Tinder

Let’s face it – our information is out there digitally for all the world to see, or at least those who are interested in Googling our names. But we like to know what kind of privacy controls are still in place for our social media accounts. We don’t want Facebook sharing our posts with just anyone, and perhaps you keep your Instagram account private, too.

But what happens when Facebook starts to encroach on what you like to keep separate? For example, Facebook has a “suggested friends” page where it connects you with people in your social circles – maybe someone you knew back in high school or through a previous employer, and you would like to friend him/her. But what happens when the suggested friend is someone you don’t care to see again – say a Tinder date gone wrong?

Apparently, this is happening more and more, but strangely, no one really knows why. News website Motherboard investigated the link between Facebook and dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid, to see where the connection lies and if they are sharing information unbeknownst to their users.

According to Motherboard, Tinder, OkCupid and Facebook all deny sharing information with each other. Plus, most of these unwanted contacts that are suggested to Facebook users share no Facebook friends nor do they have a shared workplace history or any other connection besides being a potential or previous date.

So exactly how are these apps and Facebook tracking movement (and connections) we don’t necessarily want them to see? Shouldn’t your online dating life be kept separate from your social media circles until you meet someone special and YOU want to include them in your circles? Probably the last person you want to see as a Facebook friend suggestion is your one-night stand from two weeks ago or the date who stood you up.

So why does this keep happening? The answers are unclear. As the companies deny sharing information, there are other ways that your connections can leave a digital trail that makes its way to Facebook.

One such way is through your phone. If you message one of your dates, even if you don’t save the contact information, depending on your Facebook settings the service is able to pull contacts you have messaged and called on your phone to help expand your social circles. Motherboard found one such notice from Facebook while testing this out. The article says: “Facebook does say it bases its suggestions in part on ‘imported contacts,’ but this is something users have to opt into on the mobile app or desktop... I don’t ever remember agreeing to import my contacts, and yet when I checked my “invite history” page I had 900+ contacts saved, apparently were continuously syncing and updating, that I promptly removed. Facebook warned this could make my friend suggestions ‘less relevant.’”

Another reason could lie in Facebook searches. Chances are before a date you want to look up some information about a person over social media, doing due diligence to get to know the person you were about to meet. Perhaps you searched for them on Facebook, which would mean they could show up as a suggested friend – after all, Facebook knows you looked for them, not that you were interested in dating them.

At any rate, these digital connections will continue to increase, so it’s important to be prepared to see people you may not want in your suggested circles. If nothing else, just delete.

Practically every business is expected to have a social media presence in 2015. When your business is a digital one, that pressure doubles. When your target audience is millennials, it triples. Dating services are all about helping people make social connections, but how socially savvy are they on their own profiles?

Digiday used proprietary data from two social media analytics firms, Unmetric and Socialbakers, to pit seven dating apps against each other in the battle for most effective social media strategy. Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, Match.com, Zoosk, Coffee Meets Bagel and Bumble were put to the test in several different categories.

Number Of Fans

With over 13 million million Facebook likes, Zoosk has the largest social media fan base. Match and Tinder follow with over 827,000 and 369,000 fans, respectively. Twitter shows similar stats. Zoosk has the most followers by far at over 350,000. Match comes in second, with 65,000, and Tinder in third, with over 56,000.

Although Tinder currently has the smallest fan base, it's also the most rapidly growing. The game-changing dating app saw its fan base grow 228 percent between January and October 2015.

Geographical Popularity

Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Match and Zoosk all have an international crop of users, but Tinder and Zoosk are the most diverse on social. In fact, the majority of Zoosk's Facebook fans are international.

Other services proved to be particularly popular in specific countries. Hinge is big in India, while Match is favored by Canadians and Tinder has won over Brazilian singles.

Engagement Level

Zoosk is the most prolific poster on social media. The company published 226 posts between January and October, and received the most likes and comments. Despite Zoosk's high volume, Tinder took the top spot for highest average engagement and most posts shared by fans.

Bumble is a relative newcomer to the dating world, but already it's showing promise on social. The app saw over 3,000 interactions with fans on Facebook between July and October. The numbers are expected to grow.

Number Of Fan Posts And Mentions

Match.com's users are the most likely to talk about it on Facebook. More than 9,000 messages were posted to Match's wall between January and October. Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel come next. Neither Tinder nor OkCupid had user posts on their Facebook walls. Their page settings most likely do not allow it.

