LA BUSINESS JOURNAL - Dating apps made $5.6B in revenue last year, with ~$3B being made by Match Group. Since the start of the pandemic, more people have turned to dating apps. In a publication titled "The Future of Dating is Fluid," Tinder pointed out that 2020 was an outstanding year. 60% of members came to Tinder because they felt lonely. 50% of Tinder's Gen Z users participated in a video chat, and 30% were playing online video games together. Those who tried virtual dating saw it as a low-pressure way to get a sense of someone and their personality. Hannah Shimko from the Online Dating Association said the pandemic made people more comfortable with being online. She added that new companies are trying to be innovative about bringing back in-person dating. One example is FROME, a dating app that encourages offline dates. When users sign on, they can choose "available today"or "available this week" to set up a date. When a user is interested in someone, they will send an invitation with a day, time and place. Once the other user confirms, they are locked to each other for the day and cannot connect with anyone else.
871 posts categorized "All Internet Dating Statistics"
Dating Apps Prosper in an Evolving Market
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Friendship on Dating Apps in India Is the New Trend to Watch out for
NEWS PATROLLING - Indian dating app QuackQuack analyzed its user data and behavior aiming to understand the place of dating apps in terms of friendship. QuackQuack's data and survey show that among the ~22K downloads per day, more and more people are joining the dating app intending to make friends rather than just dating. 41% of the new QuackQuack users are looking to make new friends, and the majority of these people are from tier 2 cities. The majority of users looking for friends are in the age group of 18 to 22. Among the women users, 54% are looking for friends, compared to 40% of men who are interested in making friends.
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App Market 2022 Q2 Downloads Will Reach 34B
CALIFORNIA18 - The latest insights from data.ai show that in the Q2 of 2022, global users will spend $33B on mobile apps; iOS users will increase their user spending by 4% YOY to $22B, while Android users' user spending will remain unchanged from $11B in the Q1 of 2022. A notable new product in the consumer spending charts is Bumble. In December, Bumble became one of only 15 non-gaming apps to reach $1B in lifetime global revenue.
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Post-COVID Dating in Japan
NIKKEI ASIA - Japanese dating app Tapple teams with amusement parks for events to help couples bond in person. Eureka, the company behind the Pairs dating app, estimates that the revival of in-person dating will boost Japan's economy by up to 455B yen ($3.36B) a month. In a survey of 50K people, the company found that 59% had refrained from looking for partners or dating due to the pandemic. The resulting decline in outings and consumer spending led to a monthly economic hit of 176.7B yen, Eureka says.
by Yuya Takahashi
See full article at Nikkei Asia
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Women Still Don't Feel Safe on Dating Apps
ELLE.FR - According to a Happn poll, 8 out of 10 women still feel very uncomfortable on dating apps. The main reason is insults and lewd unsolicited photos. 50% of single prefer to chat on the dating app rather than moving to another platform such as WhatsApp or messenger. 44% of users say they do not want to share their exact location, and 9 out of 10 singles prefer to meet in a public place.
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Online Dating Has Highest Email Spam Complaints
BRAND EQUITY - Netcore Cloud has released the second edition of its Email Benchmark Report for 2022. The study highlights the use of AI and other advanced technologies across audience selection, content optimization, channel preference, and email delivery. According to the report, Online dating and the media over-the-top (OTT) industry has the highest spam complaints, with ~30 emails every 10K emails sent.
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Facebook Asked to Introduce Option to List More Than One Romantic Partner
METRO.CO.UK - A polyamory advocacy group is calling on Facebook to allow users to list more than one romantic partner on their profiles. Currently Facebook allows users to indicate that they're 'in an open relationship' but the group finds this 'limited'. In the US, 4-5% of adults currently practice some form of ethical non-monogamy, with one in five adults entering into a consensually non-monogamous relationship at some point in their lives. This year, Facebook saw its number of daily active users fall for the first time in 18 years indicating that it might have become outdated.
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Survey: 40% of Single Japanese Men in Their 20s Have Never Been on a Date
SORANEWS24 - And a lot of 20-something women are yet to go on their first date too, according to a government study. As part of the paper's overarching goal of clarifying the current societal situation for men and women in Japan, the researchers asked participants in their 20s whether they were married, completely unattached, or had a "lover".
The responses were:
- Men in their 20s
- No spouse or lover: 65.8%
- Lover: 19.1%
- Common law spouse: 1.5% Spouse: 13.6% - Women in their 20s
- No spouse or lover: 51.4%
- Lover: 27.3%
- Common law spouse: 1.4% Spouse: 19.8%
Part of the reason 40% of the 20-something men, and 25% of the women, haven't ever been on even a casual date is because casual dates themselves are less common in Japan, with the "still getting to know each other" phase often taking place at nominally platonic group events instead.
