COVERING COMPANIES - Nov 16 - In Q3, Match Group posted 88% revenue growth for its non-Tinder dating apps, including Hinge, Pairs, BLK, Chispa, and Hawaya. Hinge also reported an 82% YOY surge in app downloads. Launched in 2012, the same year as Tinder, Hinge branded itself as the anti-Tinder app. Match acquired the startup in 2019. "Match's acquisition was driven by the need to retain users who were looking to move past Tinder's hookup culture, said Mark Brooks, a marketing consultant to online dating companies through his marketing agency Courtland Brooks. "Tinder is a game. What they intend to do with Tinder is soak up as many people as possible," said Brooks. "And then what they intend to do with Hinge is graduate people from Tinder to Hinge." In Q3, Hinge launched paid features: virtual roses, akin to Tinder's Super Like, and writing prompts called Standout to spur conversations between daters. Lauren Cassel, Morgan Stanley's analyst, estimated that Hinge would have 8M subscribers in 2030, contributing $2.8B in revenue compared to the current $60M.
158 posts categorized "Hinge"
Hinge Breaks out of Tinder's Shadow
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Chipotle Teams up With Hinge
CNN BUSINESS - Nov 16 - Chipotle, Uber Eats and Hinge are teaming up to create a new menu that encourages dining during distant dates. Hinge users will get $20 off their next three orders of Chipotle delivered with Uber Eats. 10 Uber Eats customers who order from the new menu will have the chance to win dating advice from actress Rebel Wilson.
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Dating App Usage Is Changing for the Better
MASHABLE - Nov 11 - Between September and October, according to Apptopia, major dating apps grew considerably. Match grew 21%, OkCupid +21%, and Bumble +16%. Tinder and Hinge grew more modestly. "As people become more isolated, the desire and need to establish some sort of intimacy may also be increasing as a coping mechanism," said Dr. Ash Nadkarni, MD, Associate Psychiatrist and Instructor at Harvard Medical School. New positive dating habits are emerging. Match's CEO, Hosseini foresees singles taking their dating app usage more seriously and Match was already seeing a slower shift from hookup culture to more intentional dating. Match's Singles in America survey, released last month, (5k+ people), found 58% of single app daters shifted toward more intentional dating due to the pandemic. 63% said they're spending more time getting to know potential partners. 70% said they're being more honest in their interactions. 45% of Hinge users reported developing new healthy dating habits during the pandemic, such as being up front about what they want. Hinge dates went up 17% this summer, ghosting went down 27%.
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Could Hinge Be Match Group's Next Tinder?
THE MOTLEY FOOL - Nov 10 - Tinder dominates Match's revenue. It has grown from around zero revenue in 2014 to ~$1.4B this year. Match.com and other legacy websites like PlentyofFish make up around a third of sales. The smallest part of Match's current portfolio is the "emerging opportunities." It includes brands like Ablo, Pairs, and Hawaya, but is led by Hinge. Hinge is "designed to be deleted," meaning it targets people in the slightly older millennial cohort looking for long-term relationships. Match doesn't disclose Hinge's nominal revenue numbers. However, the app downloads year-to-date were up 82%. In fact, the company disclosed in its Q2 report that Hinge users have grown more than tenfold since 2017. With ~10M downloads globally, Hinge may be on the verge of what Tinder achieved a few years ago: hitting escape velocity in its target market.
by Brett Schafer
See full article at The Motley Fool
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Match Group Q3 Earning Call Highlights
OPW - Nov 6 - Yesterday, the Match Group announced Q3 financial results. Revenue was up 18% YOY ($640M). Operating income was $200M, up 14% YOY.
- Average Match Group subscribers reached 10.8M, up 12% YOY. North American average subscribers grew 9% YOY, and international subscribers grew 16%.
- Tinder's average subscribers increased a little over 900K YOY, 16% growth.
- Tinder's developed markets are performing well, but in India and parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia, the virus is still impacting Tinder users.
- 23% YOY direct revenue growth at the non-Tinder brands in Q3. These brands added ~275K average subscribers YOY.
- Solid live streaming revenue growth at Plenty of Fish.
- Newer brands like Chispa and BLK are contributing significant revenue growth. Hinge has been the standout this year, with 82% year-to-date growth in downloads and outstanding progress on monetization. Collectively, these new and emerging brands, including Pairs, grew 88% in the Q3.
- For Q4, Match Group expects total revenue of $640M to $650M, which would represent 17% to 19% YOY growth.
