Communication

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.

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.

In time for Valentine’s Day, online dating service Match released its seventh annual Singles in America study, the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind.

This year’s focus was a little different from previous studies, exploring new dating rituals, shifting gender roles, and the impact social media has had on the dating culture.

First, thanks to mobile apps and the accessibility of online dating, almost one in six singles (15%) of those surveyed by Match feel addicted to the process of looking for a date. Millennials are 125% more likely to say they feel addicted to dating than older generations. And men are 97% more likely to feel addicted to dating than women – although more women feel more burned out by the process (54%).

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.

It seems many dating apps now want to distance themselves from Tinder, even though the tremendous growth of online dating was thanks to Tinder’s swiping technology. Now, instead of endless swiping that goes nowhere, a common complaint among Tinder users, a new app is offering something more intimate: requiring a phone call to connect with a match.

Dating app Hotline launched in New York last month, and is already getting some buzz thanks to its old-school premise: talking on the phone. The app doesn’t let you text until you’ve made at least one phone call and talked to your match first.

Are you sick of all the messaging and scheduling you do on your preferred dating app? Do you sometimes wish someone could just…do it for you?

Hinge thinks so, and currently the company is beta-testing a new app called Audrey, which automates the online dating process for you. If you find someone attractive on the app, Audrey will reach out, make an introduction, and if the feeling is mutual, will schedule a date for you to meet.

The app will cost about $99 per month, or that is the price point they are using for beta testing in New York, so it might change. According to Hinge’s website, the process for using Audrey goes as follows: