Dating Services

Recipient Tinder

The recipient for the 2022 Editor's Top Pick - Innovative award is Tinder. Our second year in the pandemic has made it difficult for dating app development teams to innovative and keep introducing new features. Fortunately for Tinder users with the popularity of the app, it gives them large budgets to keep features coming.

So what new a few of the new innovating features Tinder has released in the past year?

Match Group announced that the company will go carbon neutral by March of 2022 thanks to its purchase of offsets to carbon emissions, leading the way for dating apps to address issues of climate change.

The company announced the move in a press release, noting that it commits to offsetting its carbon footprint going forward, though the offset purchase made lasts only two years. Match Group invested in Hyundai Green Power Corporation, which captures and recycles waste gases to generate electricity through its Steel Waste Energy Cogeneration Project. (The site’s steel mill reuses waste gases and what remains is used by the project’s power plant.)  

When that energy is repurposed, it supplies power to the local grid in Dangjin, South Korea, instead of that grid relying on fossil fuels. This means a reduction of 1.8 million tons of carbon emissions per year, according to Match Group. 

Recipient Christian Mingle

Christian Mingle is the dating service which is the recipient of the 2022 Top Pick - Christian Award. Christian Mingle is the largest dating service of its niche in North America thanks to not only name recognition and it being in business for over 20 years, but with its growing membership base due to members who have found relationships and recommending the service to their friends. Nearly 60,000 singles signup every month.

Over the last few years not much has changed with the Christian Mingle website and the apps (Android and iOS). Frankly not much has needed to change since the current design is balanced and working very well. It is free to join Christian Mingle, create your profile and search for members. The profiles contain enough information that it doesn't take long to fill out but still offers enough information to allow the matching algorithm or members who prefer searching to determine if a match is possible and communication should be the next step. While anyone can join Christian Mingle, the profiles are obviously geared towards those of the Christian faith and have religious based questions like listing your denomination and how often you attend church.

Gay dating app Grindr was fined $7.16 million (65 million kroner) by Norway’s Internet watchdog agency for violating the privacy rights of its users.

According to ABC News, The Norwegian Data Protection Authority said that Grindr had shared the sensitive personal data of its users, including sexual orientation, to hundreds of potential advertising partners without their consent. 

It’s not the first time Grindr has been accused of violating privacy rights by the watchdog. In 2020, it filed a complaint against Grindr not only because of sensitive data that was shared with third parties, but also because it shared IP addresses and GPS locations, which could identify individual users. 

Bumble says that singles are turning to dating apps more than ever, evidenced by its recent finding that over a billion matches were made on its app in 2021, a 25 percent increase from the previous year.

The dating app also shared that over 9 billion messages were exchanged globally, up nearly 40 percent from 2020, showing that dating app usage during lockdowns wasn’t a temporary thing. Rather, once restrictions lifted, people were more eager to login to the app and start looking for matches as well as virtual date, and were also eager to use dating apps to get back out there and meet matches in real life.  

Bumble said that the highest number of message exchanges were between October and early November, just prior to the holiday season. It’s also worth noting that this was just prior to the emergence of the highly contagious Omicron variant of Covid, which has led to global lockdowns and restrictions once again. Still, the company doesn’t see things slowing down as we enter into dating’s “high season,” between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day.

Dating app Bumble is changing the look of profiles and giving an upgrade to its algorithm to provide a better online dating experience for its users.

The female-focused dating app unveiled its new look in early December. The update prioritizes a person’s pronouns and interests after their primary photo, and according to Axios Austin, this move will help users more easily identify potential matches.

The algorithm changes are aimed at creating a more curated experience. The app will now provide users with recommendations for which picture should be front and center in your profile, which the company said from early reports has already led to more matches. Bumble’s AI technology is also learning more preferences based on user behavior, noting that curating matches this way has helped people spend more time looking at each profile, an indication of heightened interest among users.