Types (Niche)

Match Group, the parent company of popular dating app Tinder, has launched a new app called Crown which offers a game-like format for online dating.

It works like this: every day at noon, users are presented with sixteen total profiles, shown two at a time, and must choose only one “winner” from each group of two. Users go through a process of elimination, until you end up with the final four matches, at which point you choose one final winner to be “crowned.” That winner is then alerted he/she has won, but that doesn’t mean you start chatting right away - it’s up to the winner to choose whether or not he/she wants to message you.

The game element is an interesting choice by Match Group. By turning it into a process where there is a possibility to “win,” the idea is that more users would feel invested in the process, and therefore be more likely to reach out. On the other hand, some argue, users might feel more acute rejection if their “winners” choose not to interact.

This week, Match Group announced it has acquired dating app Hinge. According to the press release, the deal gives Match Group a 51 percent stake in the company. Match first started buying shares in Sept of 2017 and has the option to buy remaining shares of Hinge within the next year.

Hinge has spent the last few years revamping its image and features, creating an app that countered Tinder’s hook-up reputation, and aimed to create a space for more serious daters. This included dumping its initial Tinder-like swiping feature and allowing clients to build profiles more like traditional online dating sites. Interestingly, Match Group (which owns Tinder) initially invested in Hinge in the fall of 2017, soon after it debuted its new design.

Hinge is most popular among “urban, educated millennial women looking for relationships,” according to Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg. It has also grown its user base to “five times what it was a year ago,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, making it an attractive purchase for Match Group.

Singles in Europe and New Zealand just got a leg up in the romance game. Jdate, ChristianMingle, and Bumble - three of the biggest names in online dating - recently announced plans to expand their services abroad.

Spark Networks, parent company of Jdate and ChristianMingle, recently extended their services, languages, and local market support throughout Europe. Jdate is now available in German and Spanish, as well as English, Hebrew, and French. ChristianMingle is now available in French, Spanish, and German in addition to English. Both platforms will roll out Polish and Russian language support in the next few months.

Spark Networks attributes the expansions to user demand and says they are part of a broader initiative to further enable the global Jewish and Christian communities to try connect, communicate and find partners in their native language.

Dating app Her (orginally called Dattch), designed exclusively by and for queer women, is expanding its focus to bring women together in conversation as well as for dating. Its new Community feature provides a forum for users to get updates on news and exchange ideas, expanding the app’s purpose beyond forging romantic ties.

Launched in time for Pride month in June, Her’s new feature allows for users to connect with each other around certain topics of interest to the community. In other words, a place to gather around the watercooler, but online. According to website TechCrunch, the first set of community groups includes a space for queer women of color, one centered around mindfulness and wellbeing and another for news and entertainment. App creators plan to launch more groups in the future, including pop-up forums around specific events, or even user-generated communities.

Users would be able to follow a person’s feed or post messages to a community board.

Image: Recode

Last month, Facebook announced that it will be launching a new online dating feature, and since then details have come out about what it will look like. According to website Recode, an interesting benefit to users is that the new dating service won’t include ads.

Specifically, Facebook stated that it won’t be running ads alongside dating profiles, and they won’t use personal data associated with users’ dating profiles to send targeted ads to these users.

According to Recode, Facebook will provide users with a separate dating profile page, distinct from a personal Facebook page. It will match users according to location and interests, typical for most dating apps. (With Facebook, the more groups you “unlock,” the more matches you can potentially meet.) Facebook will also provide a separate messaging service specifically for dating, so you won’t have to message matches over your personal account. The dating messaging feature will be text only – no videos or images can be shared. (This seems intended to make it a more female-friendly experience, since women often get unsolicited photos and videos over online dating apps.)

Forget Ziggy Stardust. The award for ‘Most Exciting Rise And Fall’ this week goes to SeekingArrangement, the notorious sugar daddy dating website founded by Brandon Wade in 2006.

The US-based service suddenly soared to the top of the popularity charts in China’s iOS App Store, moving up 765 places on May 22 to take the number one spot for free social networking apps. Though SeekingArrangement has been in China since 2015, this marked the first time it topped the App Store rankings in the country. By comparison, according to Quartz, it ranks only 63rd on the same chart in the United States.

It is unclear what caused SeekingArrangement’s unexpected ascent to the throne. The company connects users -- usually an older, wealthier man and a young, attractive woman -- for what it politely calls “mutually beneficial relationships” or “compensated dating”. Considering the notoriously conservative culture in China, as well as the government’s recent crackdown on violent and sexually suggestive content on dating sites, the app’s download boom is all the more mystifying.