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Tinder wants to help you find a Bonnaroo boo
Tinder is rolling out a new feature for summer music festival-goers looking for romance. The popular hookup app announced a "Festival Mode" that will let users sort through matches who are attending the same music festival. If you opt-in, your Tinder profile will receive a badge identifying you to other festival-goers.
Tinder test lets you share Spotify clips with matches
Tinder is experimenting with allowing daters to share music via Spotify right inside their conversations. The feature, first spotted by the blog MSPowerUser and confirmed by TechCrunch, is taking place in a number of markets around the world and Spotify appears to be the only streaming service involved in the test. Users already had the ability to select an "anthem" and share their most played artists by linking their Spotify account to Tinder.
Hinge's AI will use first date feedback to improve matches
Dating app Hinge wants you to help improve its pairing algorithm by telling it how your first date went with a fellow user. The aim is to get the AI serving better recommendations in the future. Here's how it works: a few days after you exchange phone numbers with a match in the app, Hinge will ping you both with the new "We Met" prompt to determine if you went on a first date. Your responses, says the company, will make its AI even smarter. Hinge claims that in initial beta tests, 90 percent of members said that their first dates were great, and 72 percent wanted to go on second dates.
OKCupid users can choose a pronoun to display in their profile
Online dating service OkCupid now allows its non-binary and LGBT users to choose their pronoun. Once they've selected their gender(s) from their profile, they can either select from a trio of options (she/her, he/him and they/them) or type in their chosen pronoun. Once entered, it will show up in the 'details' section alongside gender and sexual orientation for others to publicly see.
Facebook has begun internally testing its dating feature
At its annual F8 conference in May, Facebook revealed that it was working on a dating service for its users. Now, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong discovered evidence that the company has begun internally testing the feature among its employees. Facebook confirmed to multiple outlets that it started testing, but didn't elaborate further.
Tinder adds Bitmoji so you can flirt with cartoons
Now we know why Snapchat started letting third-party services use their cartoon-like Bitmojis: To up your flirting game. Starting today, you can use them in Tinder to impress matches with your hilarious sticker jokes.
Tinder user photos are now encrypted
In January, a security firm discovered that photos exchanged on Tinder weren't encrypted. If the firm connected to the same network as someone using the dating app, pics could be intercepted on their way between the app and the service's servers. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to the company shortly thereafter expressing concern over the vulnerability, but today Tinder wrote back assuring him that all photos are now encrypted, allowing you to upload your lovely or lascivious images securely.
Match Group buys Hinge on its way to dating dominance
Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, has bought a controlling stake in Hinge, which was redesigned to cater to individuals seeking relationships instead of the casual dating (and hookup) culture prevalent in other dating apps. This adds the 'anti-Tinder' to the company's collection of other online services OkCupid, PlentyOfFish and Match.com, adding to its already substantial dominance of the digital dating landscape.
Tinder opt-in feature would give women control over conversations
Tinder is taking a page out of Bumble's book and will soon give women the option to control the initiation of conversations, MarketWatch reports today. Bumble, helmed by Tinder co-founder Whitney Holfe Herd, has amassed some 22 million registered users and what sets it apart from other dating apps is that only women who use the app get to decide whether to start a conversation with a man they've matched with. Now, Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match Group -- which owns Match.com, OKCupid and Tinder -- says that Tinder will soon allow its women users to decide whether they want to have control over initiating conversations. Through a future app update, women will be able to opt in to the feature. "Often, women don't really want the pressure of kicking off the conversation, but if they want it, that's great," Ginsberg told MarketWatch. "Giving people the choice versus telling people how to engage is the big difference."
Tinder Gold launches worldwide to reveal who likes you
Tinder has been trying out its Gold subscription service in a handful of countries since June, and now it's launching the experimental tier worldwide. Pay $5 per month on top of Tinder Plus (this price isn't set in stone) and you can find out who likes you without having to swipe through an endless sea of profiles. In that sense, it's more like a classic dating site -- you can go straight to the people who fancy you and match up with the ones who pique your interest. You also get other premium Tinder features like Passport, Rewind and one Boost per month.
