Match.com

Image: Sensor Tower

After more than two years in the top spot, Netflix is no longer the world’s highest-grossing non-gaming mobile app. That title now goes to Tinder, which grossed $260.7 million from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store in the first quarter of this year.

App store intelligence firm Sensor Tower recently released its rankings of the highest grossing apps in the United States and worldwide for Q1 2019. Overall, global app revenue reached $19.5 billion last quarter, up nearly 17 percent year-over-year. Consumer spending on Apple’s App Store totaled approximately $12.4 billion globally, while Google Play revenue grew 20.2 percent year-over-year to approximately $7.1 billion. The world is increasingly moving to mobile, and for companies that are prepared to capitalize on the change, the potential for profit is huge.

Recipient
Match.com

For 2019 Match is the Editor's Top Pick - Paid award recipient. Since its inception Match has always been a paid dating service. It is free to look at profiles and search but a subscription is required to send messages to other members. While "Free" dating services are the latest craze their low bar of entry (i.e. no credit card required) means that scammers and bots tend to be much more prevalent. Match is very good at blocking scammers from even joining their service, thereby protecting their members. Being a paid service also means Match.com has the money to invest in the latest technology and hire some of the best trained developers.

The New Match Dating App

In late 2018 Match did a major update for both their website and dating apps (iOS and Android). They dropped a number of features and made the navigation simpler to use. In a sense Match has gone back to the basics of online dating, offering only the key features needed to search, match and message.

The apps and website more closely mirror each other now with this new version in terms of design and features. One of the main things you will notice when you first launch the new app or log into the website is the updated color pallet. Gone are the washed out darker blues. In its place you have a much more vibrant blues. This makes things pop more on the screen. Profiles also stand out more in searching and matching as they appear on screen larger. Other changes include:

We know we shouldn’t compare ourselves to what we see on social media. Everything, from the poreless skin to the sunsets over pristine beaches, is edited and carefully curated. But despite our better judgement, we can’t help feeling envious when we see travelers on picturesque getaways and fashion influencers posing in their flawlessly organized closets.

This compulsion to measure our real lives against the heavily filtered lives we see on social media now extends to our relationships. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are littered with images of #couplegoals that make it easy to draw comparisons to our own relationships and give us unrealistic perceptions of love. According to a survey from Match.com, one third of couples feel their relationship is inadequate after scrolling through snaps of seemingly-perfect partners plastered across social media.

I've been working on updating the Match review for 2019 (last major update was in 2017) and I stumbled on a statistics page Match put up for their dating service. On it they explain the breakdown of their members by age along with a few other interesting facts. I also found an article on Seeking Alpha which talks about Match Group (who owns Match.com) and what makes it an attractive buy at the moment for investors. Let’s summarize the more thought provoking of these stats.

Match has just launched a new feature called the Super Match Badge (currently in the UK only), allowing women to award men who check off all parts of Match’s profile and behavior requirements. The purpose of the badge is for women to immediately identify great candidates who they might want to meet.

Match is making an effort to appeal to women who have had to deal with less-than-tolerable behavior from men over dating apps. Many online daters have complained about ghosting and sending inappropriate messages and photos, and this is Match’s way of addressing the issue.

It’s also a good strategy for men who use dating apps – you can set yourself apart from the crowd.

These so-called Match Heroes who receive the Super Match Badge have to complete many steps in the process, including: