Types (Niche)

Dating app Romeo started a new forum for its users to be able to offer support to Ukrainian refugees, and thousands of members were quick to respond.

The gay dating app is based in Germany and has been popular for years, mainly in Eastern Europe. One of its high-profile features is “groups” or chat forums where users can congregate and discuss topics of interest. This past week, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the app decided to harness the traffic in these forums to call on users for help. Developers launched a group called “Shelter for Ukraine” so that users could offer assistance those fleeing the war.

The app was quickly overwhelmed with users wanting to help, with 8,000 members joining the chat after being active for only four days.

Dating app Tinder said that it would be ending the controversial aged-based pricing structure for its premium service Tinder Plus by the end of the second quarter.

The news follows a recent UK study that found users were paying wildly different prices to access Tinder’s premium service, typically based on age, which raised questions about discriminatory pricing.

According to Buzzfeed, the Mozilla Foundation and Consumers International took up where the UK consumer watchdog Which? and Australian consumer advocacy organization Choice left off when they first pointed out the issue of price discrepancies on the app. The researchers at Mozilla and CI didn’t find statistically different prices based on race, gender or sexual orientation, but did find it among different age groups.

Fourplay, a new dating app that lets friends create joint profiles and go on group dates with their matches, has become a hit in the New York dating scene. The app now boasts a waiting list of 9,000 people.

According to The New York Post, the app was created by two friends who were healthcare workers and didn’t have much time to devote to their jobs, friends, and the dating scene, so Danielle Dietzek and Julie Griggs decided to create a profile together on a dating app and look for matches who were willing to recruit their friends and go out all together on a double date. (Hint: they got a lot of positive responses which led to the idea for the app.)

The way Fourplay works is two friends set up a joint profile and then match with other pairs of daters. When there is a match, the four proceed to a group chat. The idea is to take the pressure and awkward conversation off of first dates, which can often be more stressful than fun, to make it a more engaging, communal experience. If there’s no romantic connection, then at least everyone got to spend time with friends, and maybe make new ones.

Online dating might be heading towards a sea change as VC firms invested about $31 million in 43 rounds of funding towards new dating apps in 2021. 

According to website Crunchbase which studies technology trends, the majority of companies raised angel, pre-seed and seed rounds, which means venture capitalist firms were interested in early-stage developments. (There were only three who received Series-A funding.)

Crunchbase also noted that every ten years there seems to be a shift in consumer preferences when it comes to dating app technology, and it usually follows the larger social app trends. Ten years ago, Instagram was the hot new app and dating apps like Tinder gamified their platforms to put photos front and center, where users could just look and swipe. 

Tech giant Apple faced another hefty fine this week from Dutch regulators over its non-compliance with a December ruling regarding its Apple Store operations. The company now owes over 25 million euros for failing to change its practices, according to Tech Crunch. 

The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) ordered Apple to allow dating apps to use third party payment systems for in-app purchases. Prior to the ruling, developers had no choice but to go through the Apple Store for payment processing, and in addition, Apple charged them a thirty percent commission for all in-app purchases. Match Group had joined other companies in asking for an investigation into the company’s practices, claiming they were losing revenue and were unable to directly help customers with billing questions.

The ACM ordered Apple to pay the Authority five million euros per week until the issue is fixed, which has now gone unresolved five weeks past the deadline, bringing their total fines to about 25 million euros, according to Tech Crunch. Apple has fought the ruling, although it did make adjustments to its Store and allowed dating apps to use third-party payment platforms. However, Apple made the process difficult by forcing the app developers to pay a 27 percent fee on sales made through third parties, so dating app developers would still take a financial hit.

The Right Stuff, a new dating app to help conservatives connect more easily, is set to launch this summer. Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech entrepreneur who founded PayPal, has already signed on as an investor, according to Axios.

Thiel has invested $1.5 million in the new app, whose target market are conservative daters who live in large cities that tend to be more liberal. The app will debut in Washington D.C. and at first will be invitation-only. It will be free to download and use, with paid and subscription options added later for those who want access to more features.

John McEntee, a former political aide for the Trump administration, founded the dating app to help conservative singles find like-minded partners. “Conservatives deserve an easy way to connect,” McEntee said to Axios.