal, or even to acquire a portion of the company rather than all of it.

Dating sites regularly add new features to help users find love and stay competitive in an increasingly crowded market.

Over the years we’ve seen Coffee Meets Bagel partner with Yelp and Spotify, Tinder ramp up its famous swipe with Super Like, The League copy it with Power Play, Bumble introduce a time limit for responding to matches, and that’s barely the tip of the updates iceberg.

OkCupid, too, is no stranger to launching new features. Back in 2009, the site debuted its A-List premium paid subscription. In 2013, it experimented with (and quickly ditched) a sister app called Crazy Blind Date. In 2014 and 2015 came expanded options for gender self-identification and the Identity Project. In 2016, OkCupid released an update for nonmonogamous daters, and most recently, users were introduced to a Member Pledge and photo commenting.

But not every update makes the cut.