Dating apps and other social friend-finders are being put on notice: Dating app giant Bumble is looking to make more acquisitions.
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Match Group, the company that owns several dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, released its first-quarter earnings report on Tuesday, which shows that Tinder’s paying user base has decreased for the sixth quarter in a row. On the other hand, Hinge has seen an increase in members who are willing to pay for the app. […]
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Allowing women to make the first move has been Bumble’s modus operandi ever since it launched in 2014. A decade later, the company wants to give women even more control. “Opening Move” is a new feature it’s introducing to let women pre-write an opening line so they can quickly send a message without having to come up with new things to say for each match.
The feature is part of a big relaunch of the app unveiled Tuesday, which will also let women prepare questions to send to matches, set additional dating intention preferences and prompts, and more.
In nonbinary and same-gender pairings, either user can create and respond to an Opening Move, the company said.
The updates are putting in significant changes at a time when dating app fatigue is becoming more prevalent, specifically among Gen Z users fed up with swiping culture. Bumble’s recent update indicates that the dating app is trying to step up its game and appeal to younger users. Later this year, the company plans to introduce new AI-powered features and other improvements, like potentially allowing men to send the first message.
To set up Opening Moves, users can either type a custom message or select from Bumble’s pre-composed questions, such as “What do you like about my profile?” and “What book or film changed the way you think?” In addition to alleviating some of that initial messaging anxiety, the new feature could be a helpful way to send a dealbreaker question to weed out unsuitable matches.
“We recognize that it can sometimes be burdensome to start a chat every single time, so we wanted to listen to our members in that respect, help them find more ways to make that first move feel a little easier,” Dara Alsulayman, a senior product manager at Bumble, told TechCrunch.
Alsulayman revealed that Bumble is planning to “add support for dynamic Opening Moves,” meaning users would be able to create and choose from multiple Opening Moves instead of only being able to send one version.
Bumble experimented with the Opening Move feature in various markets, including New Zealand and Australia, new CEO Lidiane Jones previously told Fortune. The company notes in Tuesday’s press release that, during the testing phase, the feature led to higher reply rates and longer conversations.
Bumble also made updates to profiles, including expanding its Intentions badges (an advanced filter option for premium members) to help narrow down the dating search. For instance, the dating app added more specific intentions other than looking for a “relationship,” “something casual,” or “marriage.” Starting today, users can choose between “fun, casual dates,” “intimacy without commitment,” “life partner,” and “ethical non-monogamy.” Plus, there’s now the option to show two intentions on a profile.
Additionally, Bumble launched a new Interests section to showcase which three causes and communities a user supports, such as feminism, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Bumble is continuing to help daters show off their personalities on their profiles by rolling out hundreds of new prompts for users, as well as new categories to help users find prompts. For example, there’s now an “About Me” category that offers prompts like “I’m known for,” “I’m a real nerd about,” and “My humble brag is.” Other categories include prompts related to date nights and self-care.
As part of the update, Bumble now requires new users to add four pictures to their profiles, when previously they only required two. Alsulayman said this is because users with more photos are more successful at finding connections. One common complaint among dissatisfied members is that some users haven’t added enough photos.
With Bumble approaching its tenth anniversary, the company also unveiled a new logo and refreshed app design, featuring bold fonts and a more “modern” feel, Alsulayman said.
“[The new design] feels a lot more in line with what our users have been asking for,” she added.
It’s been almost one year since Match Group announced the launch of Archer, the online dating giant’s first app for gay, bi, and queer men. Since rolling out to New York last June, Archer has been downloaded more than 685,000 times, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Archer completed its U.S. rollout this past October.
With Match and other online dating companies facing a downturn, Archer’s growth is certainly notable. Match’s last earnings results showed a decline in Tinder paying users, the company’s flagship app and one of the top dating platforms on the market.
However, despite reaching over half a million installs, Archer still has a long way to go before it catches up to heavyweight Grindr, which amassed over 10 million downloads in the past year alone and has a total of 87 million worldwide installs per Sensor Tower data. Another established competitor, Scruff, has more than 17 million all-time mobile app installs.
Unlike its rivals, who have been accused of fostering a toxic hookup culture, Archer has a fresh take on gay online dating and aims to provide a safe space for users. The app incites various safety measures to prevent unwanted behavior, such as integrating AI into its chat feature to auto-blur potential nudity. (Users can still send dick pics through private photo albums, though.) There’s also selfie verification that prevents matches from using blank profiles or headless profile pictures.
