It all started with the recent launch of Tinder Select, a $499-month premium subscription service.
Tinder Select application page.
According to Tinder itself, all users can apply for Tinder Select, but if they want to spend money, they may not be able to spend it. When I tried to apply, I was told that Tinder Select does not accept self-directed applications at this timeTinder's product director also said in the conversation that Tinder Select will only be available to less than 1% of users. In the future, even if independent applications are opened, the review will be very strict.
With a sky-high subscription price of $499, Tinder Select gives you general benefits such as exclusive badges and early access to new featuresThere are two core benefits to the comparisonFirst, the system will give priority to recommending "top premium users" on Tinder for subscribers, and subscribers' profiles will also be displayed first in the other party, a bit like "king matches king";The second is the opportunity to send messages directly to your favorite users twice a week, without having to reach a mutual selection first, which is a kind of "open the back door" privilege.
In other words, for those of us who belong to the conventional mentality of dating, we may not be able to understand the value of this kind of right. However, it may be tempting for users who have a clear purpose of finding a "quality match" and directly get a chance to have a conversation. We didn't get it anyway.
Whether it's the launch of Tinder Select or the point of view of some other practitioners, if you take the launch of Tinder as a starting point, twelve-year-old dating apps still have homework to do in the area of matching efficiency. In the recent words of the CEO of Hinge, the world's largest serious dating platform, people are fatigued with dating apps, mainly because there are too many choices, which leads to decision-making fatigue on one side, and most people on the other side do not get enough responses. Hinge data shows thatThe top 1% of men on Hinge received 16% of the likes on the platform, while the bottom 50% of men received only 43% likes.
And Tinder launched a $499 monthly subscription plan this time, the most direct solution is to solve the problem of people who can't get enough responses, to be honest, with this badge, how can you look at him more, not to mention that he can also directly send messages to interested users. It is conceivable that, correspondingly, this can also give the other party a basis for decision-making, after all, this badge means that it is strong.
Tinder is experienced in proposing solutions to problems, and there is really no problem, but looking at the overall user structure, there are probably not many users who can pay $499 a month for subscriptions, that is, a few people grab more opportunitiesSome people's problems will be solved, but the problems of the whole ecology will be more serious.
Tinder's solution may be based on the company's recent changes in financial data.
There are fewer people who pay for sliding dating, and they continue to dig on existing users
In the past two years, especially after the epidemic, the weakness of the dating market has been more or less felt by everyone. Bumble's stock price has been falling, and Match Group's earnings numbers are not good.
Data**: Match Group financial report, Note: Direct revenue refers to revenue from users.
According to Match Group's quarterly financial report data, 2022Q4 and 2023Q1 For two consecutive quarters, Match Group's direct revenue declined quarter-on-quarter, with the lowest data for Q1 2023 Match Group revenue of 7$7.4 billion, down 1% year-over-year, primarily due to a decline in the number of people who pay. In the following two quarters, the number of payers of Match Group remained on a downward trend, but its revenue increased instead of falling.
Tinder subscriber change chart **Business of Apps
Specific to Tinder, according to Business of Apps data, the number of subscribers to Tinder began to decline from Q3 2022, from a peak of 11 million to 10.4 million in Q3 2023, a decrease of 6%. And this downward momentum does not seem to be reversing.
Tinder Revenue Change Chart **Business of Apps
As mentioned above, Tinder, the leader of the group, has the same playbook as Match Group, and the decline in the number of paying people has significantly affected Tinder's revenue. In fact, since Q1 2022, Tinder's revenue has fallen ahead of the number of payers, and according to the financial report data, the decline in the US market is particularly obvious. The number of people who pay has peaked has become a reality that Match Group has to face.
But interestingly, unlike the number of people who pay all the way**, after entering 2023, Tinder's revenue has begun to stabilize. Behind this is that Match Group, which is under pressure from revenue, has begun to change its monetization strategy, and since the number of paying users can no longer expand, it will continue to dig from existing users.
