Tinder

Tinder isn’t shying away from its reputation as a hookup app - in fact, it’s leaning in.

Last year, the company launched an unapologetic ad campaign celebrating single culture with taglines including ‘Single Does What Single Wants,’ ‘Single Never Has To Go Home Early,’ and ‘Single Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.’ For Valentine’s Day 2019, the company collaborated with Homesick Candles to release a candle named “Single, Not Sorry” for Singles’ Awareness Day. Now, with college students across America eagerly awaiting their next vacation, Tinder has announced a ‘Spring Break’ mode.

Online dating is a fast-growing trend thanks to apps like Tinder. But does our ease with swiping, messaging, and moving on have further implications in our culture, including changing the way we interact with one another?

According to website Mashable, studies on dating app behavior point to a distressing trend. On the one hand, online dating has helped to bridge people from different social circles who used to rely on friends and work colleagues to introduce them to future love interests. Now, we can login to a dating app and start swiping.

However, it’s become so easy to swipe that dating apps have become a game more than a way to connect. You see how many people you can match with by endlessly swiping right. You meet someone for drinks to see if they look as hot in person, but if you’re not blown away with chemistry, you can easily move on. There’s no effort needed, and this is becoming a problem for people who are looking for more serious relationships.

Bumble Spotlight

So you want to be the center of attention? Bumble has announced a new feature called Spotlight that will do just that. When activated, Spotlight will bump your profile to the front of the line for 30 minutes, allowing you to be seen by more Bumble users than you would during a regular swiping session.

Spotlight will be available to all users who are willing to cough up two Bumble Coins (acquired through a separate in-app purchase) for the perk. One coin currently goes for $0.99 in the US or £1.99 in the UK. If you prefer to keep your promotional activities under wraps, have no fear that your Spotlight secret will be exposed. Your profile will not look any different to those browsing. On your own screen, stars will appear across the top of the app to indicate Spotlight has been enabled.

If you think the Spotlight feature sounds familiar, you are far from alone. It bears an obvious resemblance to Tinder’s Boost, which also promotes your profile in your area for 30 minutes. An icon appears next to new matches made during a Boost period, but other users see no indication you used the feature. Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold subscribers get one free Boost per month. Other users may purchase Boosts at any time.

The 2018 Winter Olympics brought a flurry of Tinder activity to South Korea. Competitors in the Olympic Villages received free Tinder Gold upgrades, while premium users around the world used the Passport feature to change their location to PyeongChang in hopes of matching with an athlete. Tinder reported a 1,850 percent increase in “passporting” swipers and a 348 percent increase in overall Tinder usage in the Olympic Villages.

Outside of the Olympic Games, it’s a different story for Tinder. The dating platform has struggled to outdo local services in South Korea, where meeting a romantic partner via a mobile app is not yet as socially acceptable as it has become in many western nations. Despite these difficulties, Tinder CEO Elie Seidman believes South Korea is a crucial testing ground for the service, and in a press conference in Seoul, Seidman indicated the company would take a different tack as it looks to expand in Asia.

Match Group announced that it has fully acquired dating app Hinge, owning 100 percent of the company along with other high-profile brands like Tinder and OkCupid. This news comes on the heels of Match Group’s announcement that it exceeded revenue expectations in the last quarter of 2018, causing its stock to rise.

Previously, Match Group stock had been downgraded from hold to buy by Deutsch Bank analysts. But with the earnings report, its stock climbed more than 5 percent.

Part of the appeal of Match Group to investors is that it has acquired a host of popular dating apps, including Hinge. The app has been through a rebrand over the last year, focusing on attracting more serious daters.

Recipient of Gold
Tinder

Recipient of Silver
POF

Recipient of Bronze
OkCupid

The 2019 Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award poll was launched in the afternoon of October 1^st, 2018. It ran for 3 months and then closed for voting on December 31^st, 2018. 437 people cast their votes in the poll. The poll asks the following question:

Which dating app or site would you recommend for the Dating Sites Reviews Single's Choice Award?

Voters could choose 1 dating service from a selection of 10 of the top dating services in 2018 as selected by the Editors. For this award the top voted dating service for the above question receives the Gold, second place gets Silver, and for third, Bronze.

In previous years for this award we had split the poll into 2 questions asking which free and then which paid dating service the voter would recommend. This year we decided on one question which the selection includes both free and paid services. We feel this better reflects the current online dating industry. This year also marked a fairly big change in the results. The top 3 results differed by only 5% in votes. The Gold recipient only differed by less than 10% with the service which came in last place (10^th). In previous polls the difference is around 30%. The race for the most recommended dating service was very tight this year.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Gold Award is Tinder. Tinder received almost 17% of the vote which works out to 73 votes. Last year Tinder came in second of the free services, so this is a step up for them.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Silver Award is POF (Plenty of Fish). Another free dating service in the top 3. POF drops to second place this year with almost 13% of the vote (56 votes). This is just 4% less than the Gold recipient.

The recipient of the 2019 Single's Choice Bronze Award is OkCupid. It was a tight race between Silver and Bronze this year with only a 1.5% difference in votes. OkCupid got 11.5% of the votes which works out to 50 votes exactly.