General News

Epic Games, maker of popular game Fortnite, just won an antitrust lawsuit against Google for its Play Store practices. This outcome could be a gamechanger for app developers, who must rely on Google and Apple stores to get their apps out in the world.

According to Tech Crunch, a San Francisco court found that Google “willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power by engaging in anticompetitive conduct” as stated in the court filings. The jury determined Google’s liability, but a judge still has to decide what the final outcome will be.

The two companies will plead their cases in January to argue for how Google will need to adjust its Play Store policies going forward. Currently, the company takes a commission of as much as 30 percent of all purchases made via apps on its platform. The original lawsuit included Match Group among other companies, but all of them settled out of court apart from Epic Games.

Image: TInder

Dating app Tinder has released its new dating trends report for 2023, and one of the main findings of the Year in Swipe point to singles wanting a range of dating experiences, rather than being so focused on finding “the one.”

In other words, more singles were interested in their own dating journeys rather than the destination, with Tinder noting that there was a 5.5 times increase in users adding statements in their bios like: “Everything I do is for the plot.” NATO dating was also a big phrase – “not being attached to an outcome.”

Singles also said they embraced “main character energy” in 2023, alluding to stories they can share about their dating lives with their friends (and followers on social media). They said they looked at the dating process as a way of building a roster of new experiences and memories (to add to their personal stories), which took the pressure off outcomes. It also left room for “self-exploration through dating,” according to Match Group’s release.

Image: Stir

Actress Busy Phillips is starring in her latest project – a new holiday promotion for dating app Stir, which caters to single parents.

The campaign MILF on the SHILF campaign satirizes the popular Christmas tradition in many households with kids of “Elf on a Shelf,” but now with an adult twist. The goal is to help single parents have a little fun this holiday season and embrace their inner MILF or DILF (Mother or Father I’d like Fireside, according to the campaign).

The campaign features a video of Phillips in elf attire posing on a mantel, luxuriating in costume in a bath, and advocating for parents to take care of themselves this holiday season – instead of focusing all their attention on making sure the kids have a great holiday.

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I can't believe it has been exactly 20 years ago today this website came online and we are still going strong.

We have produced over 5600 articles and have a dating forum with almost 14,000 posts. We have seen a lot of dating services come and go. In fact there has been 50 reviews moved to the out of business category due to the service being shut down. The total number of detailed reviews we have researched and created for service businesses in the dating industry is 149. Each of these reviews that is for a company currently in business also gets updated several times a year with a major rewrite happening every 2-3 years. It is a lot of work!

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Tinder and Hinge have recently released new ultra-premium subscriptions for what they called “motivated daters,” but a significant population of singles would rather not pay the steep price for a dating app experience. In fact, the more companies try to monetize dating app features, the more it seems to turn off daters altogether.

A recent report from Bloomberg found that people are gravitating back to in-person events like speed dating, which saw a 63 percent increase in participation this past year according to Eventbrite. And they are reluctant to pay the $500 subscription for Tinder or $60 subscription for Hinge, though Match Group has noticed an uptick in revenue since releasing the premium services.

According to Bloomberg, third-quarter downloads for Hinge were the app’s best ever and that 1.3 million of its users pay for a subscription. Bumble will be offering short term subscriptions as well as its own high-priced premium service in the coming months.

Image: Bumble

Bumble For Friends, the signature dating app’s standalone app that focuses on helping people find friends, has debuted new AI-based features.

The app announced one new feature dubbed “Plans” which helps users organize a meet-up in real life, and lets them invite up to 15 people. They can create public or private plans from the app, according to Tech Crunch, but the private plans require the planner to send invitations to specific members in their network.

The feature resembles the MeetUp app, where you can organize an event and invite members of your group to attend. Bumble offers options to grab coffee, eat out, do a workout together, “something outdoors” or a night out. Then you can make it public or private, and the last step is choosing the friends from your Bumble network to invite.