Dating Services

Tinder released its annual Year in Swipe study, and while the company has struggled in recent months to attract new paying users, many are still turning to the app to find serious relationships, not just hookups.

“Looking for…” was Tinder’s top bio mention in 2024 according to its global data. The company also found that a majority of singles – 53 percent of men and 68 percent of women – want a romantic relationship. But they are doing more than posting this desire in their bios. Nearly 20 percent of 18-to-30-year-old daters said they are creating vision boards to manifest their ideal relationship in 2025 (assisted by Tinder’s new interactive vision board tool that can be shared with friends and family).

Tinder CMO Melissa Hobley told Mashable: "I'm seeing — I think a lot of people seeing this growing frequency of people say, 'Do not talk to me if you're not looking for something serious.'"

The CFO and CMO of Bumble have announced their departures for early 2025, a shakeup for the dating app company.

According to Seeking Alpha, Bumble’s Chief Financial Officer Anu Subramanian will continue in her role until March and Chief Marketing Officer Selby Drummond will leave in January. The company has started a search process to replace Subramanian, who joined the company in 2020 and led it through its initial public offering.

According to Tip Ranks, the moves caused the share price for Bumble to increase, but overall the stock has declined almost 40% just in the last year.

Hailey Welch, the “Hawk Tuah” girl who rose to fame from a viral video moment has now launched a new dating app dubbed Pookie Tools.

Pookie Tools is AI-based and acts like a virtual wingman, offering everything from conversation prompts to outfit recommendations to profile enhancement tips.

The app targets the Gen Z market with some of Welch’s “cheat codes,” as the description in the app store reads. The cheat codes include a “Conversation Assistant” and “Text Responder” that offer personalized prompts to keep conversations going and an “Astrological Insights” feature that helps determine a match’s compatibility based on zodiac signs.

The share price of Match Group Inc. dropped after a disappointing third quarter earnings report, signaling that consumer interest in paying for dating app subscriptions continues to wane.

According to Business Insider, Match Group shares dropped more than 18 percent after the company reported that paying users on its most popular app Tinder fell 4 percent in the third quarter from the same time period last year, to $9.9 million. The revenue decline for Tinder has been continuous the past few quarters, and Match Group says it expects this slowdown to continue in the fourth quarter.

Hinge continues to be the star of Match Group’s offerings, growing 36 percent year-over-year, though its userbase is still a fraction of Tinder’s.

Young singles in India are turning to new and unexpected platforms to expand their networks, including LinkedIn for dating and Bumble for finding a job.

According to India Today, a recent survey from DatingNews.com found that 61 percent of respondents aged 35 to 40 said they have found their dates on LinkedIn. And 52 percent aged 20 to 40 said they looked to apps like LinkedIn to find dates.

Traditionally, LinkedIn has been a networking platform for careers, but lately people have been turning away from dating apps and gravitating to other social platforms, and especially to LinkedIn. At first, this trend was being reported in the US, but now it seems to be global.

Cheers, a new matchmaking app founded by former Instagram engineer Sahil Ahuja, has launched in New York.

The new app is focused on building connections by offering a similar format to social platforms like Instagram, where users can add unlimited photos and videos to their profile (similar to social media apps), so other users get a feel for who they are. Cheers uses AI in some of its features as do most dating apps now, including for photo selection and to set up user profiles.

According to Tech Crunch, Cheers is differentiating itself from apps like Tinder and Bumble by offering posting features and friend-matchmaking in addition to romantic connections, leaning heavily into the social media model.