“We recognize that there is bad behavior on gay dating apps,” Michael Kaye, Director of Brand Marketing and Communications at Archer, told TechCrunch. “There’s a lot of body shaming, and there’s a lot of racism. And we’re hoping that by requiring every person to verify [their selfie], this will help contribute to a lower rate of bad behavior because there’s really nothing to hide behind.”
Archer also separates casual and serious daters, giving them two different layouts to choose from—Dating Mode, a linear layout for users to like one match at a time, and Hookup Mode, where users can see multiple profiles at once that feature their activity status and whether they’re looking for something casual. According to the company’s findings, 66% of its users are looking for dates and relationships, and 66% are on Archer for dates and hookups.
Additionally, Archer has an array of social features that make it stand out, including the ability to follow users and add interest tags (Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, Peloton, and so on) to their profiles. It recently launched Emoji Reactions, where users can react to a profile with a fun emoji to help break the ice and start a conversation.
In hopes of attracting more users and staying on its upward trajectory, Archer plans to release new features this summer and fall. Knowing that 74% of Archer users are looking for friendships, Kaye revealed to us that it’s prioritizing community-building features, such as the ability to find users by entering tags in the search bar. He also mentioned testing other capabilities that “further help people connect with others who have shared interests and engage in offline activities.” As Kaye previously told us, Archer is working on adding a Stories feature to the app, which would make it more like Instagram.
In addition, Kaye teased the exploration of potential new AI integrations.
“We’re going to continue to explore how we can integrate AI further into the app and create a much more enhanced premium experience for our users… Match Group recently partnered with OpenAI at the beginning of this year, and I am sure we will be working with that soon,” Kaye said.
Like many other businesses, Match has increased its investment in AI, and it plans to spend around $20 to $30 million on the technology in 2024. The company now has a deal with OpenAI and previously experimented with an AI photo selection feature on Tinder.
Dating apps are not following great privacy practices and are collecting more data than ever in order to woo GenZ users, a new study by Mozilla pointed out. Researchers reviewed dating apps in terms of privacy in 2021. In the latest report, they noted that dating apps have become more data-hungry and intrusive.
The organization studied 25 apps and labeled 22 of them ” Privacy Not Included” — the lowest grade in Mozilla’s parlance. Mozilla only gave Queer-owned and operated Lex a positive review, with Harmony and Happn getting a passable rating.
Mozilla said 80% of the apps may share or sell your personal data for advertising purposes. The report noted that apps like Bumble have murky privacy clauses that might sell your data to advertisers.
“We use services that help improve marketing campaigns . . . Under certain privacy laws, this may be considered selling or sharing your personal information with our marketing partners,” an in-app popup says, as noted by Mozilla.
The report noted that the majority of apps, including Hinge, Tinder, OKCupid, Match, Plenty of Fish, BLK, and BlackPeopleMeet, had precise geolocation from users. Apps like Hinge collect location data in the background when the app is not in use.
“The collection of your geolocation may occur in the background even when you aren’t using the services if the permission you gave us expressly permits such collection. If you decline permission for us to collect your precise geolocation, we will not collect it, and our services that rely on precise geolocation may not be available to you,” Hinge’s policy states.
Dating apps claim that they collect a significant amount of data to find better matches for users. However, if that data ends up with data brokers, there are grave consequences. Last year, the Washington Post reported that a U.S.-based Catholic group bought data from Grindr to monitor some members.
Notably, Grindr — which got one of the lowest ratings under Mozilla’s review — has had a record of lapses in privacy and security practices.
“If dating apps think people are going to keep handing over their most intimate data – basically, everything but their mother’s maiden name – without finding love, they’re underestimating their users. Their predatory privacy practices are a dealbreaker,” Zoë MacDonald, researcher and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement.
As per data from analytics firm data.ai, dating app downloads are slowing down. Separately, data from Pew Research published last year suggests that only three in 10 adults have ever used a dating site or an app — a figure that has stayed the same since 2019. Last month, The New York Times published a report noting that dating app giants Match Group and Bumble have lost more than $40 billion in market value since 2021.