- Hinge monetization efforts made this year have worked (launch of Standouts and Roses - similar to Super Like on Tinder)
- Tinder Platinum is being tested in 10 markets, plans to roll it globally by the end of the year.
- Match Group launched a new brand Upward which is targeted to the Christian community in the U.S.
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TinderTales Podcast With Comedian David Piccolomini & Mark Brooks
TINDERTALES - Nov 2 - In this episode "So You Want to Date During a Pandemic", Mark and David talk about what makes a profile stand out, early online dating and how dating has evolved during a pandemic.
David: How did you get into the business of online dating?
Mark: I started a social and adventure club in Silicon Valley in 1996. When it got to 3,600 members, people started meeting and marrying which wasn't really the intention and I thought: "this is kind of nice, this is a lot of impact." So then I worked with Hyper Match in 2000. It was like an early eharmony. Members had to answer 200 - 2k questions. And then in 2002 I worked with Friendster where I ran parties called Friendster Exposed. But the code wasn't quite up to the level of scale they were getting to. And then Myspace came along and they got it right. So I went over to the dating side of the house. I worked with FriendFinder and OkCupid and then I got three job offers. So I took all three and started Courtland Brooks, which is my consultancy.
David: What were the first mobile dating services?
Mark: Webdate was way ahead of everybody. Then there was Lavalife that did SMS, Match had a WAP app. Back then, it was tough to get on deck, so you had to talk to Verizon and Sprint and negotiate a deal for distribution. People are complaining about paying out 30% to Apple right now. I think it's actually a very fair deal if you look back at what it used to be. Verizon, Sprint, and etc were taking 70%.
Mark: What's your favorite app?
David: Honestly, I like Tinder a lot. As long as you know how to advertise yourself properly, you can have relatively good success there. Hinge is doing a really good job at attracting the market that it wants to attract.
Mark: There's a saying that guys will lie about wanting a long term relationship, and women will lie about wanting a short term one. It's funny how some societies are really put offish when it comes to having intercourse and it's like they're missing out on a vital form of communication before commitment.
David: How so?
Mark: I think you get to know someone when you have intercourse with them. That's the ultimate form of communication between two people. I've studied behavioral science and I think people tell you everything if you only observe.
David: Let's talk about dating and corona. What's new?
Mark: Business has been good for Internet dating companies right now. They're ~20, 30% up, which is amazing. But the users' behavior changed. There's an interesting study that RealMe just did. RealMe found that 67% of online daters are less okay with being single right now. And apparently two in three online daters have lowered their standards. A lot of dating apps have moved towards video and a lot of people kind of warm up to one-on-one video dating. And there's one to many videos taking off.
David: What is that?
Mark: It started in China with an app called Momo. Then in the U.S. there is The Meet Group. They're actually doing these games now. So someone who isn't really comfortable with video can go in and have a look at someone else dating. People can warm up to the concept.
Mark: And there's also a safety aspect as well. People tend to approach Internet dating with rose colored glasses. In fact, there's something called halo effect. And the guy who told me about this is Dan Ariely some years ago. He said, one of the things that happens is when someone goes into a dating app and they see someone that has some attributes that are close to what they're looking for, then they'll tend to fill in the blanks.
Mark: RealMe are doing background checks and they're doing it in a very different, interesting way. They're showing a trust scale, rather just saying, "Hey, this person's a felon."
David: What do you think actually goes into a really good profile?
Mark: The mistake that a lot of people fall into is generics. They don't make themselves stand out.
David: Yes, standing out is huge.
Mark: We load people up with lots of choice, which is good and bad, because there's the paradox of choice. We're in some ways a rotten business because if we do a really good job, we wave goodbye to our users. So we want to do a good enough job that people rave about us, but we don't want to wave goodbye to our users.
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Hinge Turns Profitable
SEEKING ALPHA - Oct 28 - Amid the pandemic, Match Group announced that Hinge is now profitable and on track to triple revenue this year. In February of this year, Match Group acquired the remaining 49% of Hinge that it didn't already own. Match had previously purchased a majority stake in the app back in June 2018. Tinder's somewhat sleazy reputation as a "hookup app" allowed other entrants such as Hinge to build brands around the idea of a more relationship-focused service. Rather than retool Tinder to be all things to all people, Match bought Hinge and embraced the idea of market segmentation. Although Match doesn't offer any specific numbers, Morgan Stanley analyst Lauren Cassel estimates that the app has 6M active users and ~400K paying subscribers. Those numbers are dwarfed by Tinder's estimated user base of ~50M active accounts and ~6M paying users, but Hinge's customer base is older, and thus, willingness to pay is higher. Assuming that the 400K paying user figure is accurate, simple arithmetic shows that Hinge could be generating ~$64M annually in sales from subscriptions alone.
