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Bumble beat analysts’ expectations for its first quarter earnings report, with user spending remaining strong despite concerns over inflation and a recession.

According to Reuters, Bumble saw strong user growth during the first quarter of 2023 as more people chose to pay for its features and subscriptions. The news sent the company’s stock up 7 percent in aftermarket trading.

Bumble reported revenue of $242.9 million for the first quarter of 2023, higher than analyst expectations of $241 million, according to Refinitiv data. Total paying users were a bright spot: Bumble reported 3.5 million paying users at the end of Q1, up from 3 million just a year earlier. Total paying users grew 31 percent to 2.3 million for Bumble.

Shares of Match Group stock rose following the company’s second quarter forecasts, despite the decline in earnings for Q1.

Match Group reported EPS (earnings per share) of 42 cents, beating the consensus of 41 cents, per Reuters. It’s also a 5 percent increase from the same period last year. Revenue however was $787.12 million for the quarter, below the expected $793.87 million, and a 2 percent decline from the same time last year according to Yahoo! Finance.

Paying app users decreased by 1.1 percent to 15.87 million, according to Yahoo!, but revenue per payer actually increased to $16.26, up from $16 in the last quarter, a hopeful sign.

Muslim dating app Muzmatch has lost an appeal in its continuing legal battle with Match Group.

Match Group, which owns popular dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, filed a lawsuit against Muzmatch to change its name due to striking similarities with its own brand. The judge in the appeal upheld the June 2022 ruling calling for Muzmatch to make the name change, and the company has recently complied, changing its name to Muzz per The Times of India.

The original ruling also found in favor of Match Group due to SEO (search engine optimization) issues. Having “match” in the app’s name would mean keywords comprising the word “match” would increase Muzmatch’s chances of appearing higher up in Google searches, which means Muzmatch would unfairly benefit from Match Group’s brand.

Four college students have developed a new AI tool that is aimed to help singles communicate better over dating apps. Rizz generates personalized responses to messages using a screenshot of the chat, so singles can choose one, customize it, and move conversations forward.

The developers are coders who told The Washington Post that they struggled to chat with people, and this inspired them to create the app. "The reason we created this app is that we're experiencing the pain of not fully knowing how to converse with people," co-founder Charis Zhang told The Washington Post.

Rizz’s founders are all sophomores in college, with Zhang, Oliver Johansson and Tobias Worledge at the University of California at Berkeley; and Daniel He goes to school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble is dipping into politics again, this time in the U.K. The company has joined forces with Grazia magazine, UN Women UK, and celebrity Amy Hart to encourage legislators to change the proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB), which deals with the issue of cyberflashing.

The proposed bill’s language includes determining whether the cyberflasher (the person sending unsolicited nudes to someone without their knowledge or consent) had harmful intent, which Bumble says would be difficult to prove. Critics say that this also gives a lot of room for the accused to claim they sent these images as a “joke,” according to AOL.com.

In March, Bumble issued a press release acknowledging the milestone that the UK government agreed to make cyberflashing a criminal offense under the OSB. In the same release, they advocated that “to drive societal change, any new law must be based on non-consent.” The company argued that instead of focusing on the intent of the sender, the law should be focused on whether or not the recipient gave prior consent. 

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.”