Marketing

Tinder who? Dating app Hinge has been on a slow climb uphill, but is gathering a lot of momentum as it goes. The app has broadened its reach beyond the initial major cities, which helped build not only its user base but also its brand as a serious competitor to Tinder.

This month, the app also made Time Magazine’s “Top 10 apps of 2014,” beating out the sensationally popular Kim Kardashian Hollywood despite the fact it made $100 million this year alone. (Tinder did not make the list.) Time took a dig at Tinder, noting: “Hinge sparked a flame in 2014 as it spread to more and more cities around the U.S…[Its] matchmaking connects to your Facebook account to foster friend-of-a-friend connections, a novel concept in a sea of dating apps that prioritize immediate, nearby and mostly anonymous relationships.”

Now Hinge is launching version 3.2, and due to audience demand is starting to change some of its policies, allowing for greater access to matches. Instead of providing potential matches once a day at noon, you can now view them at your convenience throughout the day. (I’m guessing this is to get people to log in more than once a day as opposed to creating a daily traffic jam.)

Hinge is also offering more matches per day. Unlike Tinder which provides an endless array of matches whenever you log in, Hinge is more particular, mostly because it has a more limited network to pull from – namely, your Facebook social circles. In order for Hinge to match you, you have to have a Facebook friend in common. (This probably encourages users to add more Facebook friends to their network, too.)

The app began in Washington D.C. and made its way to major cities including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Hinge has further expanded its territories in recent months – adding St. Paul and Minneapolis, Omaha, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Denver, Seattle, Houston and Austin.

According to a recent article in Wired, the company has experienced 500% growth since January. While it isn’t doing Tinder’s numbers in terms of downloads and number of matches per day, the company feels its more measured growth is a better indication of its potential for long-term success.

What is in store for Hinge in 2015? On December 11th, the company announced that it raised an additional $12 million, which will help its expansion into even more cities, including its first launch into international territory in February, when it debuts in London.

Hinge is definitely a dating app to follow. For more details on this dating app you can read our Hinge review.

Tinder only launched in 2012, but already new apps are trying to make its popular “hot-or-not” visually-based format a thing of the past. TrueView, a new location-based dating app wants its users to take dating a little more seriously.

TrueView is based out of London, and its founders advocate a switch from Tinder to improve not only your dating experience, but your odds of matching with someone at all. As many people as there are logging on to Tinder regularly, TrueView points out there are 998 million rejections daily.

The app works more like a social media platform than a traditional dating app. Similar to an app like Zoosk, TrueView logs a person’s actual behavior while using the app so users have a better, “truer” view of who they really are. Users are encouraged to share things they love to do (while they are doing it), discovering people who have similar interests. The app has a “stuff to do” section which lists events, clubs, restaurants, sports and concerts in your local city. The “news” section keeps you up to date on the things most important to you, and prompts more discussions.

The idea behind TrueView is that you can have a more organic conversation online first to see if you’re interested in someone before you meet him/her – as opposed to just swiping through photos.

True View was inspired by Andrew Ibbotson, one of the founders whose real-life online dating experience left him frustrated. He was tired of the hook-up scene and a lot of matches that led to nothing, spending more time and money for very little return. He wanted to create a better experience for himself, so he teamed up with friends Matt Verity and Damian Mitchell. They came up with the idea of a service that uses what they call "real-time micro-blogging" to make two people meeting feel more organic – and True View was born.

Tinder is still the app to beat, despite all the recent apps who are trying to outdo it, like TrueView. But it seems there is room for a new player, since even the celebrities who made it popular are now starting to turn against it. As actor Sam Smith said: "No offence to people who go on Tinder, but I just feel like it's ruining romance...why would I swipe people who are 'unattractive' when I could potentially fall in love with them?" 

TrueView is betting the people who become disillusioned with Tinder will look to the app for a new experience. While this may be true, it has hit some bumps along the way. According to a dozen reviews in the Google Play store, people are encountering some bugs with the technology, but they have had a few thousand installs so far.

TrueView is available on both iTunes and Google Play. Currently, the app isn’t available yet in the U.S.

Dating apps like Tinder have taken the dating world by storm – and some argue have rendered traditional online dating a thing of the past. While sites like Match.com and eHarmony offer matches based on preferences and compatibility, Tinder offers the ability to look at a photo and instantly decide whether or not you’re interested.

In a recent article in Business Insider, eHarmony’s Vice President of Brand Marketing Grant Langston looked at Tinder’s success as a boost to his business. For instance, he’s seen a surge of new subscriptions since Tinder launched in Australia – 2.5 million members, up from 2 million the same time last year.

“The press [Tinder is] receiving is bringing lots of people to the online dating world, including people that find Tinder isn’t the right choice for them,” Langston told Business Insider. “Globally, this trend has helped us tap into new markets and led to an increase in our membership numbers.”

But why are more people choosing eHarmony when Tinder seems to be taking off? For one thing, Langston argues that people who would have never joined an online dating site before find it a little easier to start when they use a dating app. It’s made online dating in general lose its stigma.

Langston also attributes the surge in subscriptions to the high quality matchmaking that is eHarmony’s business model, compared to Tinder’s superficial match-making process. With Tinder, choosing a match is entirely dependent on photos and a couple of sentences, which aren’t much better odds for finding love than meeting someone at a bar. There isn’t necessarily any kind of compatibility – aside from that initial physical attraction.

People who are matched on eHarmony however, are compatible in specific ways. Matches aren’t made via liking the same music or TV shows or someone’s photo, but based on similar dispositions and compatible personalities – which is a bit more complex and relational. Langston says that eHarmony’s matching creates a foundation for a relationship to start, where Tinder is more fleeting, intended for a hook-up. So when people are disappointed with the matches they are meeting through Tinder, they look to other more serious online dating options, which is when they gravitate to eHarmony.

Langston also noted that eHarmony’s growth in the past year has been due to young professionals ages 23-33 flocking to the site, looking for people who are more compatible whether or not they are looking to marry.

According to Langston, eHarmony owes much of its recent success to the fact that Tinder isn’t producing many serious relationships. Then again, it seems that despite the appeal of Tinder, people are looking for something deeper.

Just how crazy are single consumers for Tinder? And how much will they be willing to pay for the service?

The company is betting that certain features will be very valuable to Tinder users who have been requesting them since the service launched. So valuable that the company will be beta testing different price points in the UK, Germany and Brazil, with prices ranging from $.99 US to $4.99 to as high as $20.00 US for the premium version of the app, Tinder Plus.

Tinder Plus will roll out in these three markets first to determine how to proceed in other markets.

Sometimes, you want a little less judgment and a lot more acceptance when it comes to your rituals or habits – especially with the person you want to date. Dating websites like eHarmony might be great at matching people based on personality traits and long-term potential, but what if you like to relax in the evening with cocktails or some cannibas and are afraid your date just won’t get it?

This is where dating app My420Mate.com comes in. Instead of tiptoeing around the subject or hiding your habit, you can date other lovers of weed.

The new app – branding itself as a “lifestyle platform” - launched in spring, and the company is now working on its first major marketing campaign, which will include billboards in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Sacramento. My420Mate will also be debuting a new version in December.

Los Angeles marijuana entrepreneur Miguel Lozano teamed up with partner Jay Lindberg to launch the new app, noting a desire from users of traditional dating sites. Apparently in L.A., just as many daters were calling themselves “420-friendly” in their profiles as saying they liked long walks on the beach, according to local paper L.A. Weekly.

There are only 11,000 users to date, but there are also only a few states where it’s legal – including California, Colorado and Washington - and that’s where the app seems to be taking off.

Lozano is trying to steer clear of stereotyping users of his new app, although he does also see a marketing opportunity to group them together under their mutual appreciation of cannabis. “I was trying to change the stereotype of the average cannabis user," Lozano told L.A. Weekly. "Everyone uses the word stoner, but it's a lifestyle. There's a lot more to it than that. We have teachers, chefs, and computer techs who enjoy the benefits of marijuana."

Niche dating sites and apps aren’t new – many developers and companies have invested in sites that cater to a specific market – be it seniors, vegetarians, Republicans, or even cowboys/cowgirls. When people are looking for compatibility or even those who share a religious faith it’s easier to go to a specialty site than filtering people out from a large site like Tinder or OkCupid.

But will My420Mate take off as a dating app? It’s too soon to tell, and might be a little premature of its founders to bet on it being as popular as Tinder. Because of its illegal status in most states, people might want to avoid putting their profile on the site altogether.

At the end of 2012, dating site Hinge had recently launched and was overshadowed by the popularity of dating app Tinder. Unsure of how to proceed with less than $32,000 in the bank and only a few thousand users according to Business Insider, Hinge decided to bet big on the mobile platform.

"We made some business assumptions that turned out to be wrong," Hinge CEO and founder Justin McLeod told the news website. "We were like, 'This thing is running out of money, and we need to do something drastic."

In what seems to be a spur-of-the-moment business decision, McLeod and a couple of developers holed up for a few weeks and launched a mobile version of Hinge on February 7th of 2013. But the launch wasn't as smooth as expected - Apple at first rejected the app, which caused many sleepless night for McLeod and his company. They had planned a huge launch party in Washington DC where the app first launched, and until the morning of the launch party, there was no app available.

The launch party turned out to be a success, and more people signed up right after it than had signed up for the beta in all of 2012. It seemed Hinge struck a chord with users where Tinder left them feeling insecure - especially women. Hinge does not just match users based on location like Tinder does (which means a lot of random profiles get into the mix) - you only get matched through your circle of Facebook friends of friends, so everyone you meet on Hinge has some kind of link to your circle. This security has been particularly attractive to female dating app consumers.

McLeod is not about to sit still. He is grabbing a good portion of the dating app market share, and expects to compete heavily with Tinder for its core user base. But he's taking things one step at a time.

Instead of launching his app nationally, he has launched city by city, building up a solid user base based on demand before he moves into a new market. Also, potential Hinge users must be invited by current Hinge users - adding a level of exclusivity and security to the app.

Hinge is now one of New York's hottest startups. Although Tinder is much larger (it makes more matches per day than Hinge has in its entire history), McLeod's company is starting to steal some Tinder users. It has expanded to 20 cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. It uses a waitlist to assess demand in other cities, then launches when a few thousand people have signed up.

"There is no shortage of companies that have tried to build what we've built," McLeod says to Business Insider. "But we're using the organic, city-by-city method, which I think is the biggest thing ... We're a utility to help users meet great people in the flesh as effectively as possible ...We want to be a house party that has a really good host."