Grindr

Grindr CEO George Arison is hoping to turn things around for the popular gay dating app after a tumultuous year with employees, investors and app users alike. He is focusing on moving Grindr beyond a hookup app, and in streamlining costs.

According to a feature in The Financial Times, an “a la carte” payment option for travel services will be added to boost the company’s revenue. Arison noted that travelling to events such as Aspen Gay Ski Week and New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro is hugely popular among Grindr users, and the company sees advantages to offering those attending a way to connect.

Grindr is currently testing a feature called Teleport, which lets users place their profile in a new location for an hour to connect with others before traveling to that place. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport, where users can mark their location at a place where they are traveling.

Some dating app users are becoming creative in their frustration with matches they are served and have started using hacks to trip up the algorithms behind the matching.

According to a recent feature in The New York Times, these hacks are aimed at besting the algorithm so that users can try and access different results. The tricky part is, the dating apps are putting more and more features behind a paywall, so it’s getting more convoluted to try and get around the algorithm.

But some dating app hackers are finding success and posting their methods on TikTok and Reddit. For example, some users recommend deactivating and then reactivating your account to get a fresh set of matches, according to The New York Times. Some have also suggested rejecting a bunch of attractive profiles to throw off the matching process, or to switch your location to a different city, which is like pressing “refresh” on your matches.

Dating app Grindr has announced a strategic partnership with Ex-human to add an AI assistant to its platform.

According to Decrypt, Ex-human is a bit different from the familiar AI tools we’ve seen, which focus on answering fact-based questions. Instead, Ex-human is designed to engage in “emotionally resonant and meaningful conversations” according to Decrypt.

In fact, the AI model offers virtual companions like imaginary geishas and popular figures like Elon Musk. The companions are designed to show expressions and reactions to different prompts, so the user feels more engaged with the bot.

Grindr has become the most popular dating app in the U.K. among singles aged 54 and older, according to a recent study from Ofcom, the country’s communications regulator.

According to The Pink News, Tinder was still the most-downloaded dating app in the UK, with 2.5 million users, followed by Bumble at 1.7 million U.K. users. Grindr has grown in 2023, but it still captures only about 1.9 percent of the U.K. adult population, or 924,000 users. But as far as time spent on the apps per user, Grindr wins hands-down.

In fact, the average user of the gay dating app spent seven hours on it in May of 2023, according to Ofcom, compared to only one hour on Tinder, and a bit more than two hours for each Bumble and Hinge.

Grindr employees got approval from the National Labor Relations Board for holding an election to form a union. The ballots will become available November 22nd, and voting will end on December 13th.

According to Bloomberg Law, the government agency ruled in November that a group of about 100 employees can vote on whether they want to be represented by the Communications Workers of America, which guided the employees through its first round of voting earlier this year.

NLRB Regional Director Mori Rubi made the decision to allow Grindr employees to move forward with unionizing. According to Bloomberg, she countered arguments by the company’s management team that product managers should be considered supervisors and therefore be unable to unionize under the current labor laws. Instead, she argued that product managers don’t hold enough power in directing other employees, according to the report.

Blued, China’s most popular gay dating app, plans to expand in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. while the Chinese government clamps down on LGBTQIA content.

According to Rest of World, Blued’s new parent company New Town wants to make the platform “the world’s largest social network for the LGBTQIA community,” and part of its strategy is to encourage user participation and community interaction, especially outside of China.

New Town’s CEO Li Ping sees enormous potential in the LGBTQIA market, and intends to grow the platform by targeting markets in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and North America. “The growth of the LGBTQ population in Southeast Asia and North America is particularly evident,” a spokesperson told Rest of World.