Specifically, Tinder's basic paid subscription service began to increase in price at the end of 2022, with Tinder Plus Gold increasing by 40% and the higher-tier Tinder Platinum increasing by 30%. And along with the *** subscription rights, there has also been a shrinkageFor example, before the price increase, Tinder Gold and Tinder Platinum had 5 Super Likes per day, but after the price increase, they became 5 times a week, and users need to pay extra if they want to get more Super Likes. The previous price increase, coupled with the launch of the super ** subscription service this time, Tinde's actions are very consistent and hardworking.
Tinder revenue, number of payers, RPP (Revenue Per Payer) data for the first three quarters of 2023, Note: Direct revenue refers to revenue from users, excluding advertising and other revenues **Match Group financial report.
Match Group's revenue by product **Match Group earnings report.
Match Group's revenue grew 9% year-over-year in Q3 2023 due to the strong performance of Tinder's shift in monetization strategy, and while Tinder was not the product with the highest increase, it contributed significantly to the overall performance as it accounted for the largest share of revenue.
But whether it's a new sky-high subscription plan or a monetization strategy that continues to catch paying users, it's a bit of a thirst quenched, and in essence, the trend towards dating app fatigue is already clear.
The swipe mode really doesn't work?
In 1995, the ** matchcom establishes, registers accounts, uploads information, and relies on ** matchmaking, which is the appearance of the first generation of Internet matchmakers. With the rise of the mobile Internet, Tinder was launched in 2013, and it adopted the product design of Swipe, giving more initiative to users. Users take a look at the information and **, swipe left or right, and chat with each other for a few days, and then they can come out on a date, and this mode has gradually become the first choice of users for a long time after that.
The way Americans know their partners **x
The Internet and mobile Internet have indeed changed people's habits of finding a date, and in the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who know their partners in the first way has skyrocketed, and in a survey spanning 70 years with a sample size of 6519, the proportion of online channels has increased to more than 70% year by year, while all other methods, are declining. Just as industrialization and urbanization have broken the way of choosing a mate, such as "matching the door" and "the life of parents", the Internet has also changed the long-standing model of relying on social connections and circles to choose a mate, and Tinder is one of the most representative products.
The benefits of using dating apps to find a mate are clear, and the options are wide, simple, and efficient. However, the disadvantages, especially the model of making decisions based on only the ** and simple information like Tinder, are inevitably superficial and superficial, and the matching efficiency is actually lower than the "traditional model". But dating apps like Tinder offer plenty of options to cover up the problem for a long time.
A friend of mine is a heavy user of dating apps, and he even set himself a goal of meeting 1-2 girls a day to qualify. He roughly calculated an account, in mid-2023, he will use a variety of dating apps frequently for half a year, and a total of about 200 people of the opposite sex will be "selected" by this way, only 20-30 can be added to private ***, and less than 10 will be offline dating. Compared to the time and effort he put in, using dating apps to find a partner is not very efficient.
U.S. Adult Confidence in Dating App Finding a Long-Term Partner, Note: Data release date is 20232, Survey date is 20227｜**pew research center
That's basically the case among the wider user base, with only 21 percent of respondents confident that they're finding love through dating apps, according to a Pew survey of adults using dating apps, and the majority say they can't or aren't sure.
Attitudes towards dating apps by user groups **pew research center
In terms of attitudes towards dating apps, only 53% of users consider their experience of using dating apps to be positive, with a higher percentage of men. When it comes to paying users, only 58% of them have a positive review, which is 5% higher than the overall data and almost the same as the data for the male user group. Considering that male users are significantly more willing to pay (male: 54%, female: 29%), paying for a dating app does not significantly increase the experience.
That said, for a variety of reasons, people are indeed starting to look for dates more online, but the overall experience is not good.
For example, dating apps are designed to help users go on dates, and they make up for the pain point of inaccurate matching with a huge number of options. However, if you want to pay for the product, you need to pay for the card, so the payment point setting of the dating app is generally based on the "control quantity" point. Generally, dating apps with Swipe as the core will limit the number of right swipes of users, and they must pay to unlock unlimited right swipes, and they do not match and limit very accurately, so that many users have to pay to recognize the date partner.
