Features

Dating apps are struggling right now, and many Gen Z women are looking to other platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram to meet people.

A new article in The Financial Times cites a poll from Mintel that found that 47 percent of men between 18 and 34 had used a dating app or website to meet someone this past year, compared to only 25 percent of women of the same age.

“Trying to engage young women is the biggest struggle for dating apps,” said Rebecca McGrath, associate director for media and technology at Mintel. “Significant gender skew means it is harder for men to find matches and, subsequently, women often become bombarded, making the experience worse for all.”

Dating app Hinge is doubling down on efforts to curb ghosting on its app with a new feature called Your Turn Limits.

According to the company’s press release, Your Turn Limits encourages a user with eight or more matches left waiting for a response to their messages to either reply or end the conversation before that user can match with someone new.

“With the launch of Your Turn Limits, we’re testing a new way to help our users focus on quality over quantity – keeping intentionality at the core of their dating experience,” said Justin McLeod, Founder and CEO of Hinge, in a statement. “We’ve heard from daters how they’re feeling overwhelmed, distracted, and, simply put, burnt out.”

Image: Hinge

Match Group announced in its first quarter earnings report that Tinder’s paying users were down for the sixth quarter in a row, but Hinge’s paying users continue to rise.

According to Tech Crunch, Hinge has seen a whopping 31 percent increase in paying users year over year, now up to 1.4 million. This is far less than Tinder’s 10 million paying users, but as Tinder continues on its downward trend, its paying users dropping 9 percent from this time last year, Hinge offers a beacon of hope.

Dating apps in general have struggled in the last year, and companies like Match Group and Bumble have been trying to address it with more exciting paid features and additional security protocols, like Verification on Tinder. However, dating app users continue to drop their subscriptions and opt not to pay for features, especially younger users who are turning to free platforms like social media apps to connect.

Founder and former CEO of Bumble Whitney Wolfe Herd told audiences at the Bloomberg Technology Summit that dating apps should lean heavily into AI, including chatbots that can advise users and even go on dates for them.

Herd, who stepped down last year, noted that Bumble will use AI "to help create more healthy and equitable" dating experience, according to Gizmodo.

“You could, in the near future, be talking to your AI dating concierge. You could share your insecurities,” Wolfe Herd said on stage at the Summit, according to Gizmodo. “There is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges.”

Image: photoroom

OkCupid and AI-powered app Photoroom have partnered to introduce a new tool that helps erase your ex from your best photos.

According to OkCupid’s press release, the “Ex-Terminator” is a new feature designed to help users digitally remove their exes from photos they want to post on the dating app. Using AI technology, Photoroom seamlessly edits out unwanted people, giving OkCupid users a chance to update their profiles with new solo lifestyle.

Interested people can go to Photoroom’s website and see the promotional page with OkCupid, dubbed “Erase Your Ex.” From there, you can drop an image and Photoroom will erase your ex and deliver your photo back to upload to OkCupid. (There’s also a link to join the dating app from the site if you’re not already a member.)

Bumble has unveiled the newest feature of its dating app, removing the requirement for women to make the first move with their matches. The app’s new CEO Lidiane Jones said that this is part of a larger relaunch of the app.

Until now, Bumble has required women to send the first message to a potential match, keeping them in control of who they want to communicate with. Now, the dating app has jettisoned its requirement to automate the process with the launch of “Opening Moves,” which lets female users choose from a list of prompts where matches can reply and start a conversation themselves. (Women can also create their own prompts.)

For same-gender and non-binary users, they can either set or respond to an Opening Move.