- Stocks for the parent companies of Tinder and Bumble fluctuated this week after the companies reported earnings.
- Tinder warned investors that it expected another drop in paid users in the fourth quarter.
- A Forbes Health study this year reported that 78% of Americans felt burned out by dating apps.
Singles aren’t the only ones feeling the pain of dating app fatigue — Wall Street is too.
Match Group shares fell more than 18% on Thursday after the company said user payments on its biggest app, Tinder, fell 4% to 9.9 million in the third quarter compared with the same period a year ago. seen. The company predicted another year-over-year decline in paid users in the fourth quarter as well. Hinge was a highlight, with third-quarter revenue up 36% year-over-year — though the app has yet to reach the scale of the Tinder app.
Meanwhile, Bumble Inc. said Wednesday it saw a 10% increase in paying users on its signature app last quarter, to 2.9 million. But average spending per user fell 10%. Bumble users can pay for different subscription levels ranging from $59.99 to $79.99 per month, which allows them to extend the time of matches and filter through their slides.
Bumble, Inc.’s revenue overall were relatively flat – falling 0.7% to $274 million year over year. Its shares are down 45% year-to-date. Match shares are down more than 16% in the same period.
The venting of investor energy around dating apps reflects a national outcry of “slide fatigue,” after a decade of meteoric app growth. A national survey by Forbes Health in July reported that 78% of respondents, across all generations, sometimes felt “emotionally, mentally or physically drained” by dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Bumble.
According to research firm Business of Apps, major dating apps are struggling to prove their continued relevance, especially with hungry startup founders waiting in the wings to disrupt the $5 billion industry.
“I want to scare the crap out of Hinge and Bumble — everybody,” influencer Serena Kerrigan, who started her own dating service on Instagram, told Business Insider in August. “I want to really disrupt the space.”
Dating apps struggle to stay on top
Dating app leaders are trying to tackle swipe fatigue and encourage more meaningful user experiences through restrictions on matches and changes to who can initiate conversations.
Bumble, for example, was built on the premise of letting women make the first move in a match. Only women could send the first message in a chat. In April, the company announced a new feature called “Opening Moves” that allows men to send messages first in response to a pre-selected question from the woman in the match.
Similarly, Hinge announced in September that it would limit concurrent user match chats to reduce unanswered messages. The company said it helped “fans shift their mindset from quantity to quality of matches” and encouraged users to follow their matches. In Match Group’s earnings call, the company signaled that this new feature is already helping increase response rates on the app.
Apps are also trying to expand beyond dating.
Earlier this year, Bumble acquired Geneva, a group chat app for niche communities like book clubs, for 17 million dollars. Bumble founder and chairman Whitney Wolfe Herd said during the Bloomberg Technology Summit in May that the platform “will not be a dating app in a few years” and instead one for broader “human connection.”
Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones said in an earnings release that the company is executing “plans to reimagine the Bumble App to enable the next generation of real-world online connections.”
To that end, the company has a pipeline of product releases lined up for 2025, a Bumble spokesperson said.
As users grow frustrated with dating app fees and algorithms, new startup founders are entering the space. Some are building new styles of finding love like Fourplay’s dual dating experience, prioritizing in-app dating like First Round’s on Me, or testing ways to turn an AI chatbot into a matchmaker like Sitch. Others are ditching the app experience entirely as well with businesses focused on IRL events that get people off their phones and meet people face-to-face.
If dating giants like Match and Bumble continue to report sluggish growth and see shaky stock for the next few quarters, some of these smaller startups may have a chance to break through and compete.