WALL STREET JOURNAL – Match Group reported mixed Q4 results on Tuesday with adjusted operating income coming in just above Wall Street's estimate, while both Tinder revenue and total revenue growth fell slightly short of analysts' expectations. Match attributed the revenue shortfall to foreign exchange and lingering effects of Omicron. Match talked more about relationship app Hinge. Match now says Hinge did just under $200M in revenue last year and forecasts that revenue would grow to ~$300M this year. Hinge's payers increased ~60% in the Q4 quarter versus the same period of 2019 with revenue per payer growing ~300% over that period.
Category: Hinge
Hinge Nabs Coca-Cola and Spotify Vet as New CMO
BUSINESS INSIDER – Hinge has hired Coca-Cola and Spotify marketing vet Jackie Jantos as its CMO. Jantos will broaden Hinge's appeal among GenZ and LGBTQ+ daters. She will also oversee international expansion into markets like Germany, France, and Sweden. She was most recently CMO at data privacy and management company Dashlane. Jantos succeeds Nathan Roth, who was Hinge's CMO between 2018 and 2021. The app plans on increasing its multi-million marketing budget by 25% compared to 2021, according to the new CMO.
According to Hinge, Therapy Could Be the Secret to a Flourishing Love Life
WOMEN'S HEALTH – According to research conducted by Hinge, the last two years have seen singles prioritize mental health more than ever. The company found that when it comes to dating, mental health isn't just an attractive quality but a necessary one, with daters admitting they aren't accepting anyone who isn’t doing it. 89% of Australian Hinge singles would prefer to date someone who goes to therapy.
How Dating Apps Are Countering ‘FODA’ This Covid-19 Christmas
FORBES – "With the vaccines and other changes in the pandemic, people want to get back out there and date," said Logan Ury, director of relationship science at Hinge, citing her research into 2021 dating trends. "But we also understood that more than half of singles have FODA." "FODA," Ury explained, "is fear of dating again." "People need love. People need connection," said Wolfe Herd in her CNBC interview. "That does not go away, irrespective of the changing landscape of this pandemic so our business remains largely unaffected during this new wave." Bumble adapted during the pandemic using video and voice. Hinge has adopted this tech, too, but not with a nod to its competition. Its team said they found inspiration in Clubhouse and added voice to users' profiles.
Hinge Cracked Getting Audio to Go Viral
THE VERGE – Last month, the dating app Hinge debuted voice prompts to daters' profiles. Instead of telling potential matches about themselves with text, they could do so with their voice. Each clip can be 30 seconds, and, at launch, Hinge said two out of three daters it polled thought voice would help them "better determine their chemistry" with someone. The prompts have gone viral on TikTok and Twitter, with people reposting them either because they're funny, cringe-worthy, or something in between. Hinge says 13% of new daters on the app build their profile with a voice prompt and that 46% of people on the app have listened to at least one voice prompt.
Hinge Launches ‘Voice Prompts’ Feature
TECH CRUNCH – Voice Prompts will allow users to answer a prompt through a 30-second voice recording. The new feature is rolling out globally. The company says 65% of its users say they believe hearing someone's voice would help them determine interest in a match, and 75% of users said it's difficult to feel connected with a match when their conversation is limited to just text and photos. Hinge also plans to launch a new "Voice Notes" feature later this fall. Bumble and Happn both have voice note features. Additionally, a new app called String lets users only communicate through voice notes.
To Make Real Money With an iOS App, Offer Entertainment, Gaming, or Dating
ABC MONEY – By the end of 2021, Statista estimates that mobile apps will generate ~$693B in revenue through paid downloads and in-app advertising, up 17.6% YOY. This amount is expected to continue increasing to $935B by 2023. The Apple App Store generated $21.5B in consumer spending in the Q3 of 2021, compared to just $12.1B on the Google Play Store, a 55% difference. In August 2021, the Apple store launched ~32,500 unique apps, with a total of 2.22M estimated to be available for download on the store. The vast majority of apps on the top 50 list fall into the entertainment, gaming, or dating genres. Two of the top ten spots on the Apple Store's top-grossing list belong to Tinder (2nd) and Bumble (8th), with an honorable mention of Hinge occupying number 28 on the top chart.
by Claire James
See full article at ABC Money
How Do the Best Dating Algorithms Work?
MASHABLE – Tinder: The Tinder algorithm used to be based on the Elo rating system, which was originally designed to rank chess players. The "Elo score" gauges how other profiles interacted with yours. It logged your swipes. Elo is no longer used. Now, the most important thing a user can do is…use the app. The more data Tinder has on you, the more Tinder knows your preferences and the algorithm is based on how your profile is Liked or Noped.
Hinge: The dating app "designed to be deleted" doesn't have swiping. Hinge uses the Gale-Shapley algorithm. This Nobel-prize winning algorithm was created to find optimal pairs in "trades" that money can't buy – like organ donations. Say there are 10 women and 10 men. How do they get paired up? Well, tell one group (either the men or women) to pick their first choice, and if they get rejected they move on to their second choice. Continue until none of the people left want to get matched anymore. Tell the app when you've met a match in person and Hinge understands who you're interested in.
OkCupid: OkCupid has 4k questions. There's 60 sexual orientation and gender options. OkCupid calculates a match percentage. If another user has similar search preferences and responses to questions as you, and is looking for the same things relationship-wise, you'll have a high match percentage.
Bumble: Bumble is similar to Tinder in that it uses a swipe model. Bumble declined to comment about its search algorithm.
Grindr: Grindr only uses algorithms for security purposes, like detecting spam accounts. There's no recommendation algorithm to speak of on Grindr today.
by Anna Iovine
See full article at Mashable
Mark Brooks: Frankly, I'm surprised at the lack of substance here. Our job is to bring clarity to a complex problem. Who to date? Who to marry? Who to raise a family with? (…and perhaps guide people further on how not to screw it up). This is not an unsolvable problem, but it is highly nuanced. Culture, religion, values, and lifestyle preferences compound the problem. Also, what people say they want and what they are willing to accept can be quite different. i.e. stated preferences vs revealed preferences. Observing people's behaviors and getting feedback after each date is key. Also, we really need to know when we have been successful. When we have clear visibility on this, at scale, then AI becomes useful for helping us solve for long-term compatibility.
See the top news on Tinder See the top news on OkCupid
See the top news on Bumble See the top news on Grindr
See the top news on Hinge
Investors See Big Potential in Smaller Online Dating Companies
The Future of Dating Is Hybrid
AXIOS – Aug 30 – Dating is expensive, and many people are deciding they'd rather meet virtually first in case it doesn't work out. The average American spends ~$700 annually on dates, according to a 2019 LendingTree study. "But the pandemic was a jolt to our systems," says Logan Ury, a behavioral scientist and the director of relationship science at Hinge. "Video chat was normalized, and it's only natural that it would extend to dating, because dates can be really costly and time-consuming." At the beginning of the pandemic, almost no Hinge users had been on a virtual date, per a survey conducted by the dating app. Now, close to half of them (44%) have been on a video date, and 65% of those people say they'll incorporate virtual dating into their routines even when it is safe to meet in person.