Marketing

Pokemon Go took the world by storm when it launched this summer. The app has successfully gotten people up off their couches to explore new neighborhoods in order to play, so it’s only natural that its positive momentum to connect people can influence the online dating sphere, too.

And now thanks to Project Fixup, a US-based dating and matchmaking service, you can sign up with a new service dubbed PokeDates in order to find your “PokeMate.”

PokéDates aim is simple: it offers single Pokémon Go players a chance to meet up at a prearranged "PokéStop” or "PokéGym" before exploring their city for various Pokemons, adding a social – and potentially romantic – element to the hugely popular game.

Here’s how it works: Pokémon Go players answer a few questions about themselves and what they’re looking for in a potential date, plus whether they have any deal breakers. Next, players/ users add in dates and times when they’re available to play the augmented reality game with a potential date. Then the Pokédaters each get an email with all the details about when and where to meet their match. After that, it’s up to the players to see if there's chemistry.

Sounds great, right? You can play the highly addictive Pokemon game, which had crowds at Central Park last week searching together madly for a rare Pokemon, and potentially meet the love of your life while doing it.

There’s a catch, however.

The first date is free with Promo code POKEDATES2016, but after that, it costs $20 per date to play, which is kind of pricey by online dating standards. It’s currently available in the US and Canada, but only for players 25 and older.

Sarah Press, Project Fixup CEO cofounder, said in a statement: "Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm and it’s more fun to play with a companion. We hope PokéDates will bring singles together to experience the joy of the game and explore their city while getting to know one another."

Of course, you could just meet other Pokemon Go players while you are out playing, as long as you take some time to strike up a conversation. But where’s the fun in that?

According to Business Insider, PokéDates claimed to have over 2,200 new signups within eight hours of being live, with 10-15 new ones occurring every minute.

And according to US Weekly, Since Pokémon Go launched in early July, it has broken records as the fastest mobile game to hit 10 million downloads.

There has been speculation that Match Group’s star performer in the online dating space – dating app Tinder – would cannibalize its other online dating companies. But so far, contrary to analysts’ reports, this hasn’t happened.

Tinder is by far the dating app industry giant, with over 25 million active users and about 1 million paid subscribers in its tiered program. Some analysts have feared that because of Tinder’s rapid growth and free platform, it would mean users would leave other popular online dating sites in Match Group (like Match, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid) to join Tinder, making them obsolete.

What they found instead was that Match Group’s overall earnings were up in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to the POF acquisition and Match Group’s strategy to grow and invest in Tinder’s rivals.

Overall revenue came in at $285 million in its first quarter, $3 million over expected revenues.

Greg Blatt, chairman and CEO of Match Group, said in the first quarter earnings release: "Match Group posted very strong revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch explained that "even without Tinder, Match would have grown its core Dating subscribers by 6% (up from about 1% last quarter) and its Dating revenue by significantly more."

The POF acquisition is an important factor in the revenue numbers. The dating website grew tremendously itself over the years with 70 million registered users, and operated for many years on a shoestring budget with one employee, Markus Frind, who created the dating site and sold it to IAC (Match Group’s parent company) for $575 million in 2015.

Over time if Tinder’s popularity continues to grow, and the app itself makes improvements that resonate with its users, then there could be an impact to Match Group’s other businesses. For now, POF, Match, and OkCupid are still going strong.

One solution that has been floated in the media is for Tinder to advertise other Match Group properties on its app. (Tinder’s revenue comes mainly from paid advertising, rather than its tiered service.)

For the most part, online daters are not beholden to one site or app, preferring to join two or more at any given time. Because of Tinder’s growth, it has grown the entire online dating industry in just three short years, and made online dating a more acceptable practice. Numerous dating apps are launching every week, hoping to cash in on Tinder’s market share and success.

It seems to be a win-win for the online dating industry as a whole, even in a saturated market.

