Tinder

There has been speculation that Match Group’s star performer in the online dating space – dating app Tinder – would cannibalize its other online dating companies. But so far, contrary to analysts’ reports, this hasn’t happened.

Tinder is by far the dating app industry giant, with over 25 million active users and about 1 million paid subscribers in its tiered program. Some analysts have feared that because of Tinder’s rapid growth and free platform, it would mean users would leave other popular online dating sites in Match Group (like Match, Plenty of Fish and OkCupid) to join Tinder, making them obsolete.

What they found instead was that Match Group’s overall earnings were up in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to the POF acquisition and Match Group’s strategy to grow and invest in Tinder’s rivals.

Overall revenue came in at $285 million in its first quarter, $3 million over expected revenues.

Greg Blatt, chairman and CEO of Match Group, said in the first quarter earnings release: "Match Group posted very strong revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, driven by exceptional growth at Tinder, solid performance of Meetic and Match, and the PlentyOfFish acquisition."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch explained that "even without Tinder, Match would have grown its core Dating subscribers by 6% (up from about 1% last quarter) and its Dating revenue by significantly more."

The POF acquisition is an important factor in the revenue numbers. The dating website grew tremendously itself over the years with 70 million registered users, and operated for many years on a shoestring budget with one employee, Markus Frind, who created the dating site and sold it to IAC (Match Group’s parent company) for $575 million in 2015.

Over time if Tinder’s popularity continues to grow, and the app itself makes improvements that resonate with its users, then there could be an impact to Match Group’s other businesses. For now, POF, Match, and OkCupid are still going strong.

One solution that has been floated in the media is for Tinder to advertise other Match Group properties on its app. (Tinder’s revenue comes mainly from paid advertising, rather than its tiered service.)

For the most part, online daters are not beholden to one site or app, preferring to join two or more at any given time. Because of Tinder’s growth, it has grown the entire online dating industry in just three short years, and made online dating a more acceptable practice. Numerous dating apps are launching every week, hoping to cash in on Tinder’s market share and success.

It seems to be a win-win for the online dating industry as a whole, even in a saturated market.

Tinder is looking to be more social – or at least hook you up along with your group of friends to connect with other friend groups out in the real world. The problem? Tinder users are being opted in to this feature by default, so you don't have a choice. Which means Tinder Social automatically displays which of your Facebook friends are also using Tinder.

This can make for some awkward conversation, especially for those who would rather keep their dating practices private.

To make matters more uncomfortable, Tinder Social presents a list of your friends along with their dating app profiles so you can not only see they are using the app, but how they are presenting themselves on Tinder. (Sexy photos, anyone?)

And worse yet, some Tinder users think Tinder Social is a way to meet others for group sex (and considering the whole hook-up reputation, it’s not that far of a stretch).

The new feature is only in the testing stages in certain parts of Australia, so chances are you haven’t encountered the feature just yet. This will give Tinder some time to refine it. The company will need to make some changes to reassure people about their privacy on the app. Over the years, it has stressed to users that their social networks would not be compromised, and that anything they do on the app wouldn’t be seen on Facebook or in their other social networks.

While there’s currently a way to opt out of the friend-finding feature, Tinder users are automatically opted in, so you actively have to disengage. A good fix would be to make it an opt-in feature only, so Tinder doesn’t risk alienating users who didn’t realize their profiles were being put on display among their social media friends.

Finding circles of friends seems to be a new wave in the dating app space, and an untapped market for an already attentive dating app population. CEO of Bumble Whitney Wolfe announced the company would be unveiling a similar group friend-finding feature on their app, and Grouper, a dating app that’s been around for a few years, offers group dates for people who don’t want the pressure of one-on-one dating. There’s also MeetUp, a networking site that has been around for a while to help people find friends in their communities through activities and other interests.

Many other apps are jumping on this new friend-finding bandwagon, hoping to capitalize on the social networking market. We’ll see if Tinder or another app can get people excited about the friend-finding potential of apps.

