Features

Dating app Hinge started out with some stiff competition against Tinder. Since its debut in 2012, several other new dating apps have launched and attracted a growing user base as well as media attention, including female-centric dating app Bumble. Meanwhile, after steady growth since its launch, this year Hinge has seen its numbers declining.

Hinge’s marketing and product development have always focused on attracting more serious daters. The app is geared toward young professionals in their late twenties and thirties who are looking for long-term relationships, as opposed to the hook-up reputation that has followed Tinder since its inception. The app is billed as a “grown-up” alternative to the young users of Tinder, which at first seemed to serve the market well.

Dating app Momo, China’s answer to Tinder, has been a popular dating app among the country’s singles with a record 75 million users. But in recent weeks, Momo seems to be expanding out of the dating business and into something more lucrative.

For its latest update, Momo executives decided to supplement the app's location-based dating service that matches people through swiping and messaging. Now, the app offers a live-streaming function, catering to music lovers and even musicians themselves. The update allows users to watch their favorite musicians perform live, as well as giving them the ability to interact with the musicians.

Bumble Boost with BeeLine, Rematch, and BusyBee.

Female-focused dating app Bumble has been available for free to its users, but now the company is offering a premium paid service for those who want to use its brand new features.

The paid version of the app includes three important features aimed at competing with other popular “tiered” dating apps like Tinder, which also offers optional paid features to help provide a premium matching experience.

Bumble’s first feature, named “Beeline,” will offer its members a line-up of users who have already “liked” them, so they can skip swiping and match with their likes by choosing “yes,” with the intention of making the process more efficient.

If there’s one thing every online dater can agree on, it’s this: they all want more matches. More matches mean more dates, more dates mean more chances of meeting someone special, and more special someones means eventually finding the someone who takes you off the market for good.

As an online dater, you have an effect on how many matches you get. You boost your odds by choosing the right photos, writing an attractive profile, and crafting intriguing messages. But as carefully as you try to present yourself well, you know it’s not entirely in your hands. Working hard in the background of every dating site or app is an algorithm that also has a say in how many matches you receive.

Tinder took the online dating world by storm a few years ago when it launched, changing the way people connected for dates. Instead of crafting elaborate profiles, Tinder’s appeal was its ease and visual component, its mobile interface – you like a photo, and you swipe.

But now, other apps who have tried to copy its example, creating swipe-like features of their own, have found that this is not the best way to stay competitive in the dating app space. So instead of making as many profiles available as quickly as possible, other apps are looking to curate their offerings and make it a more selective process, specifically for female users.

Badoo Selfie Feature

Popular online dating service Badoo has announced the release of its latest feature “Selfie Request,” which aims to provide more security for female daters using the service.

The new selfie feature allows women to request a photo from a male user after they have received an initial message, so that they can confirm their potential match is genuine and using a real photo. From there, a male user can either send the requested selfie or decline. (The selfie is taken on the spot to confirm the match is genuine.)

Selfie Request is positioned to help the ongoing problem of catfishing in online dating, where users hide their identity behind fake profiles and photos in order to exploit other users. According to Pew Research Center, 54 percent of online daters have felt that someone misrepresented themselves on their profile. This new feature update from Badoo is intended to help avoid this recurring problem by addressing the online safety of females, who are largely the targets of catfishing as well as the main recipients of unwanted and harassing messages.