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Who controls your data?
The average American, one study tell us, touches their phone 2,600 times per day. By the end of a given year, that's nearly a million touches, rising to two million if you're a power user. Each one of those taps, swipes and pulls is a potential proxy for our most intimate behaviors. Our phones are not only tools that help us organize our day but also sophisticated monitoring devices that we voluntarily feed with interactions we think are private. The questions we ask Google, for instance, can be more honest than the ones we ask our loved ones -- a "digital truth serum," as ex-Googler and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writes in Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Hoover up these data points and combine them with all of our other devices -- smart TVs, fitness trackers, cookies that stalk us across the web -- and there exists an ambient, ongoing accumulation of our habits to the tune of about 2.5 quintillion (that's a million trillion) bytes of data per day.
Tinder's new matchmaking service is just for college students
Today, Tinder introduced a new matchmaking service aimed at students attending a four-year college or university. Called Tinder U, it is primarily a dating service, but can also be used to find new friends, a study partner and more. You must have a .edu email address from an accredited university and be located on campus when you sign up for Tinder. Once you restart the Tinder app, you'll be logged into Tinder U automatically according to TechCrunch. The swipe mechanics are the same as the regular app.
Tinder co-founders sue parent company for $2 billion over deception
Three of Tinder's co-founders and several other current and former senior executives are suing the dating company's parent organizations, Match Group and IAC. According to a complaint published online, the lawsuit seeks billions of dollars in damages for allegedly manipulating financial information in order to reduce Tinder's valuation and illegally take away employees' stock options.
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 adds GIF-like video loops to spice up your dating profile
If you're a dating app regular, you know that a photo only says so much about yourself. But do you really want to go to the trouble of recording a whole video for people who could swipe left before you've even spoken a word? Tinder thinks there's a better balance between the two. It's launching a Loops feature that (surprise) adds two-second looping videos to your profile alongside the usual still shots. You just have to trim an existing video to portray yourself as a fun-loving party person or tender romantic.
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.
Tinder tests a 'Picks' feature to save you from endless swiping
Today, Tinder announced that it is testing a new feature called Picks, which highlights matches who fit your particular interests based on career, hobbies, activities and more. It's currently being tested on iOS in the UK, Germany, Brazil, France, Canada, Turkey, Mexico, Sweden, Russia and the Netherlands and is available to Tinder Gold subscribers exclusively.
Snapchat lets third-party apps use its AR camera, Bitmoji and more
Snap is bringing the walls of its closed gardens tumbling down, as it's opened up a rumored developer platform to let third-party creators use Snapchat features in other apps, and bring their own tools to Snapchat. Off the bat, that means you'll start to see Bitmoji in Tinder, and dynamic Postmates stickers that tell you when your order should arrive. Other apps that will use Snapchat features at the outset include Poshmark, Quip, Eventbrite, Giphy, Pandora, Bands in Town, Patreon and SoundHound, The Verge reports.
Tinder Places matches you with people from your favorite hangouts
The science involved in making a match on Tinder is rudimentary at best: you can narrow your pool of potential baes by age and distance, and after that you're largely on your own, relying on carefully selected photographs and vague bios that reveal how your potential match "enjoys having fun", like every other human in the world. There's not a lot to work with before you get to the chatting stage. So Tinder is upping the ante with a new location-based feature, narrowing your prospects to those you cross paths with at your favourite bars, coffee shops and other hangouts.
Facebook removes the middleman with its own dating feature
During the F8 developer conference keynote today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be launching a dating feature. The CEO said that people often tell him that they met on Facebook and since so many relationships now being online, a dating feature seemed like a logical next step. Of course, a dark cloud of data privacy concerns are hanging over the conference and in light of that, Zuckerberg made sure to note that the upcoming tool was designed from the beginning with privacy and safety in mind. The dating feature won't suggest any of your Facebook friends as a match and your friends, even those that have also opted into the feature, won't be able to see your dating profile. And only your first name will be displayed.
