Dating Services

Dating app BLK has launched a new ad campaign in support of black women, encouraging them to be their “authentic selves.”

The “New Year, Real You: #RealNotPerfect” campaign launched in January. The ad was created by Arxna in conjunction with BLK’s in-house marketing team, according to Black Enterprise magazine. The campaign is meant to encourage black women to be their authentic selves in all areas of their lives - professional, educational, and in their personal/ dating lives.

BLK also intends the campaign to challenge societal expectations and to create a “safe space” for black women to express themselves without fear of judgment, according to Black Enterprise.

Bumble has shared the best time to be on a dating app – down to the exact hour. According to the popular dating app platform, being on the app on Mondays between 7pm and 8pm in the U.S. and between 8pm and 9pm in the U.K. will boost your chances of matching.

The dating app shared that these are the busiest times with the most people active on the app - and will give you more opportunities to match and set up dates. Other good times to be active on the platform is Tuesday evenings at 9pm, Thursdays at 7pm, and Sundays at 5pm, according to recent user data.

Dating Sunday (the first Sunday in January following the holidays) might be the busiest day of the year for online dating. But on a regular basis, searching for potential matches on the weekend won’t yield the same results as looking during weekday evenings. More people are with friends and family (and on other dates), and only log back in after work during the week to match with more people.

Image: eHarmony

eharmony unveiled a new ad for its dating app in time for dating’s busiest season, but the LGBTQ+-led campaign did not go over well with Christian groups.

The ad features a lesbian couple snuggled up on the couch waiting for their laundry to finish. When the buzzer goes off, one partner gets up to retrieve the laundry while the other lies on the bed, waiting and smiling. Then her partner unloads all the clean laundry on her, and she is elated and taking in the warmth of the clothes fresh out of the dryer. The tagline for the ad is: “Get who gets you.”

According to The Pink News, despite the cute and feel-good premise, right wing Christian activist group One Million Moms has launched a petition to remove the ad from the air, and so far have received over 12,000 signatures. The organization claimed that the ad was airing during “prime time” when children were likely to be watching television and was “crossing a line that eharmony should have never crossed,” according to the petition.

Shares of Match Group rose as much as 12 percent after The Wall Street Journal reported that Elliott Management had invested almost $1 billion in the company.

According to the report, Elliott has a long history of success in tech investments, including in Salesforce and Pinterest. The Match Group investment showed signs of promise to investors who have recently shied away from dating app companies in the wake of decreasing revenues and management turnover. As a result, share prices for Match rose as high as 12 percent and ended the day up 3 percent.

According to CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, Elliott plans to engage with Match Group’s management, but it is unclear as to how involved they will be, and if that would include nominating its directors. Match Group recently appointed a new CEO for Tinder, so Tinder’s previous acting CEO Bernard Kim can focus his attention on Match Group’s entire suite of apps, which include Hinge, OkCupid, Match and BLK.

Image: Tinder

Match Group has promoted Faye Iosotaluno to head up Tinder as its new CEO, replacing Match Group CEO Bernard Kim.

According to Tech Crunch, Iosotaluno has been at Match Group since 2017, and was promoted from Tinder’s chief strategy officer to the company’s chief operating officer in 2022, when former CEO Renate Nyborg left. Kim has been acting CEO of Tinder until a replacement for Nyborg was made.

“Faye’s understanding of the dating category is unparalleled and coupled together with her remarkable leadership capabilities, I know Tinder will continue to lead the category,” said Kim in a statement.

Dating platform Feeld debuted an updated app with more features in early December, only to find that users were having trouble logging in or using the app at all.

In a statement posted on its website about the app’s troubled relaunch, Feeld said: “Since our app update on Friday, we’ve been listening to your invaluable feedback, and understand your concerns about some of the changes, technical issues, and our responses. We know that some of you missed out on Feeld dates, Connections and experiences, and we are working on meaningful ways to make this right.”

After almost two weeks of continued problems, the dating app provided another update in mid-December.