Location

Dating app Bumble announced that it was cutting almost 30 percent of its global workforce, shaking up the company while its userbase continues to decline.

According to its new CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who’s back heading up the struggling company she founded, Bumble will be focused on returning to leaner operations to drive growth, according to The Guardian. The company will be cutting 240 roles globally in efforts to turnaround its sinking stock price.

Bumble shares rallied 24 percent during early trading the day after the announcement.

Tinder CEO Faye Iosotaluno announced in a post on LinkedIn that she will be leaving her role in July after two years as head of the app and eight years working for parent company Match Group.

This is the latest shakeup for Match Group, whose new CEO Spencer Rascoff recently announced that Tinder’s chief technology officer would also be leaving at the end of May, with no replacement named.

Match Group said it would be laying off 13 percent of its workforce in efforts to cut spending, the bulk of which would come from Tinder, according to The New York Post. Tinder has seen a decline in paying users over the last several quarters, and activist investors have been pushing for a turnaround. Hinge is the company’s bright spot, which is steadily growing despite the industry’s general decline.

SmashTogether, a new dating app that was to launch in beta version on May 15, received a cease-and-desist order before the platform went live.

The new dating app was meant to bring together fans of Super Smash Bros, a popular video game, with its name being a cheeky reference to hooking up. SmashTogether doesn’t say who ordered a cease-and-desist, but likely it’s from the Smash Bros. game’s company Nintendo.

The legal news was announced via a Twitter post from SmashTogether, alongside a picture of Yoshi from the video game perched on a wall and looking off into the sunset. 

A recent study by OkCupid has found that above all else, singles want to know where people stand politically, and more specifically, if their matches’ views align with their own.

According to OkCupid's blog post, 6 in 10 women around the world want their partners to share their political views. In the U.S. which has become more divided since Trump took office, that number climbs as high as 70 percent. More than half of Gen Z men and women want to share the same political views, as do 63 percent of Millennials and 64 percent of Gen X daters. Among LGBTQ daters, that number goes up to a whopping 80 percent.

According to OkCupid, today’s singles are more interested in where someone stands on issues like climate change or reproductive rights, rather than something benign like where they last went on vacation. And if their politics don’t match, it can be a dealbreaker.

Bumble appears to be matching its users with people they have already blocked, according to a report from Rolling Stone.

The app has come under fire after this practice came to light over social media. According to Rolling Stone, professor Jennie Young at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, who specializes in rhetoric and gender studies, shared a post on Instagram with a screenshot from Bumble’s support center after asking them why she was matching with users she previously blocked.

“Bumble will show you people you have swiped left/blocked on in the past — in case you have changed your mind,” the screenshot captured of Bumble's response.  

Dating app giant Match Group is set to cut 13 percent of its staff, a reduction of about 325 employees from its most current count of 2,500. The company will also be closing all open positions.

This news comes after another disappointing first quarter. The company said in an earnings call that paid users fell more than 5 percent from a year ago, a trend that continues as more young daters look for ways to meet outside of dating apps. According to Fortune, the company’s new CEO Spencer Rascoff said that the staffing cuts will save Match Group about $100 million per year, and about $45 million in 2025 alone.

The trimming of staff will mostly focus on management according to Tech Crunch, with about one in five managers affected. The company wants to centralize key functions like technology and data services, customer care, and content moderation. It also wants to focus on media buying and international go-to-market functions to increase customer reach.