Bumble Inc

August 2015 hasn't been kind to Tinder.

Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales wrote a feature called “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse”, in which she blames the app (and online dating in general) for swiping romance off the screen and disrupting the dating lives of modern twentysomethings.

Rather than quietly moving on, Tinder took a stand. Or, to put it more accurately, Tinder decided to go on an epic Twitter rant against Nancy Jo Sales. The Twitter tear ended up in everybody's headlines, putting the app under even greater scrutiny than the original article.

In the wake of the messy meltdown, many seem to be rethinking their approach to online dating. And interestingly, a Tinder co-founder may be behind one of the best alternatives.

Last year, Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe sued the company for sexual harassment and was pushed out of the business. Following the kerfuffle, Wolfe founded Bumble – a free, feminist dating app where women call the shots.

The familiar swipe feature is still in play, and both users receive a notification if a match is made, but only women are allowed to make the first move. So far, the app has been successful. The male-female ratio is about 50-50 and more than 500,000 users have joined. The average user spends more than an hour on Bumble per day.

This month, Bumble plans to launch a new feature to help users separate the frogs from the princes. Changes to the algorithm will measure how users behave on the app. Those with “good” behavior will be rewarded with a verified status dubbed “VIBee.” The hope is that VIBee status will act as a filter, much the way age might, helping users to weed out flakes, trolls, and anyone else with generally jerky tendencies.

Unlike some apps that screen for external markers of social status, like graduating from an Ivy League university, VIBee status is about how users conduct themselves. “Our pre-vetting is about how you behave in the app,” Wolfe told TIME. “If you didn’t graduate from Harvard you can still earn your way in.”

“We want to reward those users who have been good members of the community,” she continued. “It’s about rewarding, not excluding.”

Users who respond to messages and swipe judiciously are eligible to earn VIBee status. Those who always swipe right or never swipe right at all will be screened out, as well as anyone who has been reported for harassment. Users with VIBee status will be able to search only for other VIBee-status users.

Tinder is unlikely to disappear from the scene any time soon, but for those who are questioning the world it creates, Bumble could offer a brighter future. For more on the Tinder dating app, please read our review.

A recent article in The New York Times highlighted the increased popularity of dating apps, and how one in particular – Tinder – has changed the online dating game.

The proof is in the numbers. According to the most recent Pew study, 11% of American adults have used an online dating site or app. Back in 2005 when dating sites were becoming more popular, 44% of Americans felt this was a good way to meet people. But in 2013, thanks to dating apps like Tinder, 59% agree that online dating is a good way to meet.

Tinder claims it matches more than 12 million people per day, and processes more than a billion matches daily as well. This has sparked a surge of dating apps to flood the market, some of which have succeeded in growing a steady user base based on differentiating themselves from the so-called "hook-up app" (although utilizing the same Facebook profile-validation system). Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel limit the number of matches per day, forcing users to consider a match rather than mindlessly swiping left and right. The League markets its clientele – upscale and educated – to attract new users. And apps like LuLu and Bumble are female-centric, allowing the women to call the shots on which guys can message them – as well as how their dates rate according to other female daters.

The New York Times article suggests that Tinder's success might have caused some traditionally successful online dating sites such as Match.com to put more research and development into their mobile apps. But essentially, it was only a matter of time before smartphones – which are now used to access everything from email to Facebook to TV shows at any time, from anywhere – would be a good way to meet potential dates. After all, our phones are so much more accessible than our laptops. (Plus, Tinder’s game-like interface is much more fun, compared to slogging through endless questions and profile descriptions on an online dating site.)

Amarnath Thombre, president of Match.com in North America, says there has been a 35 percent increase in the people who use the Match app each month, and a 109 percent increase in the number of people who use only the app to log in to their Match account every month.

For now, daters seem to be choosing convenience over everything else – which might not be a bad idea. Dating apps help people get to the meetings and messages with their matches a lot more quickly than the algorithm process touted by traditional dating sites. But are daters wasting more time because filters aren’t in place?

One thing is for sure: dating apps are here to stay, until something more convenient comes along.

For those who have been following the trajectory of the phenomenal success of dating app Tinder, for the founders of the app, it wasn’t such a successful match.

Whitney Wolfe was one of the founders of Tinder along with Justin Mateen and Sean Rad, who were the face of the company  as it launched to great success. Then Wolfe and Mateen became romantically involved and when that ended, so did their professional relationship – through reports of abusive behavior and a lawsuit that ended in a $1 million settlement for Wolfe.

The young entrepreneur wants to put all that behind her however. In a recent interview with Business Insider Australia, she addressed the lawsuit, her critics, and the launch of her new dating app Bumble.

Wolfe claims she has moved on, but her history with Tinder is still a bit convoluted. According to Wolfe, she came up with the name and first shepherded the dating app herself by reaching out to students on college campuses, urging them to try it. However, Mateen and Rad have stated that Mateen was the one who brought Tinder to potential users, mainly through the fraternities and his contacts with large social networks at college campuses.

The fight between Mateen and Wolfe got nasty, with text messages back and forth that were exposed in the media. From an outsider’s perspective, neither one of them looked innocent, but in the end, it was a case of he said she said.