Companies are now looking towards new ways to engage potential daters, including experimenting with AI-powered features. Match Group already said during its Q3 2024 earnings this year that it plans to leverage AI. In March, Platformer reported that Grindr plans to introduce an AI chatbot that could engage in sexually explicit language.
Mozilla said that apps already use AI to match algorithms. With the onset of generative AI, researchers are not confident that dating apps will have enough protections for user privacy.
Mozilla privacy researcher Misha Rykov said that, as dating apps collect more data, they have a duty to protect that data from being exploited.
“To forge stronger matches users have to write compelling profiles, fill out numerous interest and personality surveys, asses and charm matches, share pictures and videos — the whole experience is heavily dependent on how much information people share. By this virtue, dating apps must protect this data from exploitation,” he noted.
Earlier this year, Mozilla also evaluated a bunch of AI bots that could act as a romantic partner and found some serious concerns about security and data sharing practices of these bots.
It’s not uncommon for people to screenshot dating profiles and send them to their friends and loved ones, either to get feedback or to let them know who they’re seeing that weekend. Now, Tinder users are able to share their date plans directly from the app thanks to a new feature called “Share My Date.”
Tinder announced Monday that users will now be able to send a link that includes details about the upcoming date, including the match’s name, meeting location, date, and time. There’s also an option to type a note at the bottom. Links can be sent up to 30 days prior to the day of the date and are editable, so users can update the details whenever they want.
“Share My Date” links are viewable for every recipient, including non-Tinder users. Friends with a Tinder account can view the match’s full profile, but they can’t interact with it, including messaging the match. Non-users see a limited version of the profile in their browser, only being able to see the match’s photos, name, and age, a Tinder spokesperson explained to TechCrunch.
Like Tinder’s “Matchmaker” feature, which lets users’ friends suggest potential matches, the “Share My Date” link expires after a certain period. This is to discourage people from sharing on social media, the spokesperson told us.
The new feature was inspired by Tinder user data — 51% of singles under 30 let their friends know the details of their dates beforehand.
“At Tinder, we continue to release new features that aim to create a fun, safe, and respectful experience for all,” Tinder CMO Melissa Hobley said in a statement. “Discussing plans with friends and family is a time-honored dating ritual. Share My Date streamlines this basic info-sharing so singles can jump right to the exciting part, from figuring out what to wear to prepping conversation topics.”
In the coming months, the new feature will roll out across the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, India, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Switzerland, Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand.
The launch of “Share My Date” comes at a time when dating apps are experiencing slow growth. As of last January, there were only about 12.7 million installs in the U.S., growth of 2.38% compared to the almost 16% growth in the year prior. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Tinder’s total number of paying customers dropped by 8% year over year to 10 million.
Parent company Match Group — which owns Tinder, Match, Hinge, OkCupid, PlentyOfFish, and others — is set to report its Q1 2024 earnings on Wednesday, May 8.
Queerie is a dating app aimed specifically at LGBTQIA+ folks. It’s a very early-stage company that’s raising just $300,000 — a round size that typically falls into the “friends and family” category.
Dating is a fiercely competitive space, and there’s been a fair amount of M&A activity over the years, so I was eager to take a closer look.
We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that.
Queerie shared its full, unredacted, 13-slide pitch deck with TechCrunch.
The first thing that struck me about Queerie’s deck is that it feels fresh and fun. The use of language and graphics is clean, simple and engaging. A great starting point for a consumer brand!
[Slide 3] I love a good rallying cry. Image Credits: Queerie
If you’re trying to make the world a better place, you’re probably going to attract mission-aligned investors. So why not spell out your mission front and center? It’s a powerful storytelling technique that’s well executed in the Queerie deck.
[Slide 4] That’s certainly a problem worth solving. Image Credits: Queerie
This problem slide gave me pause: It stood as a reminder that in a lot of places, isolation and mental health challenges are rife in queer spaces.
The company is positioning itself less as a dating app and more as a solution for loneliness. Whether investors will buy it and whether this app is the right solution to the problems the company identifies are separate questions. What is certain, however, is that the problem Queerie outlines is one worth solving.
I really want Queerie to exist, so it pains me to see that the way the company is pitching makes it essentially unfundable.
I see at least one dating app pitched every month, which makes sense: Dating and finding the right partner(s) is an important part of many people’s lives, and it seems like such an easy thing to do better than what’s currently out there. The upshot is that many of these startups have founders with a lot of experience in the dating world.
