Events

Match Group announced in its quarterly earnings call that its star app Tinder will be launching a “high-end” subscription tier this fall. In addition, Tinder will debut a product refresh to cater to the Gen Z dating market.

The company has been testing price points in different markets, including a $500 subscription that was called Tinder Vault, according to CPO Mark Van Ryswyk. In an interview with Fast Company earlier this year, he noted that there’s a market for daters who are willing to pay for good matches, as evidenced by the success of its exclusive dating app The League.

However, the price point was arguably high for an app that will not include human matchmakers, but instead will continue to rely on technology to serve up better matches.

Parents in China are taking matters into their own hands with their single adult children and using dating apps to help them find someone to marry.

Parent-facing dating apps are taking off in China, according to Rest of World, which reports on tech trends globally. Many parents are using online matchmaking platforms like Perfect In-Laws, Family-Building Matchmaking, and Parents Matchmaking to set up dates for their grown and unmarried children.

On platforms like these, the parents set up profiles for their children, sometimes without their knowledge or consent, according to Rest of World. When the match is made, it’s the parents who meet and get to know each other first, similar to matchmaking apps used in India.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble has partnered with the much buzzed-about Warner Bros. movie Barbie, which premieres in July in theaters across the world.

Bumble’s partnership is to promote its new Compliments feature using images of the movie’s stars to bolster confidence and encourage people to try it out, according to marketing news website Campaign Asia. In addition to images, the app will have pre-recorded messages from the stars to motivate users to engage positively with each other.

Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, has a dialog bubble on Bumble’s app that states: “your taste in movies? Sensational. Now it’s time to show them how sensational your Compliments are.” Other stars featured include Simu Liu (Ken #2) and Issa Rae (President Barbie), and Ryan Gosling (Ken #1).

A dating app launched by two friends in San Francisco has already gained 6,000 new members, thanks to its clever hook of getting you to a real-life date as quickly as possible.

Soon works like a traditional dating app, allowing members to set up profiles, swipe and match. But once a match is made, instead of messaging first, the app presents a calendar and list of options for where to meet so you can schedule your first date. The idea is to get you meeting IRL, where you aren’t wasting a lot of time on texting a match that goes nowhere.

The meet-up places are not restaurants, but rather bars, coffee shops, or parks, because as the twenty-seven-year-old co-founder Cora Kyler told San Francisco Gate: “There’s no dinner. That is way too much of a commitment for a first date. We call it a ‘zero width’ date. It’s a vibe check, mostly coffee or a drink.”

Image: Match

Dating app Match has launched a new feature called 72 Hours, aiming to get people off the app and into a real-life date by creating a time-limited online event. The app will gather participants in close proximity and help them connect.

The time-sensitive feature will be a weekly in-app experience. Users who participate will be able to select profiles on a map and start conversations (with a nudge to make weekend plans) before the 72 hours is up. The map will limit options to 15 potential matches, but users can adjust age and location filters to find profiles that are further away, according to Tech Crunch.

Participants will only have the 72 Hours to message potential matches, and after that, their messages will disappear. (Match will also provide a countdown to remind users the clock is ticking.)

Muzz, a dating app for Muslim singles, is hosting a series of in-person events in major cities around the world, most recently in New York. About 250 of the app’s users attended.

The event was held in a halal Italian restaurant in Brooklyn and included religious observances, such as prayer mats set up in an outdoor dining tent for Maghreb, one of the five daily prayers for Muslims. The dating app has also recently held events in Toronto, New Jersey, Baltimore, London and Dubai in the last couple of months.

According to Indian Express, at the beginning of the Brooklyn event, attendees were anxious and worried that they looked “desperate” for attending. At the start of the event, women mingled with other women and men spoke with other men, even though it was intended for mingling between sexes. (Muzz does not currently serve the LGBTQ+ community. Founder and CEO Shahzad Younas told Indian Express there were no current plans to expand its app for inclusion, noting: “We’re still at a stage where the premise of our app, even for the straight market, is considered taboo.”)