Industry

Popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and Grindr are trying new subscription pricing to continue to grow revenue, including premium pricing as well as discounts and short-term subscriptions for young Gen Z daters.

Dating app revenue has stalled in recent quarters, and to increase revenue and paying subscribers these companies are looking at out-of-the-box pricing. Match Group is especially motivated, as it has seen revenue drop the past few months while Bumble and Grindr are still seeing gains. Many are starting to offer premium services to highly motivated and more affluent daters, who are willing to spend $500 a month on a dating app if it means better, more curated matches.

On the other end of the spectrum, these same apps want to attract younger daters, specifically the Gen Z market. Match Group is starting to offer short-term weekly subscriptions for those singles who don’t want to commit, as well as discounted pricing to encourage young daters to pay for subscriptions, instead of just opting for the free service and paying for certain in-app features as needed.

Match Group has hired a new Vice President of Innovation, a role that will direct the use of AI over its suite of apps.

Mark Kantor comes from his previous role as head of growth at Zynga, and co-founded startups like Yellowbrick and Grafitti, according to Tech Crunch. He will lead a team of engineers and product designers in harnessing AI technology for new features. According to an internal memo received by Tech Crunch, the new team is called ASL, which stands for Art x Science Lab, but is also a reference to an online pickup line (“age, sex, location”).

AI has been a tool that dating apps have incorporated in various ways, including in algorithms to better understand user preferences when delivering potential matches. Now with tools like ChatGPT, daters are using AI for profile-writing and messages, so dating app companies like Match Group are seeing opportunity.

Match Group and its partner Garbo, a nonprofit provider of background checks, have parted ways, according to a story that broke in The Wall Street Journal.

Garbo announced in a blog post that it will be shutting down its consumer-facing business as a result of the split. While details were not shared about exactly what happened, Garbo blamed Match Group for both the difference in priorities and the execution of the service on its platform.

Garbo’s service was integrated into Match Group’s Tinder platform and allowed users run background checks on potential dates using just a name and phone number. Garbo would give them a report stating if the person had any public reports issued against them for past violence, arrests, convictions and restraining orders.

Dating app Hinge is looking for a new head of AI, and is willing to pay almost $400K to the right person who will lead the team.

AI has become increasingly important to dating apps, and Match Group CEO Bernard Kim is capitalizing on the versatile technology to expand product offerings, especially for star app Tinder. Now, he’s focusing efforts on AI for its fastest-growing dating app, Hinge.

According to Business Insider, the new position was created to confirm Hinge as an “AI-first company.” The VP of Artificial Intelligence will lead a team of data scientists and machine learning engineers “to create and deploy AI features across the app,” as reported by Business Insider. The new hire will be based in New York, and report to Ben Celebicic, Hinge’s Chief Technology Officer.

Grindr has issued a return-to-the-office policy for all workers, forcing them to relocate to one of the company’s three main offices by October 3rd or lose their jobs. Employees say this is a retaliatory move, since it comes two weeks after they announced their plan to form a union.

According to Vice, who obtained the certification form that was sent to workers, the policy states that employees must move to within 50 miles of their newly designated office or they will lose their jobs.

Workers were given the choice to move to either Chicago (for the engineering team), and Los Angeles or San Francisco (for the product and design teams), and if they were not willing to relocate, their jobs would end August 31st. Workers were offered six months’ severance pay and healthcare benefits if they lost their jobs, according to the memo issued by the company.

Shares of Bumble fell 4 percent in early August after the company shared its relatively “lackluster” third-quarter revenue forecast, coupled with a sharper rise in its operating expenses, according to Reuters.

This rise in spending concerned investors, especially after Tinder’s parent company Match Group recently predicted that its third quarter revenue would be higher than analyst expectations, despite its own spend on development and marketing. The company has struggled lately with Tinder, and has been implementing new features to increase in-app revenue and expand its userbase. The company also recently announced it will be launching a high-end service for users who are willing to pay as much as $500 per month.

Bumble meanwhile shared that its operating expenses had jumped 7 percent in the second quarter with additional spend on product development and marketing.