Bumble

Image: bumble

Bumble for Friends, the new standalone app for finding friends from dating app Bumble, has partnered with holiday turkey brand Butterball to bring people together this holiday season.

The new partnership initiative called “Find Your Table” features a series of Friendsgiving events and some resources to help people make new connections ahead of the holiday season. The purpose, according to the joint press release, is to “help people make new connections and discover the joy and ease of gathering with friends and family, over turkey, this holiday season.”

The in-person event launches Thursday, November 2nd at 6:00pm EST in New York City, and will feature friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, No More Lonely Friends founder Marissa Meizz and Dinner with Friends Founder Anita Michaud, along with reps from Butterball, according to the release. They will conduct holiday tastings as well as help to connect people.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble is distributing campus safety kits to college students to help them date more safely on college campuses.

The Austin-based dating app company will distribute hundreds of drink spike prevention products from NightCap, along with safety alarms from She’s Birdie, to students at the University of Texas in Austin as well as 160 other campuses around the country, according to Axios.

The drink spike prevention product looks like a hair scrunchie according to Axios, and can fit over the top of a glass to cover it, leaving room for only a straw. Another selling point is that women can wear them in their hair or around their wrists until they need them, making them easy to carry and use.

The Australian government told the dating app industry that they must improve safety standards on their apps or risk being forced to make changes through legislation. Dating app companies were given until June 30th, 2024 to develop a “voluntary code of conduct” to address user concerns about safety.

According to the Associated Press, the government was basing its decision on new research that found three-quarters of dating app users in Australia between 2016 and 2021 had suffered some form of sexual violence. The research was conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology and published last year.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland noted that dating apps have become the most popular way to meet people, and therefore must improve when it comes to protecting the people using them. “The government is concerned about rates of sexual harassment, abusive and threatening language, unsolicited sexual images and violence facilitated by these platforms,” she said, according to Associated Press.

Image: hinge

Dating app Hinge recently removed the audio and video calling feature from its app, posting that people were no longer using the feature as much as they had during the pandemic.

Hinge introduced the features early on during lockdowns so that Hinge users could virtually engage rather than risk exposure through in-person meet-ups. However, things have changed since then. According to Fast Company, Hinge noted that people would rather meet in person to see if there’s a connection than do a video date.

While this move might not be a surprise to Hinge users, the company did not announce it to the press. Instead, Hinge only mentioned it in an undated blog post in its Help Center, according to Fast Company.

Dating app Bumble has updated its community guidelines to crack down on bad behaviors like ghosting and doxing, as well as to cut down on bots.

Bumble is coming down hard on the issue of bots by banning actions like “artificially influencing connections, matching, conversations, or engagement through the use of automation or scripting,” according to Tech Crunch. The app has blocked more than 8.2 million fake and spam accounts this year using AI. The problem of bots is an ongoing one for all dating apps, and using AI as a tool to identify and block these accounts benefits users in the long run.

In its guidelines, Bumble added clauses prohibiting adult content on its apps, including language in profiles and attempts to “buy, sell, or promote sexual content” according to Tech Crunch.

Popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and Grindr are trying new subscription pricing to continue to grow revenue, including premium pricing as well as discounts and short-term subscriptions for young Gen Z daters.

Dating app revenue has stalled in recent quarters, and to increase revenue and paying subscribers these companies are looking at out-of-the-box pricing. Match Group is especially motivated, as it has seen revenue drop the past few months while Bumble and Grindr are still seeing gains. Many are starting to offer premium services to highly motivated and more affluent daters, who are willing to spend $500 a month on a dating app if it means better, more curated matches.

On the other end of the spectrum, these same apps want to attract younger daters, specifically the Gen Z market. Match Group is starting to offer short-term weekly subscriptions for those singles who don’t want to commit, as well as discounted pricing to encourage young daters to pay for subscriptions, instead of just opting for the free service and paying for certain in-app features as needed.