Tinder leads the number of mentions on Twitter, perhaps because Twitter's audience skews younger than Facebook and Tinder attracts a similarly youthful user base. The app is followed by Zoosk and Match.com, which come in second and third with around 8,000 and 2,000 mentions apiece.

Popular dating app Tinder, which many daters have described as a hook-up app, has decided to get a little more serious with its latest update. Instead of upping the volume of swipes, the management team decided to focus on encouraging users to be more selective, and is now offering a feature dubbed “Super Like.”

Instead of just swiping right when you like someone special (like all the other right swipes before), the new feature allows you to swipe up – or Super Like - one special match per day. When two people Super Like each other, Tinder reports that they tend to have conversations over the app that last 70 percent longer. (Tellingly, the company is rolling out this feature in the wake of Vanity Fair’s controversial article on the so-called “dating apocalypse” fueled by Tinder, which ended in a Twitter rant from Tinder co-founder Sean Rad.)

Tinder is definitely getting its new more serious message across in marketing campaigns, including a video the company made highlighting the Super Like feature, which is targeting female daters. In the video, a woman is being harassed by a bunch of men who are trying to flirt with her, and she’s not interested. So to save herself from their aggressive tactics, she Super Likes a nice guy on the app. In other words, she is saving herself from the awful herds of pushy guys on Tinder by using Tinder’s latest feature.  

Will it be effective for Tinder to appeal to women? It is still by far the most popular app, but other developers are using Tinder’s hook-up reputation as a reason to choose another app. So Tinder is fighting back.

The new feature is a way to make women feel safer. But more than likely, it is also a response to Bumble, a rising star in the dating app world that has been getting a lot of attention.

Bumble is a female-centered dating app that looks like Tinder but gives the messaging power to women by having them make the first move. Coincidentally, Bumble was also founded by one of Tinder’s co-founders Whitney Wolfe, who sued the company and subsequently launched her own dating app. This past week, Wolfe made an appearance on The Daily Show, in which she answered questions about how her app is changing the world of online dating by putting women in the seat of power to ask the men out.

It’s great that daters have more options, and the competition from apps like Bumble means that Tinder will continue to improve its offerings. And that’s always a plus.

A recent article in The Wall Street  Journal pointed out the importance of using correct grammar in your online dating profile. According to surveys done in recent years by dating websites OkCupid and Match.com, grammar is by far one of the most important aspects of an online dating profile. If you mix up “your” and “you’re,” many daters will move on to the next.

But why is this? Aren’t people more concerned with great photos, as we’ve seen with apps like Tinder and Grindr? Why should online daters care about how people write – it isn’t necessarily an indication of who they are in real life or how great a match they would be. Besides, aren’t most daters attracted to physical appearances rather than writing style?

Apparently not. Match.com found that 88% of women and 75% of men in their survey of 5,000 singles said they cared about grammar most, putting it ahead of a person’s confidence and teeth.

The WSJ attributed this trend to the rise of dating apps and the common use of text slang, with abbreviations like YOLO (You only Live Once) replacing standard phrasing and sentences. While messaging has now become more of a convenience than an art, grammar has fallen by the wayside, and one way to make yourself stand out among the millions of other daters out there is to approach communicating with someone as though you put in some effort. After all, most dating apps don’t require much more effort than a swipe.

In other words, think about your professional life and how much time and care you put in to communication with your bosses and co-workers. When you send an email to a group of work colleagues, chances are you spell-checked it before pressing the “send” key, and most likely it isn’t filled with acronyms for every common phrase. If you apply the same protocol to online dating, it might seem a bit formal at first, but it definitely scores you more points. The person receiving your message is more likely to take you seriously because it looks like you have put in more time and effort.

In other words, you come across as smart and caring. Thoughtfulness goes a long way.

Grammar has been important in the online dating scene for a while, even before the popularity of texting and dating apps made bad grammar much more common. Dating websites like Match and eHarmony encouraged users to use complete sentences in their profiles and check for spelling errors. Wouldn’t you be turned off if someone you didn’t know turned in a report or emailed you with a couple of brief sentences, rife with misspellings?

A little effort goes a long way.

