81% of Daters Would Go on Offline Date, But Video Is Here to Stay
Posted on July 29, 2020
THE MEET GROUP – July 29 – At the start of the pandemic, video was a replacement for real-life interaction. Now, it is a filter to screen potential dates before meeting in person. This shift toward video will extend beyond the pandemic. Tinder has replaced its CEO with a media executive who led CBS's push into streaming video. The Meet Group has been building a livestreaming dating platform for over three years, and today, they are the largest provider of livestreaming dating games in the world. Meet Group's users play 185K dating games a day, up 95% since the declaration of a pandemic in March. The total time spent in video dating increased by 39% to 1.4M hours a day, with each person spending on average ~20 minutes a day. NextDate, the Meet Group's video dating feature, is like speed-dating but with an audience. People queue up to "date" a streamer who has two minutes to choose Next or Date while the audience can comment and rate the contestant. BlindDate adds a twist: it blurs the video image of the contestant, forcing the first impression to be based on personality rather than looks. According to July SurveyGizmo survey of 1500 US residents interested in dating, 81% of daters would be willing to go on an in-person date tomorrow if they met someone interesting on a dating app today. 25% said they had dated in person in the last 30 days.