You don't need a Facebook account to use Bumble
You don't need a Facebook account to sign up for Bumble anymore. Starting tomorrow, you can use your phone number to register for a new account on the dating app, according to Wired. Like Tinder, Hinge and countless other apps and services, Bumble streamlined the process of setting up a profile and adding photos by offering Facebook as a login option. Last week Tinder users had trouble logging in due to a glitch with Facebook privacy settings.
Tinder suffers sign-in problems following Facebook's privacy changes
Virtual romance has run into a momentary setback -- Tinder has confirmed reports that many users can't sign into its dating service. Those affected are frequently stuck in a login loop where they're asked for extra Facebook permissions, only to be sent back to the original Facebook sign-in request when they tap the relevant button. Others have had success signing in, but have reported losing all their messages or matches. Suffice it to say that this is worrying if you've had your eyes on someone special.
A looping GIF could soon be your next Tinder profile pic
Tinder's latest addition is one cribbed from relationship-minded competitor Hinge. The dating app is testing out a feature called "Loops" in Canada and Sweden, which are essentially two-second repeating GIFs that you can add to your profile.
Bumble sues Tinder's owners for stealing company secrets
Bumble isn't done swiping left on Tinder's parent company Match Group. After publishing an open letter excoriating Match, the women-focused dating app has filed a lawsuit against Tinder's owner, accusing it of stealing trade secrets, among other things. Match started the legal battle when it sued Bumble for allegedly violating its patents, but TechCrunch says this isn't Bumble's response to that lawsuit -- it's a separate one altogether. In the complaint, Bumble argued that the patent lawsuit is baseless but admitted that the two were discussing acquisition over the past few months.
Bumble ‘swipes left’ on Match Group’s lawsuit allegations
Match Group, which owns Tinder, Match.com and OKCupid, recently filed a lawsuit against Bumble, claiming that its rival violated two of its patents. Now Bumble has clapped back. In an open letter published on its website, Bumble says in no uncertain terms that it believes the lawsuit to be an extension of Match's ongoing attempts to acquire it and calls the lawsuit "baseless."
Tinder's parent company sues Bumble over patents
It's no secret that Tinder (or rather, its parent company Match Group) and Bumble are arch-rivals in the swipe-right dating app space, and that battle just escalated. Match Group has sued Bumble for allegedly violating two patents, one for the "ornamental" look of its app and another for the all-important swipe-based system. The Match team wasn't exactly subtle about its claims -- it asserted that Bumble (founded by former Tinder execs) explicitly copied Tinder's core formula with subtle variations on the same interface elements. However, the motivations behind the lawsuit might not be so clear cut.
Tinder rallies support for interracial couple emoji
The official emoji catalog accounts for all kinds of relationships, including same-sex couples and families, but it doesn't reflect interracial couples -- isn't that an odd omission in 2018? Tinder thinks so. The dating site has launched a campaign to officially add interracial couple emoji to the Unicode Consorium's character set. Online dating and interracial couples "go hand in hand," it argued, and that makes the company a prime advocate for greater diversity in chat icons.
After Math: Calls for alarm
While the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting provided the nation with a master class in how to effectively articulate policy reform demands and ruthlessly drag talking heads of the political class, the tech industry had some communication issues of its own. Like the 1,600 911 calls a set of iPhones at a California repair center made, or the Tinder security flaw that enabled account access with only a phone number, or how the FCC is getting sued (again) for trying to roll back Net Neutrality rules. Numbers, because how else are you going to see how savagely the NRA is getting ratioed?
Tinder security flaw granted account access with just a phone number
Security researchers at Appsecure found a way to access anyone's Tinder account via their phone number. The exploit took advantage of a software flaw in both the dating app's login process as well as the Facebook API that it's based on. The issues have been fixed since, but represent a pretty big security lapse.
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."
