Tinder

Match Group LLC stock got a boost in early October, thanks to the success of Tinder Gold. The new premium app was among the top apps in the Apple Store, not just among dating apps, but alongside Netflix and Pandora. Match shares were up 3.6% Wednesday October 11, and the stock has jumped more than 50% since the start of the year.

But one question on investors’ minds is: what should we expect from Match Group’s other dating apps?

Match Group owns four of the five most popular dating sites, including Match, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and Tinder, along with several niche dating sites. The problem for investors despite the good news is that these older sites have gotten less attention in Match Group’s overall valuation, because they aren’t generating the users or attention that Tinder does on an ongoing basis, despite their longevity in the online dating market.

Following in the footsteps of Facebook and iMessage, Tinder has introduced a collection of custom animated responses called Reactions. The emoji-like animations include hearts, an eye roll, a round of applause, and what’s surely doomed to become omnipresent and overused: a martini being tossed (presumably in someone’s face).

Tinder introduced Giphy support and bigger emojis in January of last year. Reactions further cement Tinder’s reputation as a more casual place to date, and though they may seem to be yet another excuse for singles to put minimal effort into conversations, they were actually designed to serve a higher purpose.

“In a perfect world, everyone would always treat each other with respect—whether it's from behind a phone screen or IRL. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world and most women have encountered douchey behavior at some point,” says Tinder’s Reactions announcement. “So the women of Tinder are on a mission to make calling it out, when it happens on Tinder, easy and fun while letting the nice guys know they aren’t finishing last.”

Tinder Online now Available!

Some would argue that Tinder is the app that started it all. Though it wasn’t the first dating or social networking application to launch, it’s the one that rocketed mobile matchmaking into the public consciousness and made the swipe an iconic part of pop culture. News outlets called it “the next Facebook.”

In the years following its 2012 launch, Tinder has spread to 190 countries, grown to 1.6 billion swipes per day, inspired 1.5 billion dates per week, and racked up more than 20 billion total matches. Yet in all that time, despite all those impressive decimal places, there was one thing it never did: go online.

Tinder remained a mobile-only service until March 2017, when it made an announcement many had been waiting for. Tinder Online had arrived, allowing users to swipe from any browser, on any device, anywhere in the world - whether or not they had 4G or enough memory free on their smartphones.

Well, not quite anywhere.

A woman from Canberra, Australia has been suspended by dating app Tinder for asking too many matches whether or not they registered to vote, so they could receive a ballot to vote on marriage equality.

She originally started asking friends and followers to register to vote over social media, and after many of them did, she took to Tinder to try and engage more people.

According to website Junkee, the woman, known as “Lizzy” reported that a lot of men thanked her for the reminder and were glad she reached out to them to advocate for a worthy cause. One man even shared her message along with the link to the voter registration site to all of his matches.

Meet up on Facebook

Facebook has never made a secret of its desire to dominate almost every aspect of daily life in the digital age.

The company has blatantly swiped features from Twitter, Snapchat, Foursquare, Periscope, and more. It’s also experimented with workplace collaboration tools, the ability to call Lyft and Uber rides in Messenger, and a food delivery feature.

Now the social networking giant has plans to capitalize on the massive online dating market and “borrow” from a Millennial-favourite brand: Tinder.

The new feature is for Messenger and was spotted by Motherboard’s Jacob Dubé, who noted that it was also available to some of his friends in Canada but none of his colleagues so far.

Remember when people wondered if Tinder would ever successfully monetize? Those days seem like a lifetime ago.

The company has released a string of money-making features since its 2012 launch, ranging from Super Like to the premium Tinder Plus membership. The latest to join the line-up is Tinder Gold - an optional, upgradeable tier that allows users to see who swiped right on their profile without swiping right back.

Tinder Gold was released in the United States in late August following testing in select markets around the world. The members-only service offers the app’s most popular exclusive features, including Passport, Rewind, Unlimited Likes, five Super Likes per day, one Boost per month, and more profile controls. It also includes the new Likes You feature, which reveals who’s into you before you swipe.