Tinder

Just when you thought you'd mastered the swipe left and the swipe right, Tinder throws a curve ball into your love life: a swipe up.

Meet the 'Super Like,' a brand new feature that takes the grand romantic gesture into digital territory. By swiping upwards on a potential date instead of left or right, you can show them that you're interested – like, super interested – before they decide which way to swipe on your profile.

After Super Liking someone, a blue banner declaring “So-and-so super liked you!" will appear underneath your name and age in their list of matches. If the attraction is mutual, the super-swiper will have a blue star next to their name in your list of matches.

Super Liking is not something to take lightly. Each user gets a limited number of Super Likes per day – only one – so use them wisely.

"Because they're so limited in number, a Super Like, or a 'swipe up', sends a more powerful signal, conveying an especially high level of interest," Tinder CEO Sean Rad told Engadget. "People like to know that someone finds them special, and we think this will lead to even better matches."

Tech analysts have dug deeper into the intention behind the new feature. Many believe the Super Like was introduced because Tinder has deviated from its original purpose. Instead of using the app to find real dates, many are using it only to kill time. Super Like may help restore Tinder's lost value.

“I can't help feeling the fact that Tinder has to keep imposing limits on swiping and adding features to encourage selective swiping suggests the swiping system is feeling the strain,” writes Rich Trenholm for CNET. “With many profiles complaining their matches never actually chat with them, it seems the Super Like is an attempt to restore some of the weight of a match.”

Tinder has celebrated the arrival of the Super Like with a cinematic superhero-themed advertisement featuring models Erin Heatherton and Nina Agdal (see below). The feature will launch first in Australia and is slated to roll out globally later this year.

Alongside the Super Like, Rad has also stated that the Tinder Plus version will launch soon. The new version limits the number of right swipes a user can make in a 24-hour period, and introduces Undo and Passport options. These advanced settings will be available for a monthly fee.

For more on this dating app your can read our review of Tinder.

Tired of Tinder and endless swiping that leads nowhere? While the dating app is popular, it’s leaving most online daters a little cold. Many come across fake profiles, or they match with someone only to have them disappear before actually meeting in person. And then there is the whole hook-up reputation.

So what is an online dater to do? New dating apps like The Grade and Bumble are setting out to alleviate online dating fatigue by putting their resources into creating more quality matches, so users can have a better overall experience. Specifically, these apps analyze and the behavior of their own members, so other users can see how they rate.

Bumble, founded by former Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe, aims to give power back to female daters. Bumble only allows the woman to reach out and make the first move – not the guy. So she is in control of the dating experience. A recent article in International Business Times revealed that a new feature Bumble will be rolling out is a verification program called “VIBee” -- a system that rewards users with a badge if they have good behavior on the app. The feature will aim to discourage users from nonstop swiping (left or right), and from spam messaging. If a match sees you have the badge, you’re more likely to be contacted – or so the thinking goes.

The Grade operates in a similar fashion, and as the name suggests – grades people on their behavior while using the app. The grading system is three-fold: you are "graded" based on how complete your profile is, how long it takes you to respond to messages, and the quality of the messages you send. In other words, the app will analyze message quality, including length, spelling mistakes, slang and hostile words and then assign you a letter grade, like in school. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really check context, so while some words might be “red flags” in certain contexts but not others, you could be penalized for using them at all.

Founders of The Grade pride themselves on the fact that they are weeding daters out based on how they behave. With about 100,000 downloads of The Grade so far, approximately 1,000 have been expelled and 2,000 are in danger of “failing.”

Cliff Lerner, founder of The Grade, told International Business Times: “We’re not saying we’re going to take on Tinder. We don’t want every user. All of our users are going to be high quality and accountable for their behavior. A lot of people will be kicked off.”

Lerner’s app focused on the complaints he kept hearing from female online daters, who were asking for an app that allowed them to handle offensive or hostile messages from men. Most women who have online dated have encountered such messages from time to time, which has created a huge trust problem with online dating apps and services.

Behavioral monitoring might be the next Tinder after all, at least for female daters.