[Slide 10] Hello Quuties. Image Credits: Queerie
But where are the women? For a company that’s building an “inclusivity-designed platform,” that seems like a bit of an oversight.
There’s some interesting experience here, but most of the people seem almost too senior for this startup. I know that’s a rare thing to complain about, but one of the CTOs has been a site reliability engineer at Google for 18 years. That’s a very specialized job, and while scaling an app like Queerie is going to be important, I’m finding myself doubting how much overlap there is between scaling Google’s infrastructure and scaling a site like Queerie.
Overall, from reading the team’s LinkedIn profiles and what’s on this slide, I find myself concluding that they might be able to build a really good, well-functioning app with a great user experience — but that isn’t enough to build a successful company. There is a huge gap on the sales and marketing side, and there’s not a lot of startup experience across the team either. If this slide could add a seasoned marketeer with consumer marketing app experience, I think the team would be more believable right out of the gate.
I really don’t understand what this slide is trying to accomplish:
[Slide 7] Yes, that’s a dating app. Image Credits: Queerie
This slide is a bit of a waste. It doesn’t show any of the secret sauce for why Queerie is going to be successful where others have failed; there’s nothing new or innovative here.
Slides in a pitch deck should help an investor decide to invest. If someone reads the slide and it’s likely to be neutral (or even negative), it’s best left out.
[Slide 8] This isn’t really showing traction. Image Credits: Queerie
The company says it has a “closed version of the mobile app,” but this 13-slide deck doesn’t include a single screenshot of the app. The company says it has 95 beta testers, which is great, but that isn’t really “traction.” Traction would be how these beta testers are interacting with the platform. Are they paying? What are the DAU/MAU (daily/monthly active users) stats?
I’m writing this on March 31, which is the last day of Q1 2024, so I’m confused why the company says it surveyed 3,000 people in Q2 of 2024? The company also says it is planning to grow the initial user base with “strong growth” in Q3, but then says it is launching the app in June, which is in Q2. This isn’t a huge deal, but it is a little confusing.
This slide, which describes how quickly the company wants to grow, raises some red flags.
[Slide 12] This is not a startup. Image Credits: Queerie
After the first year, the company is only planning to spend $40,000 per year on app development. That doesn’t even get a half-decent part-time developer. For a company that’s a tech startup, that’s a terrifying oversight: Is the company not planning to continue to develop its apps?
The growth here is way, way too slow. Elsewhere in the deck the company says it will acquire 1,000 users in the first half of 2024, but then it’s going to hit 20,000 monthly active users by the end of the year. Then suddenly the growth drops to “merely” doubling in 2025, and doubling again in 2026. For a hypergrowth early-stage startup, those numbers are awful. Startups typically want to be growing 10% week-over-week in the early stages. If you start with 1,000 users, after a year of 10% week-on-week growth, you should be at around 130,000 users:
10% week-on-week growth with a 1,000 user basis looks like this. Image Credits: TechCrunch / Haje Kamps
Even worse, however, with the current six-year financials, Queerie is planning to do just under $10 million of revenue in 2029. That’s pretty dismal and indicates that the founders don’t have a particularly aggressive growth plan in place. Its own numbers show that it only expects about 15% of its customers to be paying $8 per month.
Elsewhere in the deck, the company says, “Our mobile app will allow us to expand to more cities as we raise more capital,” which is awesome, but the financial overview doesn’t show more fundraising happening in the business, so it’s unclear when or how much the company is planning to raise.
In a nutshell, this slide shows that Queerie could be a pretty successful lifestyle business, but I fear that no investors would go anywhere near this as an investment; it’s too unambitious, and it shows that the company’s founders don’t understand what is expected of them as startup founders.
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Since Bumble’s blockbuster IPO at the height of the pandemic, investors’ ardor with the dating service has cooled. Bumble’s shares trade at roughly $11 per share right now, a far cry from the $76 they closed at on its first day as a public company in February 2021.
Of course, investors are fickle, which is a challenge for nearly every publicly traded company. The bigger concern for Bumble is user fatigue. People aren’t downloading dating apps as enthusiastically as they once were, which means less subscription revenue. Younger people in particular are gravitating to other platforms to find love, including TikTok, Snapchat and even Discord.