Wolfe took her experience at Tinder and decided to try her hand in launching her own female-friendly dating app called Bumble. Although it has the same user-friendly photo-based structure and ease of Tinder, Bumble encourages women to make the first move by giving them 24 hours to reach out to a match before he disappears. (The guys have to sit back and wait for the women to message them.)

Other female-friendly dating apps have come before Bumble with their own spin – like LuLu, which allows women to rate their dates and discuss them with other women on the app. There’s also JessMeetKen, which allows women to promote one of their single guy friends to other women on the site, in order to give them a little endorsement for potential dates. But Bumble is showing promise too, with Wolfe reaching out to college students and encouraging them to give it a try.

“We’re definitely not trying to be sexist, that’s not the goal,” Wolfe told Business Insider. “I know guys get sick of making the first move all the time. Why does a girl feel like she should sit and wait around? Why is there this standard that, as a woman, you can get your dream job but you can’t talk to a guy first? Let’s make dating feel more modern.”

According to Wolfe, 60% of matches on Bumble turn into conversations, and in a little over a month since the launch, there have been more than 100,000 downloads. 

This month, Tinder began rolling out its new premium service Tinder Plus in select European markets, and the feedback hasn’t been good.

The popular dating app surged to the top of the online dating market when it launched in 2012, attracting users who had never thought of signing up for an online dating site. Its easy-to-use format and free game-like service offered more entertainment than dating stress, and users flocked to check it out.

But in an effort to make money from this hugely successful endeavor, it was only a matter of time before Tinder’s owners developed a paid model for the app – opting for a premium service over adding distracting in-app advertisements. (Although the company has strategically lent its brand to marketing campaigns, like Gillette’s facial hair survey and Domino’s Pizza Valentine’s Day campaign.)

But Tinder Plus has not been greeted favorably, at least in its initial roll out – and the free service is suffering as a result. Although Tinder Plus is not set to launch in the U.S. until March, and prices are still to be determined, the company needs to find a new strategy - considering the backlash it has gotten in markets where the roll out has already taken place, such as the U.K. Tinder users who are not opting to pay for Tinder Plus and want to stick to the old free version of the app have been leaving bad reviews in the iTunes store (enough to drive the free service’s rating down to one and a half stars).

The problem has to do with new restrictions to the free service. Once a user has swiped a certain number of times, they are blocked for 24 hours from seeing any new profiles, unless they want to pay for the new Tinder Plus service. Since most users log in to Tinder multiple times a day to swipe through matches, this puts a serious hindrance on Tinder’s competitive advantage. Other dating apps that have restrictions on the number of profiles a user can see per day – like Hinge - have been easing up on their requirements, and seeing a surge of new downloads as a result.

With all the promising new free apps coming on the market, such as Bumble (started by an ex-Tinder employee), Tinder will need to think outside the box to keep its market share. After all, any online dating app or site’s currency is their user base. If Tinder loses theirs, then they stand to lose a lot more than the revenue from the premium service. Perhaps they should stick to advertising deals, or instead of taking away features from loyal users, offer more enticing new features.

Bye Felipe has become an Instagram sensation, with female daters posting their awkward, annoying, uncomfortable and sometimes even harassing message trail with other online daters, mainly men. It seems that in the wake of Tinder’s popularity, there have been a few casualties and women are looking for a more genuine tool to meet guys, sans the weird pick-up lines.

While there isn’t a dating app that can screen or prevent all creeps from making their way into your matching possibilities, at least some apps give women the power to decide what we will and will not tolerate.

Following are a few to watch for in 2015:

Bumble. While I’m not a fan of how this app came about – it’s the brainchild of Whitney Wolfe, one of the former Tinder executives who also filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against co-founder Justin Mateen. And since she walked away with a bit of money from a settlement, she has decided to launch her own dating app, where women decide who they want to meet (and have 24 hours to make that decision before the option disappears). According to its marketing, the app “promotes a safe and respectful community…Bumble suggests matches based on more relevant signals than other, more shallow apps.”

LuLu. This has been around for a couple of years, allowing women to rate their dates and share information about men with other female app users. While LuLu sounds like it has the potential to be a giant slam book, many women also use it to promote their guy friends who are looking for love – kind of an online voucher for a guy’s character. The Grade is another new app that has a similar kind of review system through – you guessed it – grading them. If you get an “F” guys? You’re off the site.

Siren. True to its name, Siren allows women to put a question out to men they choose on the site (or to all men in their area) to schedule a last-minute date. For instance, a woman could ask: “want to meet up for a jog?” - and then see who responds. She can also browse profiles in private without revealing herself.

JessMeetKen. This online dating site works through Facebook connections, and allows women to post a profile of their male friends who are looking for love, recommending them to other women. (Think of that guy you really like but just aren’t attracted to.) The guys all come recommended by a woman, so it’s less likely the men you’ll be meeting will be creepers, which makes it worth it even if you aren’t a match.

Happy dating!

Get out of the pajamas. Put down the Seamless delivery containers. Log out of Netflix. It's time to make a change around here.

If you've been avoiding online dating like the plague, no one would blame you. Sometimes it feels like online dating is a plague, except instead of the usual symptoms this plague comes with shirtless mirror selfies, terrible pickup lines, and unwanted dick pics.

Luckily, there's a new crop of dating apps designed to prevent exactly that. These apps hope to decrease the creep factor that's keeping many women away from mobile dating, by offering women more control over the process. Try out these five female-friendly dating apps in 2015: