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Tinder announced the launch of its new feature Festival Mode, designed to bring singles together through their mutual love of live music.

The dating app company partnered with Live Nation, as well as event producers AEG Presents and Superstruct Entertainment to offer users who plan to attend festivals this year the opportunity to connect with other attendees over the app, so they can meet up. Participants can match with others as early as a month before the event, and the app will feature over 20 of the biggest festivals across the globe, including The Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Stagecoach and EDC Las Vegas, as well as Lollapalooza Paris, Falls Festival in Australia, Sonar in Spain and All Points East in the UK. 

The feature will also include a “Festival Goers” space for those who don’t see their event listed or simply want to be part of “festival culture,” according to Tinder’s press release. Festival Mode will be part of the Explore section of the app.

Seventy percent of American singles felt that dating got harder during the pandemic, according to the latest research from Pew.

In 2019, before the pandemic took hold, about two thirds of singles said that dating was hard, compared to the new Pew study which took place February 2022, where roughly seven in ten singles said it was hard. 

This finding comes on the heels of the most profitable couple of years for the dating app industry, as people locked down at home and turned to dating apps for connection. Subscriptions and revenue rose for many dating app companies, but daters seem to be left wanting more.

Match Group triumphed over federal regulators in a lawsuit that would have had them pay $844 million for failing to remove fake messages and profiles from its Match dating app.

According to Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade delivered the ruling and cited the Communications Decency Act, deeming Match a publisher, which means that since the company isn’t creating the profiles but instead just publishing them, they are ultimately protected from blame.  

In 2019, the FTC filed a lawsuit against Match for fraud, saying that it exposed customers to increased risk of being scammed and engaged in other deceptive and unfair practices, including tricking hundreds of thousands of consumers into buying subscriptions. According to Tech Crunch, the agency claimed Match knowingly profited from these practices, and it made deceiving users a core part of its business practices. It also said that 25 to 30 percent of registrations on Match came from scammers. 

Match Group and Visible are teaming up to offer a Singles Registry where users can sign up to receive and send gifts to the single people in their lives. 

The announcement comes as we head into wedding season, a time when singles are often buying gifts for others and not celebrating their own lives. Match Group and the Verizon-owned digital wireless carrier wanted to spread the love (and gifts) a little more, at least for a limited time. The registry will be live from April 4ththrough the 30th.

The website the partners set up is VisibleSinglesRegistry.com, and is open to everyone, not just Match Group app users. When you sign up you can build your own wish list from a curated menu of items, including “Mine” and “Also Mine” tea towels, single serve coffee machines, wine glasses and kitchenware, a “pamper yourself” spa kit, premium memberships to Tinder, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid, and even a foldable one-person kayak for those that like adventure.

A new Connecticut bill aiming to improve safety on dating apps just advanced from the judiciary committee to the Senate for a vote. If passed, it could set a precedent for the rest of the country.

The legislation would force online dating sites to verify the identity of users and provide that information if presented with a warrant, subpoena or court order, according to CT Insider. It would also establish new education and training programs to combat online abuse and designates “grooming” (befriending minors to abuse them) as a separate crime. The judiciary committee passed the bill at the end of March.

While there is large support for the bill from legislators and violence prevention advocates, there is some hesitation among lawmakers, including Republican state senator Craig Fishbein. He questioned how dating services would be able to verify someone’s identity or stop them from transferring an account to someone else. 

Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg

Image: Match Group

Gen Z makes up more than half of all Tinder users, and they are using the app differently than their older counterparts.

According to a recent interview with Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg published in Fortune, she said that over 50 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 25, and they are more comfortable keeping things virtual compared to millennials, who typically message each other and schedule a time to meet in person. In 2021 Tinder was 56% of Match Group's revenue which was nearly $3 billion USD.

Gen Z daters have a different approach, which Nyborg referred to as “slow dating.” She noted that Gen Z daters are much more intentional and looking for a connection: “You match with someone, you chat, you go on an Animal Crossing date, you chat some more, you exchange Spotify playlists, and then two months later, you might go on a date.”