August 2015 hasn't been kind to Tinder.

Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales wrote a feature called “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse”, in which she blames the app (and online dating in general) for swiping romance off the screen and disrupting the dating lives of modern twentysomethings.

Rather than quietly moving on, Tinder took a stand. Or, to put it more accurately, Tinder decided to go on an epic Twitter rant against Nancy Jo Sales. The Twitter tear ended up in everybody's headlines, putting the app under even greater scrutiny than the original article.

In the wake of the messy meltdown, many seem to be rethinking their approach to online dating. And interestingly, a Tinder co-founder may be behind one of the best alternatives.

Last year, Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe sued the company for sexual harassment and was pushed out of the business. Following the kerfuffle, Wolfe founded Bumble – a free, feminist dating app where women call the shots.

The familiar swipe feature is still in play, and both users receive a notification if a match is made, but only women are allowed to make the first move. So far, the app has been successful. The male-female ratio is about 50-50 and more than 500,000 users have joined. The average user spends more than an hour on Bumble per day.

This month, Bumble plans to launch a new feature to help users separate the frogs from the princes. Changes to the algorithm will measure how users behave on the app. Those with “good” behavior will be rewarded with a verified status dubbed “VIBee.” The hope is that VIBee status will act as a filter, much the way age might, helping users to weed out flakes, trolls, and anyone else with generally jerky tendencies.

Unlike some apps that screen for external markers of social status, like graduating from an Ivy League university, VIBee status is about how users conduct themselves. “Our pre-vetting is about how you behave in the app,” Wolfe told TIME. “If you didn’t graduate from Harvard you can still earn your way in.”

“We want to reward those users who have been good members of the community,” she continued. “It’s about rewarding, not excluding.”

Users who respond to messages and swipe judiciously are eligible to earn VIBee status. Those who always swipe right or never swipe right at all will be screened out, as well as anyone who has been reported for harassment. Users with VIBee status will be able to search only for other VIBee-status users.

Tinder is unlikely to disappear from the scene any time soon, but for those who are questioning the world it creates, Bumble could offer a brighter future. For more on the Tinder dating app, please read our review.

A recent article in Vanity Fair made the argument that apps like Tinder have ruined dating. Reporter Nancy Jo Sales interviewed single twenty-somethings to get their impressions of online dating, and it wasn’t pretty. They admit that “Tinder sucks” and yet they still keep swiping for lack of a better way to date.

Part of the problem, she argues, is that people have a hook-up mentality with dating apps, and men especially. They meet girls to have sex under the guise of pretending to date them, and women have been burned more than once – making them skeptical that any guy wants a relationship.

This argument isn’t a new one. But the reporter feels that dating apps are the real problem – the technology, not the people using them. Let me be more precise: dating apps make it easier than ever to meet new people, providing a way for those who are averse to commitment to do a date-and-dump.

The problem I see with this argument is that it assumes technology is the problem. If we ditched dating apps and online dating in general and went back to an “easier time” – say 1995 – when dating was supposedly alive and well, and all single people were looking for long-term romance. But this just wasn’t the case. In fact, people would hook up and avoid commitment with relative ease – they just did it in person at bars and clubs, rather than through a dating app. Maybe their choices were limited, but the behavior wasn’t much better.

Remember The Rules – dating advice lexicon of that decade? It centered around dealing with men who had commitment issues, basically teaching women how to use their sexuality and femininity to get what they wanted – a relationship.

We’ve come a lot further in our relationship progress in my opinion, partly in thanks to online dating. Dating apps have helped make online dating mainstream. They have allowed shy types to interact more easily with new people. And yes – while some people do use them for hooking up, many others are looking for real love.

Dating takes time. It takes meeting a lot of people before a connection happens. That is the nature of dating – and with a dating app, the haystack is considerably bigger when you are just trying to find that one needle. So it will take you that much longer.

Instead of getting discouraged and giving up dating apps and online dating altogether, it’s time for a different approach. Let’s embrace online dating. Be truthful about what you want so you don’t waste someone else’s time. And most importantly, be respectful to your dates and you’ll find yourself meeting people who will respect you in return.

