Matching

In time for National Coming Out Day on October 11th and Spirit Day on October 17, a new report was released by GLAAD in partnership with eHarmony that explores the way dating apps intersect with how the LGBTQ+ community shares their identities and sexual preferences.

The report details how non-binary, trans and LGB+ daters express (or don’t express) themselves and their preferences over dating apps, and their differences in experiences on these platforms.

Overall, Gen Z daters have been much more likely than previous generations to come out on a dating app. Sixty-six percent of Gen Z daters came out before they were 18 years old, and 93 percent came out by age 22, compared to only 40 percent and 76 percent of Millennials, respectively.

Gay dating app Grindr has been hinting at its development of an AI wingman, but now the company is officially testing an initial model, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ interview with CEO George Arison included more details on the AI wingman, which will keep track of a user’s matches and make conversational suggestions based on messages they have had with other users. The AI bot will even recommend matches with long-term relationship potential and suggest places where they could meet.

According to Arison, down the line, the AI wingmen of Grindr users will be able to chat with each other so they can offer a “robust view” of a match before the user decides to meet in person. “Bot-to-bot conversation not only saves the humans time, it might also spot dating deal-breakers early on,” he told WSJ.

Image: OkCupid

OkCupid has added a range of new politically-focused questions to its platform along with politically-themed badges ahead of the 2024 US election.

According to CNN, the new questions focus on voter behavior and help users choose more compatible profiles. Some questions include: “Are you voting in the 2024 presidential election?” and “What’s the most important issue to you in the 2024 presidential election?”

Other questions refer to whether singles are willing to bridge the political divide, such as: “Is it a dealbreaker if your date is voting for a different candidate than you in the 2024 presidential election?”

Dating apps may be inadvertently helping contribute to greater income inequality, according to a new economic study.

According to The Independent, researchers at the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis and Dallas and Haverford College found that at least half of the rise in income inequality between 1980 and 2020 can be attributed to changing preferences and the rise of online dating. Because of how easy it is to filter based on preferences, people are more likely now to marry someone in the same socioeconomic bracket than they were before.

According to The Independent, researchers specifically tracked education, race, income, skill level and age of recently married people between 2008 and 2021, as dating apps became more popular. The findings suggest that people are marrying someone more like themselves than they were likely to in earlier years, which the researchers have tied to half of the increase in household income inequality during the same period. When higher-earning people couple up and lower earners do as well, it grows the disparity.

New gay dating apps like Scruff and Archer are positioning themselves to capture a bigger portion of the LGBTQ+ online dating market as Grindr complaints and technical issues rise.

Grindr has long been the most popular dating app for gay daters, but recently people have posted complaints on social media and online forums, saying that they are experiencing technical issues, not getting access to the features they paid for, and other problems, according to Mashable.

This year, Grindr has experienced significant bugs and periods of downed service. At the same time, it has asked its users to pay more to access certain popular features, including limiting both “taps” and “explore” features and requiring them to buy subscriptions.

Dating app After just launched in Austin, Texas, and is aimed at ending the pervasive problem of ghosting on dating apps.

According to Tech Crunch, when someone “unmatches” a person on After, they are required to let the app know why before they can keep swiping. It can be for any number of reasons – from distance issues to just a general vibe of non-interest, and the app will send a kind message to the other user in return. The idea is to give the person who was ghosted some closure with a reason why the other person is no longer interested, while also reminding them this one match experience isn’t an indication of who they are or what they are worth.

For two people who matched on the app and neglect to message each other, the app will end the match. If one person doesn’t respond to a match’s message, the app will nudge them to send a message. If they still don’t reply to a conversation, the app unmatches them and the user who didn’t respond can’t use the platform until they provide a reason for letting the match expire.