General News

Tinder appears to be losing its steady growth of not only paid subscribers, but also new app installs. Bernard Kim is heading the dating app as well as its parent company Match Group and has installed a new executive team he hopes will turn the ship around.

According to Bloomberg, Tinder hit a high of almost 80 million users in 2020, in part due to a global pandemic and more people turning to dating apps while they were in lockdown. Since, the app has declined to 75.7 million users in 2021 and just last year fell to 71.1 million users.

At the same time, new users for Hinge and Bumble have increased. For Bumble, new installs of its signature app have jumped over 60 percent, from 18.1 million in 2020 to 29 million in 2022. And Hinge is showing strong growth as well, with 11.1 million new users in 2022 compared to 8.4 million in 2020.

Image: Tinder

Romance scams have risen sharply in the last two years, so dating company Match Group is launching an awareness campaign across many of its apps to address the issue.

The company announced that its campaign will introduce in-app messages and email notifications, offering users tips on how to protect themselves from online scammers according to Tech Crunch. Tinder and Meetic will offer the tips via in-app messages, outlining behavior that could be red flags. When users come across someone that might be a scammer, the app will offer suggestions like making sure their profile photo is verified or video chatting with them before making plans to meet in person.

Match, Hinge and Plenty of Fish will send message notifications with the same tips but will send emails to users as well.

Following a devastating study by Brigham Young University which found that hundreds of instances of rape in Utah could be linked to dating apps, the state’s lawmakers are introducing legislation to help curb the problem.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, under the proposed legislation, online dating platforms would be required to provide a list of safety measures as well as instructions for how users can report assaults. These companies will also be expected to notify members if background checks are conducted and if a user they’ve messaged has been banned from the app.

The legislation had been proposed before, but now is being reintroduced this legislative session by state Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, according to The Tribune.

Chemistry Forever aims to “disrupt” the dating app market in India by offering AI Face Verification to curb the proliferation of fake profiles.

The new app is coming out strong in terms of security, which has plagued the dating app industry for years. According to The Hindustan Times, the app has had over 10,000 downloads in its first two months (it had a soft launch in September of last year). So far most of the profiles on the app are verified, though users have the choice to opt-in for Face Verification. 

According to the company’s website, the registration process is simple. After downloading the app, it asks the user to upload a recent profile photo (to be verified later in the process), and offers users “stars” for each completed step of the process to make their profiles more appealing and complete.

Image: Vox Media

Vox Media’s award-winning podcast series Land of the Giants, which is about the biggest tech companies and their impact on our culture, will focus on dating apps for its second season.

Hosted by Lakshmi Rengarajan, who spent several years at Match Group, and The Cut’s Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, the two explore the industry as a whole and the experience of dating app users. The series delves into how dating apps have changed how we approach dating, and how the dating app industry designs apps to keep people coming back.

The series was inspired by New York Magazine’s special issue evaluating the last ten years of dating apps, according to The Cut. After surveying thousands of daters about their experiences with popular dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble, New York Magazine found that people felt caught in a cycle where they enjoyed the swiping experience for a few weeks, but then when nothing much changed, they deleted their dating apps - only to return to them again.

Hinge Wrapped Homepage

A new TikTok-inspired website can help singles to examine their dating life over the past year to help them have a better experience in 2023.

Hinge Wrapped was inspired by the TikTok viral videos dubbed Dating Wrapped that had users posting their best and worst dating experiences in 2022.

According to HITC.com, a TikTok user posted a video where he showed a dating recap of his time on Hinge, captioning it “Hinge is unhinged.” He shows himself to be a “night owl swiper” and goes over the number of likes he sent and his most-liked photo. He said he’s been to seven different places trying to find love.

Thanks to this viral video, Hinge Unwrapped was born, though the actual website was created by Canadian software engineer Niko Draca (not the company Hinge). He said that he created the website to help daters reflect on the highlights of their experiences on the app, and so far, people are flocking to use it.