Dating

Image: Netflix

The wildly popular dating reality series Perfect Match has been renewed for a second season by Netflix. The series debuted in February of this year and spent five weeks on Netflix’s Global Top 10 English TV list, and reaching the top 10 TV lists in 58 countries, according to Deadline.com.

The show doesn’t introduce new singles to its audience – instead, it brings together stars who remained single after they left other popular dating reality shows like Love is Blind, The Ultimatum, Too Hot to Handle, and The Mole.

The characters convene on a tropical island (per usual for reality shows) and try to find their “perfect match.” The twist is that the singles have to compete to form relationships, and the most compatible couples have the most power. These couples play matchmaker, with the ability to break up others and send them on dates with other singles they invite to the villa.

Image: Match Group

Match Group has appointed former Plenty of Fish CEO Malgosia Green as CEO of Match Group Asia, who will now be based in Singapore. The company has said it will be targeting the growing Asian market in the coming months as well as focusing on AI development, and a huge step forward is having an executive in the region.

Green was appointed by Match Group CEO Bernard Kim, who has been under fire from shareholders about the fourth quarter revenue decline because of poor product rollouts from Tinder. He has named four main points of growth for the company, one of which is focusing on the Asian market.

In an interview with Fast Company, Green said: “Given the huge potential of the region, and how large it is . . . it made a lot more sense to have someone specifically dedicated to Asia itself, and to be based in the region.”

Tinder has become a pawn in some new intelligence tactics employed by Russian spies. They are using the app to woo German soldiers as informants, so they can obtain intelligence about Ukraine’s war strategy.

According to Insider, German newspaper Welt am Sonntag broke the story, reporting that Russian agents are specifically targeting politicians and members of Germany’s armed forces as sources of information, and they are using dating app Tinder as a tool to reach them.

Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) confirmed at a recent NATO meeting in the country that “members of other intelligence services (e.g. Russia) use social media to specifically establish contacts with members of the Bundeswehr,” or the German armed forces, according to Insider. MAD also confirmed that Tinder was the app most used.

New users are downloading and registering for dating apps every day, and business is booming for the $5.61 billion-dollar industry, despite a recent decline in subscriptions for Tinder.

According to new research gathered from website Cloudwards, 1 in 5 U.S. Internet users are also using a dating app. In fact, the total number of dating app users grew to 366 million worldwide in 2022 alone, up from 240.9 million in 2016 and 323.9 million in 2021.

Gen Z daters seem to have a stronger preference for Tinder, which is the most popular dating app in the U.S. Tinder has a reputation that it’s mainly for singles who aren’t looking for anything serious, and Gen Z daters are on these apps to look for friendships and casual relationships as much as a partner. However, in recent months, Tinder’s new CEO Bernard Kim seems to be taking the app in a new direction and focusing on attracting more serious daters, including testing a new $500 VIP service called Tinder Vault.

A new strategy that’s gaining steam among organizers is using dating apps to reach out to potential voters ahead of crucial U.S. elections.

According to The Guardian, encouraging young voters on dating apps to go to the polls on April 4th was an important strategy in the race in Wisconsin for a State Supreme Court seat, where youth votes ensured a victory for a Democrat-backed justice in the face of increasing rollbacks of rights regarding abortion and education.

In a report from Vanderbilt University in 2020, researchers found that 31 percent of millennial respondents were using online dating services even more than before the pandemic, and an even larger percentage of Gen Z singles were turning to dating apps to meet people. At the same time, they are increasingly resistant to phone calls and texts from organizers and campaign staff, especially as they get bombarded around election time. Dating apps are a way to casually engage their commitment.

Dating app Bumble has partnered with Gymshark to create a UK-based ad campaign centered around fitness, a popular first date activity among younger daters.

According to The Drum, the campaign focuses on compatibility for singles, and how they can bond more easily over shared interests. “For Dates That Workout” includes new interest badges that users can add to their profiles, including weightlifting, HIIT and bodybuilding, which were chosen by Bumble based on what’s most popular with Gymshark members. Yahoo! Life noted that the most popular workout activities for Bumble dates were running, and HIIT, yoga and Pilates classes.

Bumble found that 22 percent of Gen Z and millennials have exercised or attended a fitness class on a first date, according to The Drum. This has been especially popular since the pandemic, where meeting for drinks has taken a backseat to more active dates. According to their research, 32 percent of singles have attended a fitness class with the intention to meet someone.