Types (Niche)

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Tinder…

It’s officially been four years since Tinder first appeared in app stores (this past October). Today it boasts over 40 million users worldwide and more than a billion daily swipes. It’s used in 196 countries, has been downloaded 100 million times, has made 10 billion total matches, and has launched 1.5 million dates. Tinder is now worth a reported $1.2 billion. It’s the app everyone loves and loves to hate.

In honor of the big birthday, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and remember how Tinder became mobile dating’s flashiest success story.

Do you have what it takes to join The Inner Circle? The super-selective, Amsterdam-based dating platform has officially entered the US market with a launch in New York City.

The Inner Circle’s premise is not unlike The League, another elite dating service that vets potential members before allowing them to join. Both apps aim to create exclusive communities of “high-quality” users - singles who are smart, attractive, ambitious, and career-focused. To do so, new users must apply to join and all applicants are carefully screened before being granted access.

Since Tinder launched in 2012, new users have been given two options to describe themselves: male or female. For much of the population, the decision was easy. But for a significant portion, those two words posed a problem.

Transgender and gender non-conforming Tinder users had no way to accurately identify, and many experienced harassment as a result. When news of their troubling experiences reached company CEO Sean Rad, he decided the app was in need of an update.

New Tinder users are now presented with three options: 'male,' 'female,' and 'more.' Selecting 'more' reveals dozens of new terms members can use to describe their identity. The company partnered with media advocacy organization GLAAD to develop a list of nearly 40 auto-fill suggestions. Users can also type in their own perferred terms.

A hack against popular adult dating and entertainment company FriendFinder Networks has exposed personal data linked to more than 412 million user accounts. The breach is one of the largest in history, and marks the second such incident at the company in two years.

Nearly 340 million accounts from the company’s flagship site, Adult FriendFinder, were compromised according to a report from LeakedSource. The hack also targeted other sites owned by FriendFinder Network, including Cams.com, and records from Penthouse.com, which was sold in February.

The Adult FriendFinder data stretched back 20 years. Information such as usernames, emails, and join dates was stolen, along with account passwords (the majority of which featured unsecured protections or none at all) and membership data like VIP status and browser information. The cache also appears to include 15 million email addresses from deleted accounts.

Though the US Presidential Election is over, the nation remains deeply divided along party lines. Many Americans have made jokes about moving to Canada in the past, but this week, the Canadian immigration website’s server broke down because of all the traffic from unhappy American voters.

Enter Maple Match, a dating app which matches Americans and Canadians for potential romance. The company took an opportunity to make lemonade out of political lemons.

Maple Match was beta testing its service earlier this year, and this month seized the opportunity to launch its new app to help Americans feeling less than happy with their country’s choices. The app's tagline is “make dating great again,” similar to the slogan for President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.

Maple Match’s technology is straightforward. It offers the same photo-based profile that Tinder does, but there is no swiping. You indicate your citizenship and your desired citizenship, and then you can look through potential matches and start messaging whomever you like.

Some of October’s biggest dating news came courtesy of Hinge. The dating service announced a total overhaul, complete with a rebrand, an updated app, and a new advertising campaign. Two changes in particular made big news: Hinge was ditching the swipe and adding a $7 monthly fee.

The move was inspired by a Vanity Fair article called Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’. In the article, writer Nancy Jo Sales criticized the current state of the dating landscape, painting it as superficial and sex-crazed, and placing the blame on dating apps like Tinder and Hinge.

Justin McLeod, Hinge’s founder and CEO, was dismayed by the portrayal and resolved to take action. He announced that big changes were coming to Hinge in the fall, ones that realigned the company with its original, relationship-focused intentions. Then came the news about the swipes and the membership fee.