Features

The ultimate goal of dating apps is real-life love, but all too often, users find their swipes end in ghosted message threads. Though services like How About We have emerged to encourage singles to take their digital romances offline as soon as possible, many still struggle to turn online matches into in-person connections.

A recent trend in online dating appears to be yet another effort to connect users IRL. Apps from Bumble to Happn to Tinder are opening spaces and hosting events around the world to bring their members together.

Bumble opened its first physical location in New York City earlier this summer. Dubbed ‘The Hive,’ the installation was clad head-to-toe in Bumble’s branding and offered users and non-users alike a date spot, a place to hang with friends, a co-working space, or a quiet respite from the buzz of city life. The Hive featured a coffee bar, a real bar, and a shop with Bumble merchandise. It also hosted styling sessions from Drybar and a series of talks and social events.

Tinder's New Look

Will dating apps soon be saying sayonara to the swipe? Tinder, the app often credited with popularizing the swipe gesture, has gotten an updated look and new navigation gestures to go with it.

“Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at work refreshing the user experience,” said a company blog post. “Today, we’re excited to start rolling out a more seamless way to navigate Tinder for our users around the world.”

Tinder promises a new user experience that is both smarter and better looking. On the aesthetics front, the app now boasts a cleaner design and photos take up more real estate, extending all the way to the edges of the screen. Tinder calls the makeover “part of an ongoing effort to make our app as fun and attractive as the community it serves.”

Badoo Look A Like

Ever downloaded Tinder or Bumble in the hopes of meeting someone who looked like Ryan Gosling or Chris Pratt? Well, look no further – dating app Badoo has launched its new Lookalikes feature to help you out.

The app provides a list of various celebrities for users to choose from (think Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba, Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, and even Donald Trump). When you click on that celebrity’s photo, a list of choices with profile pictures of your matches appears.

The app uses facial recognition technology to scour their database of 350 million daters to deliver the results. The matches aren’t exactly spitting images, but there are certain features that they and their celebrity counterparts have in common to consider them a lookalike. (Although I question a 40-something Jennifer Lawrence, for instance).

How to use the Bumble SuperSwipe

Dating apps are not only looking to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, they are trying to find ways to monetize without alienating customers. And now, female-friendly app Bumble is taking a leaf out of Tinder’s playbook and adding a new feature called SuperSwipe, similar to Tinder’s Super Like.

SuperSwipe allows users to call attention to someone they are really interested in, by clicking a heart on the chosen profile before swiping right and hoping for a match. The benefit is that your SuperSwipe can see that you’re interested before he swipes left or right, which hopefully increases your chances of matching with him.

Super Like on Tinder is very similar; your potential match can see that you’ve chosen to Super Like him in advance. Super Like is also only available via the app’s premium service, and it seems Bumble is following suit.

Love can feel like a game sometimes, and in this case, it’s literal. Happn is testing a new gamified feature for singles in Spain, a simple but addictive game called CrushTime.

CrushTime is designed to give users another opportunity to connect with people they cross paths with in real life. At the start of the game, CrushTime presents four users you’ve recently been near. One is a person who has already liked you (a “Crush”), and it’s up to you to figure out which one it is.

If your intuition is on point and you guess correctly, you can start chatting in-app immediately with your new match. If you’re wrong, it’s simply a non-mutual like and no one knows but you. You can either start a new game or try again if you’re into one of the remaining profiles.

Dating apps have to set themselves apart from the rigorous competition, and it seems new features are being introduced weekly. The latest is from dating app Happn, who announced a new matching feature called “Crush Time” to help its users find matches.

Crush Time is purposefully game-like, which makes it interesting. It shows you four profiles, and you have to guess which one already liked you. If you guess correctly, you can start messaging right away with the in-app messaging feature. If you don’t guess correctly, then you don’t match (because it’s not a mutual like).

Another unique twist to Crush Time is the fact that you can’t just endlessly play the game. It pops up every so often, so you have to watch for it. (This of course adds to the stickiness of checking the Happn app more than you otherwise might). It makes the game all the more exciting when you get to play.