Features

Dating app conglomerate Match Group announced that it will launch new audio and video chat features to its suite of dating apps over the next two years. The company shared this news on its second quarter earnings call with investors.

The company plans to debut a new audio chat feature and group video chat, along with other “livestreaming technologies” across its apps, according to Tech Crunch. The rollouts will happen over the next 12 to 24 months, with two of their dating apps debuting it before the end of this year, followed by more rollouts in 2022.

Adding new livestream and chat features are the result of the company’s pricey acquisition of social discovery platform Hyperconnect (the acquisition’s officially closed in mid-June). Match Group owns a series of popular dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish among others, and has said that the future of dating apps will likely resemble social platforms, with livestreaming and video being at the forefront.

Apple has pulled a new dating app for unvaccinated people from its store, stating that the app was spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.

According to PC Magazine, the app “Unjected” was initially reported to Apple by Bloomberg, who contacted the company when the dating app added a new social feature where users could publish their own posts. Many Unjected users began to add content containing conspiracy theories and misinformation about the pandemic and vaccines. This violated app store rules, which bans entertainment and gaming apps from using Covid-19 as a theme.

Apple told PC Magazine that Unjected broke other app store rules, too, namely by telling its users to avoid certain Covid-related words like “vaccine,” “jabbed,” and “microchip” because this might lead to the app being flagged and potentially banned from the store, which eventually it was.

Popular dating apps like Tinder and Bumble that operate in Australia and New Zealand are starting to add vaccination badges as a new profile feature to entice people to match and date. Bumble is rolling its badge out at the end of July, while Tinder is still a few weeks away.

The apps have already rolled out this popular feature in the U.S. and U.K., and now that Australians and New Zealanders are signing up to receive a vaccine, they will be expanding the feature to offer it in these countries, too. 

According to The Guardian, only 11 percent of Australians are fully vaccinated, which might make it more difficult for dating apps to offer as an incentive to match, at least for now. The Astro-Zeneca vaccine is available to eligible adults in the countries, but many are opting to wait for Pfizer, which remains in limited supply. But Australia and New Zealand are ahead of the game - many countries are still waiting for any vaccine dosages to become available for their populations.

Tinder has noticed a popular trend emerging in the past week – users from around the world are changing their location to match with athletes staying in Olympic Village.

Tinder’s popular Passport feature was made available to all users at no cost for limited times during pandemic lockdowns, and many members took advantage. Passport allows users to switch locations to match with anyone in the world, regardless of where they currently live. And recently, Tinder users began changing their location to match with athletes participating in the Olympics.

There’s no current tally of the number of Tinder users setting their romantic sights on 2021 Olympic athletes, but referencing 2018 numbers, Tinder confirmed to Newsweek that there was an increase of 1,850 percent of users accessing Passport to match with athletes in the Olympic Village. 

SwoonMe is a new dating app that offers users avatars and audio clips in place of real photos and videos to encourage “less superficial” interactions, according to the company.

The app requires users to take a selfie and creates an avatar based on the photo. According to Tech Crunch, the user then records an audio clip for their profile, where they can share what they are looking for in a partner as well as give a brief introduction to who they are. Users can also answer questions, like what kind of relationship they are looking for and what their love language is. SwoonMe’s platform also encourages voice messages and ice breaker games to get to know each other, rather than messaging and photo sharing. 

The more a user communicates with a match, the more the profile photo underneath the avatar is revealed - until you can see the actual person. 

Dating app Thursday has secured $3.5 million in seed money investment after launching in New York and London in May, according to Tech Crunch.

The dating app’s name comes from the fact that it’s only live once a week – on Thursdays, so users of the app will have to be sure to log on then if they don’t want to wait another week to connect with potential matches. Thursday goes live at 1:00am and closes at midnight each week, when all conversations and matches vanish. So, if you really want to continue with a match you made on the app, you have to commit and make plans quickly. 

The idea seems to be taking off, at least for now. A month and a half after its launch, the company said in a statement that it had 52,000 downloads, 110,000 likes were sent, and also reported 7,500 matches in a single day. The company also received more seed money than it had planned to raise.