It looks like Tinder has swiped left on its latest CEO Chris Payne, and is asking co-founder Sean Rad to take control once again of running the company behind the infamously popular dating app. Rad will re-assume his position as CEO and Greg Blatt, Chairman of Match Group, will assume the newly created position of Executive Chairman of Tinder. Match Group is the parent company of online dating brands that include some of the most successful dating sites, including Tinder, Match.com and OkCupid.

Payne, a former eBay and Microsoft executive, is leaving the company after only five months as CEO. While Match Group originally hired him because of his experience, hoping to bring more corporate strategic thinking to the company, Rad remained the face of Tinder in the news thanks to his part in the app’s early success and his outspoken manner. (At the time, it didn’t help that he was embroiled in a sexual harassment lawsuit by former employee Whitney Wolfe, founder of new female-friendly dating app Bumble.)

For now, Payne seems to be content with the decision for him to step down. "I enjoyed my time at Tinder but we mutually determined that this wasn't going to be optimal and thought that a quick transition served everybody best," said Mr. Payne in a statement. "I think Tinder's going to be an incredible company." 

Website Mashable (who reported Tinder’s executive shake-up) has linked the decision to re-establish Rad in the CEO position as part of Match Group’s financial strategy. The company plans an initial public offering later this year. According to Blatt, the dating industry has come a long way since the company’s inception, but the category remains “underpenetrated.”

Tinder introduced a new premium paid service earlier this year, offering extra perks like the ability to go back and change a previously rejected profile or giving users more profiles to swipe per day. One analyst predicted Tinder’s valuation would top $1 billion in 2015.

For now, the company and Rad are focused on the future. "I'm committed to continuing to drive Tinder's growth and to make Tinder one of the great businesses of our time," said Mr. Rad. "I look forward to working closely with Greg to make that happen."

"It's only been a few months, but there was mutual agreement here that it was not the right long-term fit, and given Tinder's rapid growth trajectory both Christopher and the Board thought prompt action was best for everyone," said Matt Cohler, of Benchmark, a Tinder director. "We appreciate Christopher's work here and wish him well in future endeavors."

An article in last month’s Vanity Fair attacked apps like Tinder as being promoters of hook-up culture among young daters. The article caused a wave of dialogue, backlash and upset, with many people wondering if dating apps were in fact “killing” the culture of dating and navigating relationships.

While technology has been blamed for bad behavior, dating app Hinge is aiming to distinguish itself from its popular and notorious competitor, Tinder. Instead of taking the bait and offering more Tinder-like services like many dating apps looking for success in this growing market, Hinge is taking the hook-up culture argument to heart. Instead of fighting the article's argument, the company is offering an update to its app in acknowledgment of the problem - with an “Intentions” feature.

The update offers a new profile page where users are encouraged up front to include their intentions for using the app, whether it’s to find a relationship, to date, or a casual hook-up. Hinge hopes that this gives more transparency in the online dating process.

According to Hinge, most of the people coming to its app are looking for something more serious than a hook-up. When the company surveyed 1,500 of its users, they discovered that sixty-three percent claim they are looking for relationships, 33% for dating, and only 2% for hook-ups.

The company’s last update called out daters who weren’t being truthful about being single, which has also caused an uproar among Tinder users. (A survey earlier this year found that more than 40% of Tinder users were already in a relationship.) Hinge now publishes each user’s relationship status (that the user shares on Facebook), so there’s no mistaking whether or not a user is single.

The company also added a new feature in August called HingePerks for its most dedicated users, offering discounts and contests for things like trips, ball games, and drinks. The first promotion was a free “staycation” at a Starwood Hotel with a spa service included. They have also offered concert tickets for social media participation (including liking on Facebook, tagging and sharing), as well as a free bottle of wine for the Hinge couple that posts a fun photo on Instagram.

Since its inception, the company has focused on its primary user base – young professionals, another way to distinguish itself from Tinder, which got its start on college campuses and whose demographic skews a bit younger than Hinge’s. In the last month, Hinge has promoted their “most eligible” male and female users according to profession, offering basic profile information. Hinge also asks their most embarrassing date moment and greatest career accomplishment to date.

Whether Hinge's strategy succeed in this competitive dating app market is yet to be seen. But it does offer daters a more interesting and engaging alternative to the dating app experience. For more on this dating app, please check out our review of Hinge.