Features

A vast majority of daters – 85 percent of women and 87 percent of men - want apps to verify the ages, recency of photos, and locations of potential matches.

According to a new study from TransUnion, over half of those surveyed also said that dating app profiles didn’t accurately reflect the people they met in person. Women were twice as likely to say that people lied about their age, and men were more likely to say they were a victim of a “bait and switch” according to the company’s press release. The study is entitled “The Paradox of Online Dating: Convenience vs. Connection.”

In fact, of those surveyed, more than 75 percent said they were willing to undergo background checks themselves to bring more transparency among dating app users.

Tinder Dating Handbook

Image: Tinder

On International Women’s Day, Tinder announced the launch of Her New Dating Rule Book, a guide to challenging dating norms and traditions for singles in India.

According to Mashable India, the new guide offers new “rules” for dating today, including who should foot the bill on a first date. Traditionally, it’s been the man, but Tinder says that dating dynamics are changing, and young women in India embrace a more progressive, less traditional approach.

One of the first rules of the guidebook states: “Respect Over Outdated Gender Roles, a.k.a. Chivalry 2.0,” to highlight the fact that young singles are looking for mutual respect and dates who keep promises over outdated notions of chivalry, like expecting a man to pay for a meal. And 36 percent surveyed said they value dates who give their full attention and put the phone away on the date.

An investigation into Match Group by nonprofit news organization The Markup and Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network found that the company had information about users who were reported for sexual assault, but did not ban them from its apps, publicly identify them, or report them to authorities.

This report follows the company’s ouster of CEO Bernard Kim, who was not able to turn around the company’s revenue decline over the past several quarters. He was replaced by Zillow Group Inc. co-founder Spencer Rascoff.

Now, Match Group is facing the fallout from this investigation.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Tinder has partnered with food brand Knorr to encourage users to highlight cooking skills on their Tinder profiles. A whopping 93 percent of Gen Z Tinder users find a date’s ability to cook attractive.

According to Design Rush, the new campaign encourages Tinder users to “unlock their green flag” by touting their ability to cook in profiles and hopefully sparking conversation. Knorr is also helping Tinder users get inspired by offering recipes and cooking tips on TikTok and Instagram leading up to Valentine’s Day under the campaign hashtag #UnlockYourGreenFlag.

According to the joint press release, Knorr and Tinder conducted a study of users to find that 63 percent are more likely to swipe right on someone with cooking listed as interest. And about 28 percent of singles said they won’t consider dating someone who can’t cook.

Hinge just launched Prompt Feedback, a new feature to help users with profile building. The personalized, AI-driven coaching feature “guides daters to create more meaningful first impressions” according to the company’s website.

Prompt Feedback is Hinge’s first AI-powered coaching feature, and offers personalized advice to help daters improve the responses they give for Prompts. Hinge notes that writing Prompts can be difficult for its users. “On Hinge, 27% of all Prompts are just one word, and 60% of daters admit they struggle to know what to write," the company wrote in its release.

With Prompt Feedback, when a user writes a response to a prompt, they are given one of three pieces of feedback: “great answer,” “Try a small change,” or “go a little deeper.”

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd announced that she will be returning to the company as CEO in March.

Wolfe Herd left the position early last year and Lidiane Jones, the former CEO of Slack, took the reins at Bumble. Jones oversaw a major reboot of the app which deviated from its original female-first approach, allowing men to message women first. During her tenure, the company went through staff layoffs and a significant drop in stock value as well.

Jones said she was leaving “for personal reasons” according to The Verge.