Dating Services

LinkedIn is having a moment with romance. In a recent study, more than half of singles are turning to the career networking platform to find dates.

According to Dating News, a majority of 61 percent of singles aged 35 to 40 found dates on LinkedIn. Overall, 52 percent of all respondents ages 20 to 40 have found their dates on the business networking platform, highlighting its unexpected new role.

Interestingly, the second-best way that people say they are finding dates (48 percent) is through being set up on blind dates. Only 45 percent of respondents reported finding luck on online dating sites in comparison.

Older daters are more apt to have successfully met people via dating sites – half of respondents between 35 and 40 years old said they have met people on dating sites compared to only 33 percent of people between 20 and 24 years old, according to Dating News. Gen Z appears more open to meeting people outside of dating sites than Millennials, who came of age when dating apps launched and tend to gravitate to those platforms.

Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones is reconsidering the app’s signature selling point: a dating app where females make the first move. The app is scheduled to relaunch later this year, and it seems everything is on the table.

Bumble’s longtime marketing strategy and company mission was to appeal to women and help them feel empowered while using a dating app. Jones however feels that things have changed, and it has become a “burden for a subset of our customers today," according to Yahoo! Finance.

The company has been testing out alternatives, from sending prompts to help women start conversations (and reduce their anxiety about doing so) or they can choose to let their matches start conversations instead.

Dating app conglomerate Match Group has attracted its second activist investor Anson Funds Management LP, who have built a stake in the company.

Bloomberg, who broke the news, also noted that shares of Match Group fell 0.9% in mid-day trading the day the news was released.

Bloomberg also reported that Anson is trying to “change the composition” of Match Group’s Board of Directors, citing reputable sources. The investment firm also discussed with Match Group’s management about embracing AI in its products, which Match Group has already been doing.

Yoel Roth, former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, has now accepted a position as vice president of trust and safety at Match Group.

According to Tech Crunch, Roth will be responsible for developing policies and standards concerning safety across all Match Group apps.

The new VP made the announcement on his LinkedIn page: “As they say… some personal news! I swiped right on Match Group! 15 years ago, I started studying what we now call ‘trust and safety’ because the then-new world of dating apps felt like the Wild West; it’s truly a dream come true to get to roll up my sleeves and work to protect the millions of people making connections on our apps worldwide.”

Dating app Tinder has agreed to provide more transparency about its pricing for premium services to users in the EU. The agreement follows a probe from the European Union’s consumer watchdog agencies when complaints surfaced from daters who were charged different fees for the same service.

According to Reuters, Tinder agreed to better inform users about its pricing, specifically the personalized discounts it offered. Users who showed little interest in purchasing one of the dating app’s standard premium services were later offered personalized discounts to get them to pay for Tinder. It was also disclosed that the app was using automation to identify these users and to personalize the prices for them.

In fact, a study in Sweden in 2022 showed that Tinder was offering 36 different “personalized” price levels, ranging from about $3 U.S. to as much as $36 per month for the same premium service, which prompted the investigation.

Grindr CEO George Arison is hoping to turn things around for the popular gay dating app after a tumultuous year with employees, investors and app users alike. He is focusing on moving Grindr beyond a hookup app, and in streamlining costs.

According to a feature in The Financial Times, an “a la carte” payment option for travel services will be added to boost the company’s revenue. Arison noted that travelling to events such as Aspen Gay Ski Week and New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro is hugely popular among Grindr users, and the company sees advantages to offering those attending a way to connect.

Grindr is currently testing a feature called Teleport, which lets users place their profile in a new location for an hour to connect with others before traveling to that place. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport, where users can mark their location at a place where they are traveling.