Tinder

Sean Rad, Co-founder of Tinder

Former and current Tinder employees slapped a lawsuit against parent company Match Group, claiming the popular dating app was purposefully devalued at the time Match Group was valuating stock options. The Tinder employees suing Match Group were placed on administrative leave, according to a report by MSN.

The ten former and current Tinder employees initiating the lawsuit include founder and ex-CEO Sean Rad along with co-founders Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen. Tinder’s VP of Communications Rosette Pambakian has also joined the lawsuit, and claims that IAC/ Match Group executive Greg Blatt sexually harassed her at a company party. (IAC changed its name to Match Group, but the company is still owned by media mogul Barry Diller.)

Pambakian wrote an email to Tinder employees explaining her decision, as reported by Fortune Magazine:

Match Group, the parent company of popular dating apps such as Tinder, OkCupid, and PlentyofFish, reported second quarter earnings of $421 million, exceeding industry analyst expectations.

The rise in profits was thanks to its star app Tinder, which gained an additional 300,000 subscribers in Q2 alone, and has seen a record 3.8 million subscribers to date. Match Group expects to earn $1.72 billion this year, with Tinder expected to exceed $800 million in revenue, according to Fortune Magazine. Match Group’s subscribers for all apps total about 7.7 million.

“Retention and conversion were a bit stronger than we thought they would be,” Chief Executive Mandy Ginsberg told website MarketWatch.

Tinder has announced that users will be able to add Bitmoji when messaging matches.

The popular dating app is utilizing the personalized-avatar service Bitmoji to help users be a little more creative and expressive when they communicate and share with their matches. Previously, Tinder did not allow users to send any images in messages to other matches because of potential abuse and sensitive content (a.k.a. “dick pics”). Users had to rely on curated photos (up to nine total per profile) to express their personalities and preferences, which many people felt was insufficient for something as personal as online dating.

Adding Bitmoji cartoons and caricatures allows users to be creative and express themselves to matches without worrying about the potential problems of sharing photos.

Tinder swiping sessions are more secure than ever and there’s an unlikely hero to thank: 69-year-old U.S. Senator Rob Wyden.

Wyden made news earlier this year when he released a letter demanding that Tinder resolve security issues exposed by a report from Checkmarx, a Tel Aviv-based security firm. Months later, Tinder has responded with good news for both singles and the senator, revealing recent changes to the app’s handling of images and swipe data that make it harder for sensitive information to fall into criminal hands.

Checkmarx noted two “disturbing vulnerabilities” in its original report, dated January 23, 2018:

Dating app Tinder announced the rollout of a new feature called Tinder Loops, which allows users to create looping GIFs for their profiles.

Tinder users can upload short videos (two seconds in length) to their profiles so they can “show more personality” than with photos alone, according to Tinder. When the company tested the feature earlier this year in Japan, Tech Crunch noted that people who added the Loops feature to their profiles were 10% more likely to receive a right swipe.

The feature also seems to increase the likelihood that people will communicate over the app. Tech Crunch also reported that users testing the feature saw their average conversation length increase by 20%.

Whether or not the teams score, the fans certainly will. Around two million of them have flocked to Moscow to see soccer’s brightest stars do battle during the 2018 World Cup, causing a massive surge of traffic for Tinder in the Russian capital.

The phenomenon is a familiar one. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Tinder reported a 50% spike in usage in the country over the course of the tournament. During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Tinder founder Sean Rad told the Wall Street Journal the app experienced a 400% day-on-day increase in new users. And during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Tinder noted a 1,850% hike in users taking advantage of the Passport feature to change their location to South Korea.