Match Group

Whether or not the teams score, the fans certainly will. Around two million of them have flocked to Moscow to see soccer’s brightest stars do battle during the 2018 World Cup, causing a massive surge of traffic for Tinder in the Russian capital.

The phenomenon is a familiar one. During the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Tinder reported a 50% spike in usage in the country over the course of the tournament. During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Tinder founder Sean Rad told the Wall Street Journal the app experienced a 400% day-on-day increase in new users. And during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Tinder noted a 1,850% hike in users taking advantage of the Passport feature to change their location to South Korea.

Match Group has a new dating app called Crown, and to kick off its initial launch in Los Angeles, the company threw a party at the trendy rooftop bar EP&LP in West Hollywood.

The event drew more people than originally anticipated – the company received almost 800 RSVPs. This was an invitation-only event, but word managed to trickle out to L.A. singles. When we arrived, there was a line forming down the block just to get inside.

Crown strategists are positioning the app as a departure from the typical swiping apps modeled after Tinder, because of its intentionally game-like format. Much like you would approach betting on your favorite sports team, say for March Madness, Crown presents you with sixteen matches per day, presented in a bracket format. You pick the winner of each pair of potential matches, until you are left with the final four. When you crown the winner, you have twenty-four hours to message each other and see what happens next. The process starts all over again the next day with new matches.

Image: Tinder

Tinder is boldly going where it has never gone before. The so-called “hookup app” is not only taking a stab at shaping more serious relationships, it’s also giving users a break from its most famous feature.

Tinder’s latest update is Picks, an exclusive matching option for Tinder Gold members that highlights your most promising matches so you don’t have to sink hours into searching, and swiping, for them.

“Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to stay on top of your swiping game,” says Tinder’s announcement. “We’ll show you your Picks on a daily basis — and believe us, we know how to pick ‘em.”

Match Group, the parent company of popular dating app Tinder, has launched a new app called Crown which offers a game-like format for online dating.

It works like this: every day at noon, users are presented with sixteen total profiles, shown two at a time, and must choose only one “winner” from each group of two. Users go through a process of elimination, until you end up with the final four matches, at which point you choose one final winner to be “crowned.” That winner is then alerted he/she has won, but that doesn’t mean you start chatting right away - it’s up to the winner to choose whether or not he/she wants to message you.

The game element is an interesting choice by Match Group. By turning it into a process where there is a possibility to “win,” the idea is that more users would feel invested in the process, and therefore be more likely to reach out. On the other hand, some argue, users might feel more acute rejection if their “winners” choose not to interact.

This week, Match Group announced it has acquired dating app Hinge. According to the press release, the deal gives Match Group a 51 percent stake in the company. Match first started buying shares in Sept of 2017 and has the option to buy remaining shares of Hinge within the next year.

Hinge has spent the last few years revamping its image and features, creating an app that countered Tinder’s hook-up reputation, and aimed to create a space for more serious daters. This included dumping its initial Tinder-like swiping feature and allowing clients to build profiles more like traditional online dating sites. Interestingly, Match Group (which owns Tinder) initially invested in Hinge in the fall of 2017, soon after it debuted its new design.

Hinge is most popular among “urban, educated millennial women looking for relationships,” according to Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg. It has also grown its user base to “five times what it was a year ago,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, making it an attractive purchase for Match Group.

Image: OkCupid

Dating experts have long cautioned against discussing controversial subjects like politics on the first date, but a new partnership between OkCupid and the American Civil Liberties Union puts politics front and center in honor of Pride Month.

The dating service is introducing an ACLU #RightToLove profile badge to help users meet other members who support the non-profit. The badge will be displayed on the profile of every OkCupid user who publicly responds “yes” to the question “Do you support the ACLU?” For every user who receives the badge, OkCupid will donate $1 towards the ACLU (up to $50,000).

According to an OkCupid blog post, ninety percent of users who answered the question said yes — one of the highest agreement percentages across all of OkCupid’s iconic questions.