Percentage of users who experience negative emotions because they receive too many or too few messages **PEW Research Center
Therefore, on the user side, there will be two points that cause the fatigue of dating apps summarized by the CEO of Hinge, either it is difficult to make decisions after receiving too many messages, or it is difficult to make decisions after receiving too few messages. Pew data shows that 54% of female users and 25% of male users feel overwhelmed by receiving too many messages, while 40% of women and 64% of men feel anxious because they receive too few messages.
Proportion of people who experience emotional fatigue or burnout as a result of using the dating app **healthy framework
And that's just the beginningWhether it's unlocking the right-hand swipe limit, super like, or directly seeing who likes you, paying for a dating app can only improve the "matching" link, and the subsequent initial reply, online chat, offline dating, every step in this long chain may end without a problem.
From matching, to mutual understanding, and then to offline, in this long chain, dating apps still have problems that have not been solved, and after more than ten years of development, it is difficult to appear in new product forms, and there are not many users who can expand the app, and even some users have begun to flee. It's no wonder that as soon as AI came out, products like former Tinder CEOs and Bumble were gearing up again.
But today we want to talk about a more interesting phenomenon, users have begun to "vote with their feet", and they are not doing their job properly.
Perpendicular no1 They came to grab business?
At the beginning of December, an app that can't be played with dating has been updated, but **He users said that a "new dating app" is about to be born.
Report by the Daily Mail (top), comments on the news by X users (bottom) *Daily Mail, x
On December 6, the fitness app Str**a launched private and direct messenger messages between users. The UK's Daily Mail bluntly stated that this new feature could "enhance users' love lives". Many users on social media have also said that str**a with the addition of DM function is already comparable to dating apps.
***sensor tower
Str**a is a social fitness tracking app that started with a focus on running and cycling and has expanded to more than 30 sports. Users can record and share their own activity tracks and other data in the app, as well as see other users' activity data, and interact under the user's shared activity data. It can be regarded as a sports app with certain social attributes. Although it is not familiar to users in China, back in 2020, this app was the most profitable fitness app in the world, and there was no one. Currently, there are more than 3 million DAUs in the world, and 500,000+ in the United States alone.
However, when the author collected information on social media and search engines, I found that before DM, many users already knew their dates through the comment area of str**a, and there were many people who eventually became married. According to the summary of netizens on the Reddit forum, there are three major benefits to using str**a to meet your date. First, str**a's users love sports, and their overall life is relatively positiveSecond, the topic of sports can provide a lot of topics for both sides;The third is to avoid an awkward first date, as long as you make an appointment on the app for a sports game, you can meet naturally. The probability of actually getting together is much higher than meeting people on dating apps, and the same interests become the cornerstone of high success rates.
Just a few days before Str**a launched its new features, an article was published on Wall Street** about four couples who used non-dating apps such as Duolingo, Str**A, and Yelp to fall in love and eventually get married, and thus proposed a trendThat is, more users prefer interest-based dating methods.
One example of this is Ciesielski, an event manager who lives in Washington, USA, and Amanda, a writer who lives in the Philippines, while learning Chinese on Duolingo and seeing each other on the leaderboard. After some time, Ciesielski began to encourage Amanda to stick with her after she completed her "streak" every day, and they swapped*** to start an "online dating". The story also has a fairytale ending, and the two finally survive the pandemic and walk together beyond the restrictions of distance. Duolingo, who was cue, was also in the official tweet** and replied "Please add the matchmaker to my resume".
Although str**a and duolingo are not specialized dating apps, the two verticals are no1. Under the premise of a large user base, the interactive function is obviously used flexibly by users. The current state of dating apps is embracing the positivity of AI and the recent emergence of a new AI-based dating app, YourmoveAI, Rizz, IRIS, AIMM, TEASER, etc., are all showing that the dating market, which has been stable for many years, may have something new.
References: 1. Match Group financial report;
2、key findings about online dating in the u.s.
3、online dating burnout and emotional fatigue data (2023 study)
4、people are ditching dating apps to find love on…duolingo?