Dating Services

Hinge announced that it has launched a new feature called “Dating Intentions” to encourage users to be more honest and upfront about what kind of relationship they are looking for.

According to Tech Crunch, the feature allows users to select a dating goal from a drop-down menu, which will be displayed in their profile. Some options include “life partner,” “long-term,” “open to short-term,” “short term, open to long-term,” “short term,” and “figuring out my dating goals.”

Online daters have grown increasingly frustrated with forming relationships that go nowhere, or that are layered in ambiguity. Some find it difficult to ask their dates what they are looking for in a relationship in the early stages, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding and heartache down the line, after they’ve invested emotionally in the relationship. Hinge hopes the new feature will help alleviate that, or at least help spark a conversation before the first date so both parties know what to expect.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is suing Match Group for hindering its investigation into OkCupid. The dating app, owned by Match, shared a user’s photo with facial recognition company Clarifai.

According to Bloomberg and BiometricUpdate.com, the FTC found that Clarifai was using the image without the user’s consent or knowledge, violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The government agency also said that it filed the lawsuit because its investigation was being “stonewalled by Match Group.” OkCupid originally shared the image with the AI company back in 2014.

OkCupid user Jordan Stein, whose image was shared without her knowledge or consent, brought a lawsuit against Clarifai as a result, but in March of last year, a judge ruled that Clarifai could not be sued for violating Illinois’ law because it was out of its jurisdiction. 

The Lox Club has turned to TikTok for attracting new users and is seeing record new downloads of its app as a result. 

The dating app launched last year to big fanfare and a profile in The New York Times, but the real test came with keeping users engaged so they didn’t return to Tinder and other popular dating apps. Since launching its new TikTok marketing strategy, the company has seen 13,000 conversions (clicks turned to downloads of the app) in January and February, according to AdWeek. This is also five times the number of conversions in November and December of last year. 

There’s a crop of new dating apps looking for novel ways to attract Gen Z users who want more than a swiping experience, which means thinking outside traditional advertising options, like Facebook ads which don’t necessarily convert browsers to users. Younger daters also gravitate to creative content and TikTok in larger numbers, opting to be entertained, which has driven some engaging new features in the dating app industry. For example, Tinder launched an “Explore” section, which includes Festival Mode to help users meet up with each other at music festivals and an interactive series called “Swipe Night,” among other features.

In time for Pride Month, dating app OkCupid announced it has added compatibility questions for users to find matches who support the LGBTQ+ community.

The new questions focus on a range of topics, including what Pride means to a potential match and whether they advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and whether it is “OK to silently support the transgender movement.” Other questions include how they would want to have children (via surrogate, adoption, fostering and other options), and whether it’s important that their dates care about LGBTQ+ rights, according to PRWeek. 

In addition to the new questions, OkCupid will also show specific definitions for the 20 sexual orientation options and 22 gender identity options the app offers for users to add to their profiles, so that daters can be clear on exactly how they identify. In addition, users can choose up to five options so they are not boxed into only one. 

Bumble is focusing beyond its popular dating app and adding a new social networking feature to its BFF platform.

Bumble BFF uses the same swipe-based matching found on the dating app, but will expand options for users to include networking groups where they can connect and chat with each other based on topics of interest, according to Tech Crunch. Bumble had hinted that it was testing this new feature and it was “doing well,” according to its first quarter earnings call.

While Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd didn’t offer many details about the new feature on the call, she did describe it was a way to help “people to discover and get to know each other around shared joys and common struggles.” She also noted that over 40 percent of “active BFF users” were checking out the new feature and the various networking groups, sharing that its one-month retention was more than 75 percent, according to Tech Crunch.

BLK Profile Badges

Image: blk

BLK, a dating app for black singles, is rolling out an array of new profile stickers for users to highlight who they are and spark conversations with potential matches.

The company is offering a range of badges to help users identify themselves through more than just pictures, a feature many dating apps offer, but this one particularly unique to the black experience. BLK also wanted to add to the community building on its platform, which took off along with the racial justice movement in 2020 when users were sharing resources with each other over the app and engaging in conversations about their experiences.

The new badges are artistic and whimsical and include choices such as “Black biz owner” and “Community activist” to describe work, as well as “Caribbean Descent” and “Afro Latino” to identify cultural roots, and “Naturally Dope” to highlight allegiance to the natural hair movement. Other identifiers like “Poly” and “Transgender” are available to choose from too, according to Business Insider, for a total of 30 badges. The stickers were designed by Colombian-born and now New York-based artist Leonel Gonzalez.