BUSINESS INSIDER – Dec 11 – Dating app Hinge selects daily matches for its users based on their network of friends on Facebook. In November, Hinge raised $4M from the likes of Red Swan and 500 Startups. It has launched in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, with San Francisco or Chicago up next. ~100K people have signed up. An average person logs in 40 times per month.
Category: Hinge
Hinge Raised $4M
TECH CRUNCH – Nov 4 – Mobile dating app, Hinge, has raised a $4M Series A from Great Oaks, Social + Capital, and more. At first glance, the app looks like Tinder. It gives you one potential mate at a time that you can swipe right to approve or swipe left to dismiss. If two people approve each other, they’re allowed to chat within Hinge. Founder Justin McLeod believes that people use this app to find romance as opposed to Tinder, mostly known for hookups. Since expanding beyond its home city of DC in August to New York and Boston, Hinge has doubled its user count to 60K.
by Josh Constine
See full article at Tech Crunch
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Hinge Dating App Making Smart Match Recommendations
THE VERGE – Aug 16 – Hinge is a lot like Tinder, a popular hookup app that only reveals potential matches once both people show interest, except it only surfaces matches that are friends of friends. Hinge doesn’t ask the usual array of questions but instead relies on pre-existing signals to make assumptions about you. Solely by examining your friends and interests, the service can predict your political leaning, your age, your sexual orientation, and your race.
by Ellis Hamburger
See full article at The Verge
Mark Brooks: Good move! Past behaviors are the best indicator of future behaviors.
Hinge Brings Its Romance Graph To More Cities
TECH CRUNCH – Aug 8 – The problem with Tinder is women don’t trust strangers, so matches don’t turn into meet-ups. Hinge uses the same hot-or-not style but only shows you trustable friends of friends based on its “romance graph”. That’s led to insane retention in D.C., upcoming funding, and now an expansion to New York City with plans for Boston and Philadelphia. The app is focused on young professionals and grad students. It’s got 30K total users with an average age of 27, and has made 200K matches. 85% of those who download it are still active a week later, and 75% are still active a month later. You can only join if you already have friends on the app. Hinge will look to monetize through premium subscriptions that give you more insight into who is checking you out, or put you in front of more potential dates.
Dating Startup Hinge Expanding To New York
WASHINGTON POST – May 6 – Hinge, a free dating app that connects users to the friends of their Facebook friends, plans to launch in New York this summer. The app has attracted ~10K users since its launch in the Washington area in February. Every day at noon, Hinge users receive a batch of their Facebook friends’ single friends, and can indicate if they’re interested. If two users mutually indicate interest, Hinge sends an e-mail introduction. In the future, the team plans to incorporate third-degree connections — friends of friends of friends.
Hinge Dating App Hits 10,000 Users
GUESTOFGUEST – Apr 25 – Dating app Hinge, which matches potential couples through mutual facebook friends, has surpassed 10K users and is now available on Android.
Hinge Helps Users Date Friends Of Facebook Friends
WASHINGTON POST – Feb 14 – Justin McLeod recently started a D.C.-based mobile dating app called Hinge, which lets users rank and connect with their friends’ Facebook friends. Every day at noon, Hinge users who sign up using their Facebook accounts receive a batch of 25 profiles of potential matches collected from a pool of their friends’ friends. Users rank the profiles on a scale from 1 to 5. If two people rank each other at 4 or 5, Hinge sends a “match” introduction to both. Hinge’s algorithm weeds out users who are listed on Facebook as married or in a relationship, who aren’t local, and who are out of users’ desired age range. Since its launch last week, Hinge’s app has been installed a couple thousand times. The app has already produced ~600 matches.
Hinge.co: New Facebook Dating App
WASHINGTON POST – Jan 18 – Hinge.co launched this summer as the love child of Facebook and Friend-setups. Justin McLeod, CEO came up with the idea after eyeing a cute girl in one of his Harvard Business School classes and later finding that they had a dozen Facebook friends in common. Together with Bennett Richardson, CMO, and Matt O'Donnell, CTO, Hinge was born. Facebook users sign up for the Hinge game and by answering a series of questions such as "Who throws the best parties?. The game develops a list of compatible friends of friends.
Hinge Social Dating Facebook App Launches
WASHINGTON POST – July 13 – The Hinge application uses Facebook friends-of-friends as a source of potential dates through a game-like interface. The service is live in the Washington D.C. Area using a freemium model with a $7 per month premium subscription. According to Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch, “No one has gotten this right. The privacy concerns are incredible.” But, he adds, “it’s one of the last big opportunities in the online dating space, for sure.”