Tips

Dating app Hinge posted some advice on its blog to guide users heading into the busiest season for dating apps, from New Year’s Day until Valentine’s Day.

Hinge advises users to embrace a concept called “Dating Forward,” which means to focus on intentional actions to create the love life you want. Hinge’s Director of Relationship Science, Logan Ury said in the post to give your profile a refresh, which includes updated photos, trying out a new prompt on its app, and including your dating intentions so there’s clarity about what you want in a relationship.

There are also other tips Ury offers for searching on dating apps, such as looking for potential in matches and agreeing to message and meet for a date to see where it goes before discounting them because they don’t match your ideal.

Hailey Welch, the “Hawk Tuah” girl who rose to fame from a viral video moment has now launched a new dating app dubbed Pookie Tools.

Pookie Tools is AI-based and acts like a virtual wingman, offering everything from conversation prompts to outfit recommendations to profile enhancement tips.

The app targets the Gen Z market with some of Welch’s “cheat codes,” as the description in the app store reads. The cheat codes include a “Conversation Assistant” and “Text Responder” that offer personalized prompts to keep conversations going and an “Astrological Insights” feature that helps determine a match’s compatibility based on zodiac signs.

A new study found that men who post pictures with their dogs have a higher match rate on dating apps than those who don’t.

According to the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science which published the study, men who wanted long-term relationships also tended to pose with their dogs for dating app photos, compared to those looking for short-term flings, who were much more likely to pose with status symbols like boats or motorcycles, or show off their bare chests.

The study looked at 750 dating profiles, with 225 men and women each seeking long-term relationships, and 225 men looking for a casual relationship.

The Democrats have launched a new series of ads on dating app Grindr to appeal to young LGBTQ+ daters, in hopes of turning out more votes ahead of election day on November 5th.

According to The Advocate, the targeted ads focus on the Republican party’s Project 2025, emphasizing that the document threatens LGBTQ+ rights. These ads urge people to vote against the extremist agenda. One ad says: “Project 2025 Rips Away Our Rights. Stop Republicans. Make a plan to vote at IWillVote.com.”

The Kamala Harris campaign has spent three figures on the ads, indicating the importance of the LGBTQ+ constituency to her success.

Popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Grindr are building and testing out virtual wingmen and other AI-driven tools on their platforms to help generate icebreakers and offer instant feedback, according to a new feature in The Financial Times.

Grindr chief product officer AJ Balance told the Financial Times that the gay dating app’s chatbot assistant called Grindr Wingman would help users with their dating “pain points,” like helping them initiate flirty conversation via curated prompts based on user profiles and chat histories.

“It’s that friend in the bar who’s helping you to ask someone out — but in the virtual context,” Balance told FT, saying that using AI in this way could help take the hard work out of online dating.

A vast majority of 79 percent of Gen Z singles said they have experienced dating app burnout, according to a new study by Forbes Health.

The study found that in the last six months, 49 percent of those who reported burnout were using Tinder, followed by Plenty of Fish at 38 percent and Bumble at 29 percent. Raya users had the least amount of burnout reported, at only 3 percent.

“People who experience burnout with dating apps are exhausted from constantly meeting new people, failing opportunities and lies,” Dr. Rufus Spann, a sex therapist and Forbes Health Advisory Board member, said in an article about the study. “Over time, the unfortunate misgivings of being on a dating app can cause someone to lose hope in the dating process and finding the right person.”