Dating app Badoo adds video chat to help you filter out creeps
Dating apps have been slow to adopt video functionality. Big shot Tinder bought a video service in February but hasn't announced plans to add its functionality, while Hinge just included user-made movie clips for profiles -- a feature that Badoo launched last year. Today, the UK-based dating service is taking another step forward and adding video chat straight into the app, so users can move past text and talk in real-time.
Match.com turned its most eligible bachelors into free dolls
Match.com is as synonymous with online dating as Tinder is with casual bonking, but even an established platform needs a good PR push occasionally. In a campaign that would've almost certainly become national news if genders had been reversed, Match.com and PR agency Brands2Life set up a pop-up shop in London's swanky Marylebone area this week, offering free dolls modelled (literally) on the site's most eligible bachelors.
Verified Twitter users have their very own dating app
Just like the rest of us, celebrities yearn for love too. These days most people seeking romance (and other pursuits) can turn to a dating app. But a traditional Tinder account is just too basic for the rich and famous (especially if they want to hookup with mutually wealthy people). Enter Loveflutter "Blue," the latest premium app aimed at celebs -- only this new dating service comes with a twist. The app exclusively caters to verified Twitter users. Hence its name, which refers to the platform's blue tick community.
Tinder's new 'Gold' subscription shows your likes before you swipe
Tinder is introducing another subscription option, which comes with an exclusive perk to get existing premium members to fork out some extra cash. Tinder Gold gives you access to a new "Likes You" option that basically allows you to browse through all of your pending likes. Think of it as a shortcut that lets you cut out the riff raff and head straight to the people on the app that are interested in you.
Videos are the latest way to seduce people on your dating app
The dating app Hinge has just added a video option to its users' profiles. Now, any of a user's six profile photos can be swapped for a video that will autoplay whenever someone scrolls through their profile. The videos can be uploaded from Instagram, Facebook or a phone's camera roll.
Tinder just bought a Snapchat-like video app
With Tinder's acquisition of collaborative video messaging app Wheel, the swiping app of choice may soon offer more than photos of available people in your area. Tinder expanded beyond dating last July with the introduction of Tinder Social, which connects groups of friends to hang out. As Business Insider notes, Wheel is similar to Snapchat's "Live Stories," which allows users to post to a public feed of themed videos.
Dating app Hinge ditches flings for relationships
Between Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid and the plethora of dating apps available, finding someone to hook up with has never been easier. But the endless supply of options has also made it much harder to connect with someone on a deeper, longer-lasting level. To tackle that problem, Hinge is rebuilding itself to focus on connecting people looking for relationships. It's also incorporating a new $7 monthly membership fee, in part to make sure that subscribers are actually invested in looking for relationships.
Land that Tinder match with your favorite Spotify track
If you, single person, often find yourself nostalgic for the bygone days of MySpace profile songs*, Tinder and Spotify would like to get you back in the mood with their latest collaboration. Starting today, anyone can add a Tinder "Anthem" to their profile page, show off their top artists on Spotify and quickly swipe through potential mates based on their music tastes.
PokeMatch is the 'Pokémon Go' dating app you've been dreading
If you're one of the millions of Pokémon Go addicts, you know that waking life carries a new, unrelenting question: what Pokémon are around me right now? The need to keep trying to catch them all has probably soured a few dates since the game launched three weeks ago, but fear not, amorous players: the PokeMatch app has arrived to set you up with the similarly poké-obsessed.
Ghosting redefined
They are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our teachers, our students, our bankers, our janitors, the bathroom attendant, the perfume-counter girl, the porn star, the preacher. They are the right-wing nut job, the Left Shark and the guy in the middle seat. There's no discernible difference between us and them. In fact, there's a good chance you're one of them. They are ghosts -- or so we've been told.