Millions of singles using dating services each day, searching through a stream of faces in hopes of finding a mate. Pictures have always been an important part of the online dating process, but with the rise of simple, image-centric mobile apps like Tinder, photographs are more important than ever.

New online dating research reveals a secret side to swiping. According to the study, potential dates may be evaluating you based not on your profile, but on the profile they saw before yours.

Huh?

"From an evolutionary perspective, attractiveness is a key social characteristic that determines how approachable or desirable we are. Perceived attractiveness is determined not only by our own attributes but by the attractiveness of people around us," says the study.

Here’s how that relates to your luck on Tinder. If your profile comes after an attractive person’s profile, you appear more attractive as a result and are more likely to score a left swipe. The opposite is also true: if an unattractive face comes before yours, you’re more likely to get a rejection.

Over two experiments, 32 women were shown 60 male profile pictures and asked to rate them as either attractive or unattractive. The images varied in composition, face size, clothing, and background cues. Researchers presumed that all the pictures were intended to attract female attention as they were sourced from heterosexual sections of dating sites.

Each participant looked at a computer screen that presented the profile photos. After about 300ms, they were asked to rate the image as attractive or unattractive. At the end of the experiments, the researchers concluded that profile pictures were significantly more likely to be deemed attractive if the picture in the previous profile was rated as attractive.

"While online dating is popular, and is certainly an efficient (and anonymous) way to sort through potential mates from the comfort of one's own home,” concludes the study, “it may not be quite as reliable as it seems given the recent evidence for sequential dependencies when judging rapid sequences of faces."

As you sort through a string of faces, evaluating each one in the few seconds it takes to swipe, you could be affected by this phenomenon - in which case, your final choice of desirable mate might be one face too late. Is this the start of songs about love at second sight?

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read in full here.To find out more about the dating app you can read our Tinder reviews.

Tinder has been at the forefront of online dating industry growth, making it more accessible to more users than any other online dating platform. So it’s only natural that its accessibility extends to daters in the transgender community.

Transgender online daters don’t have many options when they go online to try and date, because most apps, including Tinder, only allow them to identify as male or female. In the next couple of months, Tinder has said they will be adding more gender identification choices along with more dating preferences.

Tinder is owned by Match Group, but it’s late to the party: other online dating platforms within Match Group, such as OkCupid, have already added more gender preferences to their platforms. In addition to “woman” and “man,” OkCupid’s gender options include “agender, adrogynous, bigender, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, genderqueer, hijra, intersex, non-binary, other, pangender, transfeminine, transgender, transmasculine, transsexual, trans man, trans woman,” and “two-spirit,” as of November 2014.

Members of the LGBTQ community have pushed for this change in online dating, as they have felt excluded and left out of the conversation as more features are added and improvements made to the online dating experience – except when it comes to their needs and preferences.

Huffington Post Live’s Alex Berg reported deleting her online dating account, writing: “In the grand scheme of problems for LGBTQ people, the options of a dating website might seem like minutia ... [but] that recognition has the power to change the hearts and minds of those who would deny our rights in the physical world.”

It seems Tinder Founder and CEO Sean Rad agrees. “For a long time we haven’t done enough to give [transgender members] a good experience,” he said at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “It’s harder for them to get what they are looking for. We have to modify our experience to address that.”

Tinder is working on the changes with transgender activist Andrea James and GLAAD, as part of its promise to be more inclusive to its community of daters.

“One challenge we face at Tinder is making sure our tens of millions of users around the world have the same user experience. No matter who you are, no matter what you’re looking for, you should get quality matches through the Tinder experience,” the company said to Fortune Magazine. “There’s an important transgender (and gender nonconforming) community on Tinder who haven’t had that experience … yet.”

Tinder might be the dating app giant, but other dating apps are seeing success by catering to specific market needs that don't involve endless swiping.