Tinder is looking to be more social – or at least hook you up along with your group of friends to connect with other friend groups out in the real world. The problem? Tinder users are being opted in to this feature by default, so you don't have a choice. Which means Tinder Social automatically displays which of your Facebook friends are also using Tinder.

This can make for some awkward conversation, especially for those who would rather keep their dating practices private.

To make matters more uncomfortable, Tinder Social presents a list of your friends along with their dating app profiles so you can not only see they are using the app, but how they are presenting themselves on Tinder. (Sexy photos, anyone?)

And worse yet, some Tinder users think Tinder Social is a way to meet others for group sex (and considering the whole hook-up reputation, it’s not that far of a stretch).

The new feature is only in the testing stages in certain parts of Australia, so chances are you haven’t encountered the feature just yet. This will give Tinder some time to refine it. The company will need to make some changes to reassure people about their privacy on the app. Over the years, it has stressed to users that their social networks would not be compromised, and that anything they do on the app wouldn’t be seen on Facebook or in their other social networks.

While there’s currently a way to opt out of the friend-finding feature, Tinder users are automatically opted in, so you actively have to disengage. A good fix would be to make it an opt-in feature only, so Tinder doesn’t risk alienating users who didn’t realize their profiles were being put on display among their social media friends.

Finding circles of friends seems to be a new wave in the dating app space, and an untapped market for an already attentive dating app population. CEO of Bumble Whitney Wolfe announced the company would be unveiling a similar group friend-finding feature on their app, and Grouper, a dating app that’s been around for a few years, offers group dates for people who don’t want the pressure of one-on-one dating. There’s also MeetUp, a networking site that has been around for a while to help people find friends in their communities through activities and other interests.

Many other apps are jumping on this new friend-finding bandwagon, hoping to capitalize on the social networking market. We’ll see if Tinder or another app can get people excited about the friend-finding potential of apps.

OkCupid has always been bold when it comes to analyzing data in interesting ways and making it easier for people to interact online. They were one of the first online dating sites to offer transgender identity options, and now they are aiming to provide a little more depth to the swiping madness we all crave from our online dating apps.

The company is launching “Quickmatch Flavors,” a cute name for an interesting new feature. While most people swipe quickly (in the span of less than a second), making decisions based on a single profile picture, OkCupid aims to provide users with a little more information so they won’t potentially miss out on someone great. After all, the faster we swipe, the more we miss.

The new feature is designed to counter this photo-based one-dimensionality, allowing users to also see a snapshot of someone's personality, too.

Look at it this way: you could like someone’s profile who looks hot, but maybe you’re a couch potato and she is unreasonably obsessed with the gym. Or maybe you’ve passed on a bookish nerd who’s actually great in bed. The OkCupid team wanted to bring more depth to swiping, so they examined user profiles to come up with different types – or “flavors” – of personalities. 

For a taste of the flavors, OkCupid listed some options they tested on their website, and provided a background of their methodology. Flavors are curated groups of people within Quickmatch that fall into a specific category, like liberals, indie music fans or outdoorsy types. But OkCupid found that the feature wasn’t so fun to use when the categories were so boring and simple. 

So instead, OkCupid (being the irreverent website that it is) has come up with some interesting twists for the categories to make it more fun. For instance, in the first round of flavors they included “tattooed cuddlers” and “mannerly metalheads.” Also for more lifestyle-based choices, “holy rollers” (with a smoking joint icon), “Hipster vegans” (again with an avocado smoking a joint), or even “Best in Show” which I can only assume means dog lovers.

OkCupid measured the results, noting which descriptions its users were most likely to choose. People seemed to respond best to descriptions that were more sexual and playful, so they came up with another round of categories, including “Night Owls,” “Bookworms,” “Thrill Seekers,” “Easy Goers,” “Early Birds,” and “Star Gazers.”

OkCupid said in a statement: "We executed this idea because we wanted to explore how to reinforce what makes people unique. Personality and opinions matter when it comes to connecting with people. If it didn’t, we’d all be plain old vanilla. And Flavors speaks to that.”