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Ethnicity Filters on Dating Apps Raise Questions About Romantic Discrimination
MANCUNIAN MATTERS - Oct 21 - After Black Lives Matter protests shook cities across the world, Grindr opted to remove its 'ethnicity filter', sparking a major debate about romantic discrimination in the digital age. However, many have also expressed opposition to the update, stating that apps should respect the 'preferences' of individual users. Other dating sites were dragged into the mix. Hinge and OkCupid have said that they have opted to continue giving users the option to filter by ethnicity. Match Group argued in a statement by spokesperson Justine Sacco, "In many cases we've been asked to create filters for minorities that would otherwise not find each other."
by Jacklin Kwan
See full article at Mancunian Matters
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More Singles Are Fast Tracking New Relationships
NEW YORK TIMES - Oct 8 - Americans are dating with an intention that some experts say that they haven't seen before. Many experts, along with daters themselves, say that daters have become more likely to couple up, to lower their standards and to do what they can to find a partner to face whatever comes next. Hinge's surveys indicate that 69% of the app's users are "thinking more about who they're really looking for" and 50% say they are "no longer chasing after people who aren't interested in them." A survey of 2K dating app users Match conducted between July and August, showed that 59% of daters were considering a wider range of people as potential partners and that 55% were fast tracking new relationships more than before the pandemic.
by Jonah Engel Bromwich & Sandra E. Garcia
See full article at New York Times
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Hinge CEO: Half of Our Users Now Video Dating 'Out of Necessity'
YAHOO FINANCE - Oct 7 - Social distancing has normalized jumping on FaceTime as a first date, according to the founder and CEO of dating app Hinge Justin McLeod. "90% of our users want to video date, that they enjoyed it and want to do it again and more than half of our users say they want to continue to do this after the pandemic because it's a great vibe check before you invest in going out with a person," he added. Match Group CEO Shar Dubey called out Hinge as a key growth and revenue driver during the company's Q2 earnings call in August.
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Hinge and Headspace Launch Free Pre-date Meditations
MASHABLE - Oct 6 - From today, daters can access Hinge and Headspace's pre-date guided mediations on hinge.co/headspace at no cost. The meditations last around five to six minutes and they tackle a number of emotions singles might be feeling before a date, from self-doubt to negative self-talk.
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Hinge Is on Track to Triple Its Revenue This Year
MARKETWATCH - Sep 22 - Since Match made its first investment in Hinge back in 2017, the dating app has seen its user base grow 20 times, according to Match. Hinge was launched in 2012 as an app seeking to move beyond the "hookup culture". When Match initially got involved with Hinge, the app had a fairly limited set of revenue-generating features. Now Match is "finally focusing on monetization," according to Amarnath Thombre, CEO of the company's Americas business, who oversees its non-Tinder properties. The recent push has Hinge on track to triple its revenue this year.
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Hinge Reports Decline in Ghosting During the Pandemic
HYPEBAE - Sep 17 - Dating app Hinge reports a 27% decrease in ghosting amongst users over the course of August 2020 as compared to August 2019. Hinge users also report going on 17% more dates last month as compared to the year before. Read the full Ghosting report.
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Hinge Users Slam the Dating App for Technical Glitch
YAHOO SPORTS - Aug 27 - On August 25, a technical malfunction caused Hinge to crash. According to Twitter, Hinge users were alarmed that their matches were disappearing after they restarted the app. This is not the first time a glitch like this has occurred for the app. A few days prior, on August 20, users also started complaining about how the app restarted and erased their profiles, matches, likes and conversations.
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How the Pandemic Has Changed Dating
TODAY - July 28 - Tinder recorded its highest single day of swiping this year, while Bumble hit a milestone of 100M users. Some apps, like Hinge, are integrating new features, like in-app video chatting, to help people connect online. Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and the chief science advisor at Match.com, says that the pandemic has led to a major change on dating apps. "This pandemic has led to more conversations, more meaningful conversations, more self-disclosure, more intimacy (and) less anxiety about sex and money," she said.
by Kerry Breen
See full article at Today
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See the top news on Hinge See the top news on Match.com
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