Hinge

Facebook has come under fire, with many longtime users debating whether or not to delete their accounts, rather than make their personal information vulnerable to third parties. But something you might not have considered, brought to light by a reporter from Mashable, is how deleting Facebook might affect your love life.

Many dating apps rely on Facebook to verify profile information – that is, to make sure you really are a person and not a bot or an advertisement. With this in mind, many apps require that you use your Facebook account to login, including Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and other really popular apps.

Research firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of hijacking data from 50 million Facebook users and using the data to influence the 2016 U.S. election. This information breach was made possible because Facebook relies on third parties for ad revenue, and also partners with research firms like Cambridge Analytica, which leaves its platform open to security problems. Facebook maintains it didn’t know about the information grab, though evidence has come to light via whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who developed the strategy for hijacking and using the data to create targeted political profiles of Americans.

Bumble changed the game when it launched in 2014 and required female users to make the first move. Now Hinge is offering its own take on conversation, and it hopes the new feature will help combat one of online dating’s biggest scourges.

After focus grouping, surveying, and beta testing, Hinge found that conversations frequently fizzled out simply because users had forgotten to respond. To offer a gentle reminder, the company has introduced ‘Your Turn’, a feature that lets users decide – regardless of gender – who makes the first move, and politely prompts you when it’s your turn to respond.

This addresses one of digital dating’s most stubborn problems. Conversations often start strong but are later abandoned - or, as Hinge’s research discovered, are unintentionally forgotten. Your Turn is a tiny-but-effective nudge to remind you that someone is waiting to hear back. In early tests, the feature was found to reduce ghosting by 25 percent.

How Hinge Matchmaker Works

We normally frown upon butting into the love lives of others, but Hinge has launched a new app that hopes to make it socially acceptable to hook up your friends.

Hinge Matchmaker is designed to let you pair up your pals who are already on the dating app. After downloading the app and logging in, Matchmaker will scan your Facebook friends list for people who have Hinge profiles. The app then presents two of your single Facebook friends at a time, leaving it up to you to decide whether you think they’d be a solid match.

If the answer is yes, you can suggest the match and even add an icebreaker message to get the ball rolling. Your suggested match will see each other on the regular Hinge app, along with your note, and can choose whether to continue the conversation or not. There’s also the option to focus on a specific friend’s dating life by locking their profile, which allows the matchmaker to rotate through the available matches for that person alone.

Dating app Hinge wants to reward you for taking dating seriously. In a new promotion, the company is offering free gifts from its “Milestone Marketplace” when a couple who meets over the app hits certain relationship milestones. Unfortunately, it’s only for a limited time. The happy couples can claim their rewards until August 23^rd.

Some milestones include the first sleepover, moving in, getting a dog, getting engaged, honeymooning, and even having a baby. There are eleven total milestones that Hinge celebrates with free gifts, which include pillows, an electronic toothbrush, birthstone stud earrings and a $200 vibrator, among other gifts. Hinge had a little fun with the prizes. For “meeting the parents,” couples get a $50 credit to Minibar for wine.

For getting engaged, couples can earn $100 for a Zola registry, a nice gift for newlyweds.

Video is in. After the explosive success of Snapchat, competitor social networks scrambled to launch Stories features of their own. Instagram’s copycat proved so popular that Instagram Stories usage surpassed all Snapchat activity in April 2017.

Yet despite the success stories, online dating remains mysteriously absent from that race to innovate. On the surface, the search for love seems like an ideal candidate for video - if a picture on a profile is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth several times that - but few dating services have dared incorporate video into their features.

Hinge and Lively hope to be at the forefront of the eventual, seemingly inevitable, push to make video a regular part of the digital dating experience. Lively, a video-based social app, recently announced the release of augmented live video chat, while Hinge debuted a feature to add video clips to profiles.

It’s been a whirlwind week in the online dating world.

First, Badoo launched a feature to help singles hook up with their celebrity crushes… well, almost. A new search feature uses facial recognition technology to match users with dates who look like their favourite celebs. Among the most searched-for famous faces so far are Kim Kardashian West, Justin Bieber, and Robert Pattinson.

“People are looking for quick, fast, easy ways to start connections,” said Badoo's Miles Norris to the BBC, “and if the way someone looks is a good onboarding to that, then we want to make it easy for them.”