For more on this online dating service please read our review of OkCupid.

Tinder might be the dating app giant, but other dating apps are seeing success by catering to specific market needs that don't involve endless swiping.

Last month at Tech Crunch Disrupt, a panel of dating app CEOS gathered to discuss the industry, trends, and how things are changing – they think for the better. Specifically, the talk was given by three female CEOs about how women are changing the dating app game: Whitney Wolfe from Bumble, Dawoon Kang from Coffee Meets Bagel, and Robyn Exton of Her.

One thing to note: while these are all dating apps, they made sure to point out that their focuses and application are different. Bumble is a female-centric dating app similar to Tinder and free to use, although the company is looking for ways to monetize the app without resorting to all-paid memberships or advertising. Wolfe says that they have noticed an interesting trend among users: that they are looking for friendships, too. Right now, Bumble’s platform allows you to look for friends as well as dates, but soon they will be rolling out a feature that includes finding groups with similar interests.

Coffee Meets Bagel is an app that stresses quality over quantity, allowing only one match per day, and giving the users only twenty-four hours to accept a match. Kang is focused on the success of the matches, which she says only helps other people spread the word about the app. She is rolling out a paid feature that lets daters use an A/B test to see which photos they should put on their profile. Right now, users can also pay for a premium membership, which includes more matches and other incentives.

Her is aimed specifically toward female dating in the LGBTQ community. Exton points out that they have been lucky to be able to focus on one gender when studying patterns for dating and befriending people over the app. The app offers users a community – with news of local events, social networking, and dating applications.

All three CEOs agreed that a more nuanced approach to features is the key to an app’s success, designed to benefit a specific group of users, whether that is women, same-sex daters or people looking for friendship.

Despite the popularity of Tinder and our swipe-happy culture of dating, there is still room in the market for other players – even new apps. Most people (while they do still use Tinder) are looking to other apps to help fill a need that they feel Tinder isn’t serving. Whether daters have concerns about security, or are looking for an app that offers more than photos, or look to a niche market (like Farmer Dating) to satisfy their particular requests for mates, many more apps are launching and some are seeing success.

Competition, no matter how saturated the market, is always good for the consumer.

Since its debut, The League has earned a somewhat elitist reputation. True to its name, the dating app screens all of its applicants according to their career and education, making it a place for singles of a certain stature to find each other online.

Recently, the company launched a new version of its dating app in Los Angeles following a soft launch in New York and San Francisco, and is now focusing on events. Potential members are still required to apply before being able to use the app (the company claims more than 100,000 are on its waiting list). But once you’ve been approved as a member, you can join or create new events based on your interests.

TechCrunch interviewed CEO Amanda Bradford about the app’s new focus, and she emphasized its potential. “The overall goal,” Bradford told the news website, is to turn The League into a “members-only club,” with “a killer singles scene.”

Business Insider was a little more skeptical about the relaunch, calling it a “do or die moment” for the company, since they need to make some cash soon. According to Business Insider, The League spent most of the last year rebuilding its app from the ground up because it wouldn’t scale properly – hence the focus on events. The company needed to see if people were just curious about the app because of the media buzz, or if it was a viable platform where its members would truly engage. Although the app is still free, Bradford did say that the plan is to offer a freemium service and start charging a tiered membership fee, similar to a members-only club. “Ads aren’t feasible for us,” Bradford told the website.

The newest version of The League is meant to encourage friendships and networking among the site’s members, and not necessarily limit connections to dating. For instance, a female user can create a “women’s wine circle” or a running group. The focus is more on the activity, event or interest, and less on meeting potential dates, which makes these events more organic and fun compared to a singles party. The League has done its own events for members, but these are limited in comparison to members taking charge and creating events themselves.

So while the company says it’s not moving away from the dating space, it seems to be focusing more on the app’s potential to create connections – whether it’s friendships, business contacts, or potential dates.  The bigger question is how soon the app will be able to grow its membership, stickiness, and eventually its revenue stream.