We're halfway through 2015 and IAC has good news to share. The company's profit in Q2 2015 exceeded expectations, thanks in large part to the overwhelming success of the paid version of its mobile app Tinder.

Match Group, the star of the conglomerate, has driven consistently strong results for the last few quarters, and this one has been particularly momentous. IAC announced its intent to pursue an initial public offering of less than 20% of the common stock of the Match Group. The IPO is expected to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2015.

“The IPO positions The Match Group for continued success with an independent currency, and allows us to focus our attention and capital on growing the rest of IAC’s assets,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin in a statement.

The Match Group also announced plans to purchase PlentyOfFish for $575 million on July 14, 2015. The transaction is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2015.

The paid version of Tinder, launched in March, has garnered good responses from users, despite concerns from many that the model would fail.

"Monetization continues to perform at or above our expectations on key metrics like renewal, conversion and resubscription rates,” said Match Group Chairman Greg Blatt. “We’ve seen no discernible negative correlation between monetization and growth."

IAC reported that the number of paid subscribers for its dating services grew 18% to 4.1 million in the second quarter ended June 30. Revenue at Match Group, which accounts for about a third of total revenue, rose 19%.

Outside of IAC's dating businesses, the company has other successes to report. Within Search & Applications, Applications queries increased 8% driven by 20% B2C growth. B2C revenue increased 18% versus prior year. In the Media segment, Vimeo grew paid subscribers 25% to nearly 630,000. In the eCommerce segment, HomeAdvisor revenue grew 26%.

On the downside, Websites revenue decreased 20% due primarily to a decline in revenue at Ask.com and certain legacy businesses. Applications revenue decreased 2% due to lower revenue in B2B. Revenue in Media was down 1% versus last year, despite the strong growth at Vimeo. Operating income for the match Group in the current year period was negatively impacted by a $4.2 million year-over-year increase in amortization of intangibles.

All in all, revenue growth clocked in at 2% for a total of $771.1 million. IAC's net income was $59.3 million, or 68 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $18 million, or 22 cents per share.

Musicians are having to find new and more organic ways to promote their new albums, since people are discovering content in different ways outside of traditional radio. To capture new – and especially younger – fans, artists who are serious about promotion are now looking to dating apps, and finding some success.

Millennials are the largest group of consumers of music, and they also tend to be on dating apps like Tinder and Grindr. So it only makes sense that music and dating apps would eventually come together.

Some recent examples: Madonna's latest album was advertised on Grindr, a dating app for gay men, while Jason Derulo debuted a music video on Tinder. PlentyofFish was one of the first dating sites to link itself to an artist, by making an appearance in Derulo’s 2010 video for his song “Ridin Solo.” POF also worked with Lady Gaga during a U.S. tour, offering fans a chance to win tickets and backstage passes.

Other popular dating sites are linking to musicians, too - Mariah Carey premiered her music video for the single, "Infinity" via her new profile on Match.com, and DJ-producer Afrojack answered questions about love and relationships for eight hours on Match’s Twitter account to promote his new single.

The latest musician to take advantage of the wide reach of dating apps is Zedd, the Grammy-winning DJ-producer. He worked with Tinder to promote his album, "True Colors," released last month, by setting up his profile on the dating app. While Tinder users searched for dates, they would come across Zedd's promotional profile. They could swipe left or right, as with any other potential match. But instead of messaging him or setting up a date, if they swiped right, they could purchase his new album at a discounted price of $3.99 (compared to $7.99 on iTunes).

According to a recent story from Associated Press, “True Colors” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart its first week with 39,000 copies sold. While no specifics were given about how many sales were the direct result of Tinder users swiping right on Zedd’s profile, chances are the app had something to do with the album’s popular debut.

According to Tinder, eighty-five percent of its users are between the ages 18-34, and the average user spends about 11 minutes on the app each day — one of the main reasons artists are looking to work with Tinder in particular. It makes sense. Since users’ engagement with dating apps is pretty high, artists have their attention, at least for a few seconds, which is long enough to swipe right and learn more.