It’s slowing down. Dating, it seems. Not the demand for it but the pace. A ‘slow dating’ app Once has been acquired by the Dating Group for $18 million in cash and stock. From the Techcrunch piece:
Once is a dating app that uses matching algorithms to deliver just one match per day to each user. It pitched itself as an alternative to the frenetically paced apps such as Tinder and Bumble. Indeed, Bumble revealed last week that two in five people of those it surveyed are taking longer to get to know someone as a result of pandemic lockdowns. And 38% Bumble users admit that it had made them want something more serious.
Interestingly, Bumble emerged as an antidote to Tinder’s (and other existing dating apps) male skew. On Bumble, the women makes the first move. As they clarify on their website:
After two users have mutually right-swiped one another, a match is created. After a match is created, you'll see a notification appear on your screen. From here, you can either start a chat or continue swiping through other profiles.
After a match has been created, what follows depends on the user’s gender.
On Bumble, women always make the first move. If she doesn't initiate a conversation within 24 hours, the connection expires.
Men cannot initiate a conversation with women. However, they can show that they're especially interested in her by using the daily 24-hour extend feature.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble has an interesting connection with Tinder, she used to handle their marketing and campus recruitment. She started dating one of the co-founders but things went kind of downhill with her ending up starting Bumble. You can read about the fracas in Why are Tinder and Bumble fighting? And if you are the audio type, this wonderful podcast from Wondery (they got bought by Amazon recently), Dating App Wars | Are You Ready to Bumble? is a must listen. From the podcast’s notes:
Niche apps are kicking into high gear for users with specific criteria, and there’s something for everyone: muzmatch for Muslims, Mouse Mingle for Disney fans, Twindog for canine lovers, Sizzl for bacon aficionados, Bristl for beard enthusiasts and Dead Meet for morticians and other death professionals.
In the mainstream, Match and Tinder have a new, serious competitor: Whitney Wolfe Herd’s Bumble. The feminist app debuts to a huge response — and a stinging lawsuit from Wolfe Herd’s former employer, Tinder.
And Bumble has recently filed to go public.
Meanwhile, in good old India dating apps are blooming. The ever reliable Statista estimates India will be the second largest revenue generator for dating apps after the US in 2021. And they say Indians don’t pay for anything online.
From a recent Mint piece:
Dating apps reach 2.2% of India’s total population and are on track to reach 3.6% by 2024, market researcher Statista has estimated.
While apps declined to share the absolute number of users on their platforms, American-origin Bumble, where actor Priyanka Chopra is an investor, said it crossed 4 million in July.
Statista data places Tinder as the runaway leader in India with OKCupid in second place.
A lot of the boom in India is being spurred by Tier-II towns. This Indian Express article tells us:
Happn, one of the most popular apps in India with 28 million users, now has Nagpur, Surat, Ludhiana, and Agra in its top 20 cities. “Because of the pandemic, smaller cities are rising in terms of new members or activity on the app,” said Marine Ravinet, Head of Trends at Happn.
Truly Madly, an Indian dating app with 7.8 million users, found that, out of cities with a revenue base in lakhs, those like Bhubaneshwar, Jammu, Kanpur, Patna, Rajkot, Varanasi, and Vijaywada have seen a seven-fold revenue growth since the pandemic — much more than the metros. “One factor could be reverse migration as our small town growth accelerated in March… We also saw the peak time for usage shift from 11 pm to 2 am,” said Snehil Khanor, CEO of TrulyMadly, which has 7.8 million users in India.
And just this morning the Economic Times informed us that in dating apps political beliefs are become a determinant of compatibility. From Shephali Bhatt’s ‘Love Aaj Kal..is matching political beliefs’:
According to OkCupid’s survey of a million users on the dating app in India, 29% of women prefer not to date someone with radical-left or radical-right politics as against 25% men.
Since women's issues have been front and centre the world over of late, women, especially millennials, have been the most vocal about their political views, observes Julie Spira, an online dating expert from Los Angeles.
“It’s not a priority as you’re going to have a lot of differences,” says Swetha Priyadharshini from Chennai. “But with the current political scenario in India, there are a lot of political ideologies I don't associate myself with, and I'd at least like to know what I'm getting into.”
Getting to know what one is getting into is always a good idea.
With that, I will leave you to mull over the current state of affairs.
Have a great weekend.
Suprio