Now, it’s Lidiane Jones’ job to reverse these trends. It’s a tall order, one faced by numerous CEOs who’ve been tasked with rescuing outfits from their post-pandemic doldrums: in publishing, in retail and in the automotive industry, among other sectors. The outcome is far from certain, of course. But Jones, who was recruited to Bumble in January from Slack — where she was also hired as a turnaround CEO and left after just 10 months — has a game plan, as she explained recently over the din of lunchtime diners at a San Francisco restaurant.
Part of the plan ties to AI, which Bumble’s rivals are also leaning into more heavily. Part of it ties to “margin expansion.” A big part of it, Jones told me, is simply restoring joy to an experience that is no longer fun for nearly half of the participants. Much of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Like a lot of CEOs right now, you walked into a situation where, almost immediately, you had to lay off people — in Bumble’s case, 30% of a staff of 1,200. That’s a lot to figure out fast. How did you manage it?
I had a bit of onboarding that was going on before I even started. [Bumble founder] Whitney [Wolfe Herd] was incredibly engaged in my onboarding, which gave me an accelerated path to learning the organization. She’s been really supportive. I think that made a huge difference. I’m also a strong believer that if you’re going to do a transformation, be really thorough and do it thoughtfully, so that you’re not putting the company through a lengthy multi-phase process.
You are relaunching the Bumble app in the second quarter of this year. I read that you are reconsidering having women make the first move, which seems like a big shift.
Our brand awareness is so high, it’s amazing. And if you ask anybody about Bumble, they’ll say it’s about women, and the core of that is not changing. We are a company that really cares about women’s empowerment.
But as we approach our 10-year anniversary, it’s a great moment to think about how we best serve our mission. For us, it’s really about how we express women’s empowerment today and for the next 10 years. What we really want is to go from women making the first move to women deciding [who should make the first move]. We’re giving women more control and flexibility based on what works for them.
Do you think that by inviting women to make the first move, Bumble had an impact on who uses the platform? Friends have told me the men they’ve met on the platform tend to be more passive, sometimes to their consternation.
Historically, what we’ve seen is that a lot of the men who come to Bumble believe in women being empowered. I’ve heard that feedback about passive [men] a few times, but not as much. Certainly, our ultimate goal is to ensure that our customers have a great experience.
Other areas of focus for you are security and AI. What can Bumble’s users expect to see with this relaunch?
If you think about the advancement of this incredible technology in the context of dating, it’s only as good and as safe as a company’s data and safety practices. Our customers’ privacy and their trust has always been incredibly strong; we’ve always had a high bar for healthy connections.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve developed a lot of AI and technology that safeguards behavior in the app, and we can tune the models to reflect our values and safety guidelines. But we want to take it even further. A huge part of Bumble’s DNA is advocating for policies that will ensure women feel safe, and we want to be at the forefront of not only driving great technology development, but also policy advocacy for safety online.
Bumble has long run physical verifications of its users to ensure user profiles aren’t bots or scams, but it does not conduct criminal background checks. Is that changing with the help of AI?
Background checks are one that we are exploring. It’s one that we certainly will partner with different [players]. But it is a priority for me. I think it’s an important next step for us.
What else should people know about the coming update?
It is the beginning of a new pace of innovation for Bumble. It’s the start of a new set of experiences. We are updating the profile experience; we’re updating the visual language of the app; we want to feel more connected to our users, and for the tone of voice to be fun and joyful. We’re looking at AI to help augment some of the inflection points in people’s lives that are particularly anxiety provoking, like the profile creation, which can be really challenging. We really want dating to be fun again — that’s the key of it.
User fatigue is a lot to combat. Is there a new user acquisition strategy to accompany the new app?
Bumble has always been great at community-based marketing: hosting events and finding ambassadors who really want to represent the brand. That got a little disrupted during the pandemic; we’re using this moment ahead of our launch to reignite a lot of community-based events, because there are a lot of people who are excited to reconnect in person, and that’s the starting point.
Bumble has always been about more than dating, too. Dating is a huge part of it, but we’ve always believed that there is a need for connection and friendships. So we’re expanding our investments in our friendship capability, because we believe that a lot of people want to just start by hanging out with other people. From a friendship perspective, when it comes to local and safe in-person events, there are tons of opportunities there and unmet need.
Bumble for Friends launched last year. Would we ever see you spin this out as a standalone entity?
We’re still gathering customer feedback. I’ve heard passionate cases for both. We’re still exploring that one.
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