Last month at Tech Crunch Disrupt, a panel of dating app CEOS gathered to discuss the industry, trends, and how things are changing – they think for the better. Specifically, the talk was given by three female CEOs about how women are changing the dating app game: Whitney Wolfe from Bumble, Dawoon Kang from Coffee Meets Bagel, and Robyn Exton of Her.

One thing to note: while these are all dating apps, they made sure to point out that their focuses and application are different. Bumble is a female-centric dating app similar to Tinder and free to use, although the company is looking for ways to monetize the app without resorting to all-paid memberships or advertising. Wolfe says that they have noticed an interesting trend among users: that they are looking for friendships, too. Right now, Bumble’s platform allows you to look for friends as well as dates, but soon they will be rolling out a feature that includes finding groups with similar interests.

Coffee Meets Bagel is an app that stresses quality over quantity, allowing only one match per day, and giving the users only twenty-four hours to accept a match. Kang is focused on the success of the matches, which she says only helps other people spread the word about the app. She is rolling out a paid feature that lets daters use an A/B test to see which photos they should put on their profile. Right now, users can also pay for a premium membership, which includes more matches and other incentives.

Her is aimed specifically toward female dating in the LGBTQ community. Exton points out that they have been lucky to be able to focus on one gender when studying patterns for dating and befriending people over the app. The app offers users a community – with news of local events, social networking, and dating applications.

All three CEOs agreed that a more nuanced approach to features is the key to an app’s success, designed to benefit a specific group of users, whether that is women, same-sex daters or people looking for friendship.

Despite the popularity of Tinder and our swipe-happy culture of dating, there is still room in the market for other players – even new apps. Most people (while they do still use Tinder) are looking to other apps to help fill a need that they feel Tinder isn’t serving. Whether daters have concerns about security, or are looking for an app that offers more than photos, or look to a niche market (like Farmer Dating) to satisfy their particular requests for mates, many more apps are launching and some are seeing success.

Competition, no matter how saturated the market, is always good for the consumer.

Mixing politics and dating isn’t always the best idea, but one thing’s for sure: politicians want to encourage young people to vote and be politically active. So what better way to connect with them than on their own turf?

At least, this is the thinking behind UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s latest move. He joined Tinder last month, not to date, but to connect with millennials, who are a target voting market. He met with leading tech companies earlier to try a new approach that would engage young voters.

Reports claim he has joined Tinder to encourage young people to vote in the EU referendum, amid fears many aren’t registered. The plan with Tinder is that Cameron will place advertisements that resemble dating profiles as part of the electoral registration drive.

Does this seem deceptive to people on Tinder who are looking to meet dates, not to engage in politics? Perhaps, but this isn’t the first time dating apps have gotten political.

Earlier this year, Swipe The Vote asked Tinder users 10 questions designed to assess their political preferences for issues like same-sex marriage, immigration and fracking. And when Bernie Sanders supporters on Facebook noticed a trend of Bernie fans looking to meet each other, a new dating site called Bernie Singles was born. Now, there’s even a dating app for Trump opponents called Maple Dating, which offers eligible Canadian matches to Americans who want to leave the country.

So what does all this mean? Are dating apps getting more political? Should dating and politics mix? It’s murky ground, but one thing is for sure. Politicians wanting to capture the attention of young voters have to think outside of normal ad campaigns. And if setting up a dating profile on Tinder works to engage your audience, then why not meet them where they are?

Bumble has gotten in on the political action, too. It now allows its users to declare which Presidential candidate they support, and to filter those who disagree accordingly. JSwipe also has features that let you filter according to political persuasion. And while most daters are willing to date across party lines, they have their limits. The polarization of American politics is getting more personal, where people who are staunch supporters of particular polarizing candidates – like Trump – or specific issues, like those that deal with LGBTQ laws – do not want to date those who disagree with them.

So where does that leave us? Dating culture reflects our shifting values and politics, so it’s only natural that in a controversial Presidential election season, we become more engaged in political discussion. But hopefully after November, you can date a little easier.

For more on this dating app you can read our Tinder review