Dating

Smitten, a new dating app designed for Gen Z daters, has raised $10 million in its latest round of Series A funding.

According to Venture Beat, investors of the app include Makers Fund, Possible Ventures, and Wonder Invest.

Smitten has gotten attention, thanks to a new study that found it had a post-match success rate of 60 percent, compared to Tinder’s 11 percent – a huge difference to online daters. It is currently the most popular dating app in Iceland and second most popular in Europe, so the new round of funding is in part to help the app expand into new territories and grow its user base.

Smitten has a new take on matching – in addition to sifting through profiles, it has added games to help young daters interact in more engaging ways. If you are interested in someone’s profile, you can start with a questionnaire game called Guessary, where you can guess how the other person answered a series of yes and no questions and get immediate feedback on whether they are correct. If you like how they answered, you can like and match with them and take it from there.

A new survey from dating app Hinge found that young Gen Z daters are no longer interested in hookup culture, thanks to the isolation they felt from the pandemic.

Forty-five percent of Gen Z daters surveyed felt that they had changed their dating habits for the better since the pandemic began - and are only interested in relationships that would be “additive” to their lives, according to a report from New York Post.

In addition, 39 percent of those surveyed said they were pickier about who they dated since the pandemic, and 91 percent of these respondents said this was because they didn’t want to waste time on the wrong person.

Bumble’s first original series to launch in India, Dating These Nights, was so popular it is back again with a third season.

The teaser for the series includes candid interviews with singles and celebrities about different topics of modern dating that don’t often get discussed openly. The series went live September 2nd on the company’s YouTube channel, and features filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, popular actor Mrunal Thakur, and star of the recently released film Darlings Vijay Varma, among others.

According to ANI Business Wire India, the first episode is entitled “Romances and Bromances” and features a conversation between Akhtar and actor Jim Sarbh to discuss what “healthy masculinity” looks like today.

Image: Amazon Studios

Cosmic Love, a new astrology-based dating reality series launched by Amazon Studios, has become a hit among young Gen Z daters. Instead of experts doing the matchmaking, the show leaves it to the contestants’ birth charts.

The premise is already popular – more than a third of Gen Z singles use astrology to decide who they date. Dating app Bumble announced it is rolling out astrology-based features for its platform based on its own user surveys.

According to website Her Campus, the new series was developed in part by celebrity astrologists the Astrotwins, also known as Tali & Ophira Edut, the official astrologers for Elle magazine and who co-founded an entire astrology-inspired brand called Astrostyle (which includes a series of astrology-based novels). They wanted to extend their brand to television, and despite being Gen Xers themselves, have drawn young Gen Z viewers.

The Right Stuff, a dating app for conservatives that is backed by Peter Thiel, will launch in September of this year.

The announcement came from the company’s social media platforms, with a video promotion starring Ryann McEnany, sister of former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, touting the app’s features. "The Right Stuff is all about getting into the right dating pool with people who share the same values and beliefs as you," she says in the video. She also notes that the app is “invite only,” aiming to model itself after exclusive dating apps like The League.

Thiel invested $1.5 million in the app, which Axios said is being created by a company run by former Trump political aide John McEntee. Former Trump White House advisor Daniel Huff is a co-founder of the app.

A new study found that dating app users experienced higher rates of depression and hypersexuality, or sex addiction. Researchers said it could point to those who already struggle with mental health issues using dating apps as a coping mechanism.

According to Psy Post, researcher and author Giacomo Ciocca, an assistant professor at Sapienza, University of Rome, explored these two mental health challenges as they relate to dating apps, to see if there was a correlation. “Much evidence shows that the formation of couple relationships is often related to the use of dating apps. Also, sexual behavior is mediated by the use of these technological tools. Therefore, psychological research is called to study this contemporary phenomenon,” he said in the paper.

The research team surveyed 1,000 Italians between ages 18 and 60 via an online questionnaire. Participants answered questions about “relationship status, sexual orientation, contraceptive use, and whether they were currently in a stable or casual sexual relationship,” according to Psy Post. They were also asked whether they used dating apps.