A year ago, Vanity Fair ran an article dramatically called Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’. It caused a major stir in the media - everyone was debating whether the swipe made love easier to find or wiped romance from the equation completely.

The article wasn’t just a catalyst for discussion amongst daters and writers. Justin McLeod, founder and CEO of the dating app Hinge, was also struck by what it had to say.

“It was the first among many realizations that Hinge had morphed into something other than what I originally set out to build (an app for real relationships),” McLeod said in an email to the Vanity Fair writer, Nancy Jo Sales. “Your honest depiction of the dating app landscape has contributed to a massive change we’re making at Hinge later this fall.”

Dating app giant Tinder is trying to expand its influence beyond the dating scene. While the dating market has essentially built the app’s user base, Tinder execs feel that moving outside of this niche to include a larger portion of the population will reap some obvious benefits.

Fear not daters, you can still swipe left and right to date people with the original Tinder app. The new app is a totally separate experience, called Tinder Stacks, and it’s basically a social media voting tool. It’s all about group decision-making.

According to an article in The Verge, Tinder works through your iMessage app to allow you to contact multiple friends and choose a bunch of pictures from your phone to send to them. Message recipients will then be able to go through your “stack” of photos and swipe left and right, depending on whether or not they approve of or like each one. (You can also add a question to the stack, such as “which dress makes me look the most sexy?”) As the voting takes place, the sender will be able to see how many likes and skips each image receives.

Bumble has been making big moves this year. First, in an effort to even the playing field, the app announced that male users must respond to women’s messages within 24 hours or they lose the match. CEO Whitney Wolfe also announced plans to take Bumble beyond dating into the world of business networking.

The company’s latest update is designed to prevent its users from falling prey to catfishers. How they intend to do it is the fun part.

Bumble’s new plan to outsmart scammers is a photo feature that prompts users to verify their accounts by submitting selfies. Yes, it’s 2016 and selfies are here to save us all.

Tinder & Spotify Partner

Tinder has swiped right on a relationship with Spotify. The online dating app and music streaming service are partnering to launch a handful of new features for musically-inclined singles.

“Tinder already suggests matches based on your swiping preferences, mutual friends and common interests, but we know we can always add more to the equation,” says Tinder’s company blog. “That’s why we’ve matched with Spotify to integrate music into the swiping experience.”

Two big changes are on their way for Tinder users. First, users who connect their Spotify accounts to Tinder are now able to display their top songs on their profiles. All Tinder users can play previews of other people’s top songs via Spotify, without leaving their Tinder profiles. If you have your Spotify account connected, you’ll also be able to see which artists you have in common with potential dates.

The word “squad’ is ubiquitous in 2016, so it was only a matter of time before someone turned it into a dating app.

The thing is, Squad is not just the newest app on the mobile dating scene - it may be the year’s best new dating app.

For starters, the relationship experts on the judging panel of the inaugural US Dating Awards named it Best New Dating App 2016. It beat out The Catch, faith-based Crosspaths, video-centric Lively, and the matchmakers of Once. It’s also received write-ups from the likes of TechCrunch, Thrillist, CNN, Observer, and the Washington Post.

Summer is officially behind us (except for those of you in the southern hemisphere), which means the start of the holiday season. And while you might be missing those warm nights, there’s a good chance your love life will improve in the new season.

Autumn has been proven to be the season for finding lasting love, whether it’s because people are socializing more, or the rush and romance of the holidays, or the fact that cold nights by the fire inspire romantic notions. To help you get a jump start this season, dating site Match has put together a few statistics about the best ways to find love, based on its annual survey of thousands of people in the US, called Singles in America.

First of all, Match encourages you to give love a real chance, and not to expect instant chemistry to lead to a long-term romance. In fact, Match found that a majority of daters – 59% of men and women – do not expect to feel chemistry until the second date, and 35% reported they have fallen deeply in love with someone they didn’t initially find attractive.

Let’s let this settle a moment: 35% of survey respondents admitted they have fallen in love with someone they weren’t initially attracted to. This goes against many romantic stories we have been told of love at first sight, and it’s also heartening to know that chemistry builds over time.

Here’s some advice Match shared about what works and what doesn’t on a first date, to help you get to the second date where the real magic can happen: