Features

Dating app Bumble has seen tremendous success since its launch over two years ago, with more than 12.5 million registrations to date. Now, the company wants to expand their services to offer connections for friendship and business opportunities, too.

Bumble debuted as a dating app, differentiating itself from Tinder by putting the power of communication in the hands of women, who are required to make the first move. Since then, the company has launched Bumble BFF for people seeking friendships rather than romantic relationships, and it is about to release Bumble Biz to connect people for business networking.

Tinder’s reign won’t let up. The dating app is not only the most recognizable in the industry, it’s also one of the most successful. With constant feature updates, like 2015’s introduction of the ‘Super Like’, Tinder ensures it remains on top of the game.

Two of the most recent updates have proved to be highly beneficial for the app. During a panel at this year’s SXSW, co-founder Sean Rad shared that Tinder has matched some 250,000 transgender users since unveiling new gender identity options last November. The company also increased its community education and refined its approach to preventing harassment.

“We have a great algorithm that can help, but no algorithm can solve humans,” Rad explained. “We were taken aback by how complex identity is. It’s a very complex area and, at the same time, Tinder is extremely simple.”

According to website Tech Crunch, Tinder has been offering a dating service for its most elite users for at least six months without announcing its existence.

“Tinder Select” is just as it sounds – a dating service for those Tinder users who are high profile and the most desirable, such as celebrities, supermodels and CEOs, so they can have access to date and message other high profile users and bypass the normal user matches.

But before you get excited to join and flirt with the A-listers, you can’t. Or at least most of us can’t because Tinder has to invite you first.

There are more dating apps on the market than you could possibly count, with new ones popping up seemingly every week. Though they cover a diverse - and sometimes outright strange - range of people and interests, the vast majority are made with heterosexual couples in mind.

Winkd is a dating app based in Sydney which just launched this month. It hopes to take a different approach and join the likes of Grindr as a successful service built by putting the LGBTQ community first.

Founders Diana Kalkoul and Neda Robat-Meily, who are both queer, found themselves frustrated with the lack of inclusivity in most popular dating apps. But rather than giving up dating apps altogether, they decided to create their own.

If anyone can make bold predictions about the future of online dating, it’s industry game-changer and Tinder CEO Sean Rad. This month at the StartUp Grind Global Conference in California, he shared that dating apps could soon be using augmented reality technology to help users meet.

He explained that the technology would help people meet in real time, and work similarly to Pokemon Go. For instance, if you walk down the street and point your smartphone at someone you find attractive, you can find out immediately whether or not they are single. And if you are single and dating, you could also send virtual signals to someone you pass, letting them know you’re interested. This could work through technology like Google Glass as well as your phone.

We’re 2 months into 2017, but it’s not too late to call some of the hottest trends we expect to see in online dating this year.

Online dating is one of the most dynamic industries in the world. New services are constantly emerging, along with new technologies that keep the way we date in a constant state of evolution. Things won’t be any different in 2017. Change is coming - both from companies and from consumers.

Here are a few things the remainder of the year could have in store.