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The Obstacles of Non-binary Dating
BBC - In the US, ~1.2M LGBTQ adults identify as non-binary, according to a 2021 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Identifying as non-binary means, simply, not defining one's gender within the male versus female binary. While many dating apps allow users to identify as non-binary, their profiles still get lumped in with men or women when it comes to how other users of the app can view them. Users on Bumble can choose who they'd like to be seen by on the app, like if they want to be seen by "women, men, non-binary people, a selection of two options, or everyone". Then there are dating apps such as Lex, which primarily target users who identify as "queer, trans, gender non-conforming, two spirit, and non-binary".
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Why People Behave Badly on Dating Apps
BBC - Cheating, ghosting and swiping - online dating brings out the worst in many people. "The screen mediates our courage, so we will do and say things online that we would never do in real life," says Dr Joanne Orlando, an Australia-based researcher and author who focuses on digital wellness. Dana Weiser, an associate professor at Texas Tech University, began collecting data from 550 undergraduate students about infidelity on Tinder, which was published in a 2018 study. 64% reported seeing someone on Tinder whom they knew to be in an exclusive relationship, 17% of the study's participants themselves admitted to messaging someone on Tinder while in a relationship, and 7% said they'd had a sexual experience with someone they met on Tinder while dating someone else. A 2016 survey by Plenty of Fish showed 80% of respondents between 18 and 33 years old reported having at least one relationship end via ghosting. 35% of respondents to the 2020 Pew Research Center study reported someone had sent them an "explicit message or image they didn't ask for" on a dating app, and that number rose to 57% among female users aged 18 to 34.
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'Single Shaming': Why People Judge Singles
BBC - Asking why someone is 'still' single and assuring them they'll 'find their person soon' may seem like thoughtful, even sensitive, ways to check in on single friends. However, these simple phrases constitute 'single shaming' - and they're likely to be more harmful than helpful. Data from a survey by dating service Match, shows 52% of 1K single UK adults reported experiencing single shaming "since the start of the pandemic", likely due to the increased focus on whom people could rely on during lockdowns. And even though 59% said they were "content with their relationship status", they still were the target of intrusive questions. Match asked about the common "shaming phrases" single people have heard from others, and 35% said they were told "you'll find someone soon". 29% heard "you must be so lonely", while 38% reported general pity over their relationship status. Bumble's research from October 2021, showed that 53% of Bumble users surveyed "realized that it's okay to be alone for a while", thanks to the pandemic.
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Dating Apps Accused of Ignoring Sexual Assault
BBC - The number of reported sexual offences linked to dating apps doubled between 2017 and 2020. Young people from across the UK have told BBC Three that their reports of sexual assault and harassment were ignored by dating apps. A survey carried out for new BBC Three documentary Dating's Dangerous Secrets, suggests a quarter of people who have used dating platforms in the last four years experienced sexual assault while on a date, whilst a third said they experienced harassment or abuse on a dating app. Of those who said they'd reported someone to the service, almost half said they were dissatisfied with the dating platform's response. Many of the free dating apps and platforms do not carry out mandatory identity verification, meaning anyone with a phone number and email address can sign up to their services. Tinder announced last year that they would roll out the option to verify your account on the platform, but this is currently still voluntary.
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Study Finds Aussie Dating App Users Warming to Video Chats & VR Interactions
B&T MAGAZINE - US video-based human insights firm UserTesting recently captured the reactions of men and women in Australia and other APAC countries about video chatting and virtual reality interactions on dating apps. While video chatting emerged as the most popular trend amongst young people, concepts such as "dating in metaverse" were commonly perceived as highly futuristic, niche, and appealing. 80% reported their openness to try new formats of dating such as metaverse. However, a few also expressed concern on the lack of clarity about the functioning of a metaverse.
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The Global User Expenditure of Dating Apps Exceeded $4.2B in 2021
EQUALOCEAN - According to the mobile 2022 status report of APP Annie, the global user expenditure of dating apps exceeded $4.2B in 2021, an increase of 95% YOY compared with 2018 and 30% YOY compared with 2020. Tinder is still the global market leader. Its user expenditure reached a record $1.35B in 2021.
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Pandemic and Crypto Fuel Increase in Romance Scams
WALL STREET JOURNAL - The number of romance-related frauds reported to the FTC rose ~70% in 2021, and the total amount lost jumped to $547M. The pandemic may have fueled the continued growth of romance scams as the coronavirus has provided a convenient excuse for scammers to say they aren't able to meet in person. Last year also saw scammers increasingly using romance as a hook to lure people into bogus investments, particularly those involving cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency was the top method that victims used to make payments in 2021, at ~$139M. That is nearly five times the cryptocurrency amount reported in 2020 and more than 25 times that in 2019, the FTC said. In comparison, ~ $121M was lost through bank transfers or payments and another $93M through wire transfers in 2021, FTC data shows.
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