• Yoel Roth is leading Match Group's initiative to curb inappropriate messages on dating apps.
• The company uses AI to flag abusive messages, promoting respectful dating interactions.
• Match's CEO said safety and security are good for business.

Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, is trying to reduce inappropriate messages sent on Match Group's dating platforms, like Tinder and Hinge.

The company is working on what Spencer Rascoff, its new CEO, called "an ecosystem cleanup." On an earnings call earlier this month, Rascoff said safety and security are good for business.

Roth joined Match a year ago as its vice president of trust and safety, responsible for overseeing content moderation across its dating apps. He formerly led the team that set rules for what was allowed on Twitter but quit shortly after Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.

Last month, Meta ignited a firestorm when it announced it would end professional fact-checking in the US. But Roth, who dealt with online harassment himself after speaking out against Musk's Twitter, said Match is "doubling down on safety."

"For men especially, a big part of our safety approach is focused on driving behavioral change so that we can make dating experiences safer and more respectful," Roth told the Financial Times.

Using AI tools, Match can flag messages that could be perceived as abusive or overtly sexual. Match asks users who type what Roth called "off-color" messages if they would like to reconsider — and a fifth do, the FT reported.

The company found "a real need and opportunity to help people understand the norms and behaviors that go along with respectful and consensual dating," Roth said.

Due to dating app fatigue, women are also creating their own alternatives. A journalist with no previous event experience created the Bored Of Dating Apps events, where single people can meet in real life and form deeper connections, which took off in the UK and the US.

Between May 2023 and the end of 2024, more than half a million users left Tinder, a report from the UK-based online behavior research group Ofcom said.

Bumble and Hinge also reported losing 368,000 and 131,000 users, respectively, in the same period. Bumble's stock has slumped 37% in the past year, and Match is down 7.7%.

Match Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Tinder hopes to reverse its ongoing decline in active users by turning to AI. In the coming quarter, the Match-owned dating app will roll out new AI-powered features for discovery and matching. The addition aims to offer fatigued singles an alternative to the “swipe” that defined the dating app in its earlier days and influenced […]

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Dating app giant Tinder updated its Explore page to give users access to new categories, “Non-Monogamy,” “Serious Dater,” “Short-Term Fun,” “Long-Term Partner,” and “New Friends,”  the company announced on Thursday.  These new categories are designed to help users find compatible matches by grouping profiles according to dating intentions. The “Serious Dater” option focuses on users […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• Jess Evans founded Bored Of Dating Apps after being constantly disappointed by dating apps.
• Her events offer an alternative to meeting someone online, focusing on real-life connections.
• There's one very important rule: no ghosting each other.

When Jess Evans was going through a horrible breakup a few years ago, she did what many people do in that situation: downloaded some dating apps.

"What I found there was just your usual string of disappointing experiences," Evans, 33, told Business Insider. "It was just one disheartening experience after the next."

Vowing to ditch the apps for good, Evans thought about other ways to meet someone. Uninspired by the options, she called up a friend and told her she was going to put on her own one-off dating night.

As a journalist with no events experience, Evans worried it would be a flop. But it wasn't. More than 200 singletons looking for love showed up.

That was in February 2022, and Evans hasn't looked back. Bored Of Dating Apps events now take place in London and Manchester in the UK, and launched in New York last year.

It's been so successful that BODA is now Evans' full-time job. She also met her now-fiancee at one of the events, so she swears by how effective they can be.

"Even if they haven't met someone romantically, people go home feeling so much better," she said. "They're like, oh my goodness, I can't believe how many amazing single people there are. It's just about getting off the apps and actually getting people in the same space."

People crave real-life connections

Many agree that dating apps aren't fun anymore, with Gen Zers in particular rejecting them. A Forbes Health survey of 1,000 Americans last year found that 79% of Gen Z respondents said they were experiencing dating app burnout.

This trend has left some apps struggling. Shares in Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and Match.com, have fallen 64% over the past five years as the number of paying users dips. Match also announced layoffs last July.

Evans has also noticed people fighting back against the surface-level dating culture that apps promote.

Rather than judging someone on a few photos and a list of vague interests, you get to take them in as a full person. After all, a profile cannot tell you whether you will have chemistry in person.

When she was on the apps, Evans said she felt like she was constantly battling against the perfect idea of a woman. The curse of dating apps is that they encourage you to think the grass is always greener, rather than see all of the good traits of the person you're seeing. Some call this the paradox of choice.

"There's always someone hotter or taller or thinner or someone with a better job, or someone who holds their pen in a particular way so you don't get the ick," Evans said. "As long as we were only ever hooking up, the apps would always have you back in their pocket again."

One of the biggest lessons Evans has learned is for people to embrace dating outside their "type."

"When we look at exactly what that type is, it's often quite an outdated tick list of ours," Evans said. "Someone that we think we ought to like layered over time with our 14-year-old teen crush on an American show doubled with a familiar face of an ex-boyfriend in university that it didn't work with."

Dating apps have led people to shut out people who they could have had a "beautiful relationship with," Evans said, simply because they didn't look exactly right on the surface.

"Because they haven't fitted their rigid, on-paper litmus test, they haven't given it a go," she said. "We've been judging people so much on just a few words on a page."

Finding love and a community

There's one golden rule anyone attending a BODA event must follow: ghosting is strictly prohibited.

"We want everyone to look after each other," Evans said. "So if you meet someone tonight and go on a date with them, please don't ghost them after."

Evans said this basic rule of social interaction has been lost along the way, largely because of dating app culture.

Ghosting and standing people up have become the norm, with little consideration for someone's feelings.

This cycle is particularly frustrating for people in their 30s who may have friendship groups full of people settling down, getting married, and having children.

Evans felt this way herself. She felt isolated as her friends became more occupied with their own families, and spare cash once devoted to nights out with the girls was set aside for family holidays and living expenses.

BODA gave Evans the opportunity to socialize and find people in the same situation, and it has become a community as well as a place to find love.

"It felt amazing to have those friendships where we could have loads of fun together and go out on a night out together and wing woman for each other," she said.

The art of the spontaneous flirt

BODA events include socials where singles can mingle and "meet-cutes" in bookshops, which mimic the old ways of flirting and meeting a potential match in the wild as depicted in romcoms.

"So many people, both men and women, have just really, really wanted to lean into the element of that romance," Evans said. "People are really, really craving romance right now."

Other past BODA events include hikes, supper clubs, painting evenings, and yoga, where people can practice the art of what Evans called "the spontaneous flirt."

The goal is for people to find deeper connections — and that's working for some. Evans told BI there have been 15 engagements and a "BODA baby" since the events started.

That's what makes all the hard work worth it, she said. "I'm such a hopeless romantic. I love that I get to watch people fall in love."

• When Wolfe Herd took Bumble public in 2021, she became the youngest female CEO to make such a move.
• Before Bumble, Wolfe Herd cofounded rival dating app Tinder.
• Wolfe Herd left her CEO role in 2024, and Bumble announced she'll return in March 2025.

Whitney Wolfe Herd is coming back as CEO of dating app Bumble just over a year after stepping down in 2024.

Wolfe Herd, who co-founded the app, transitioned into the executive chair position at Bumble in January 2024. She did so at a time when the dating app industry faced challenges. In her stead, Lidiane Jones had the top job before resigning, citing personal reasons, a press release said.

In 2021, Wolfe Herd made a bold move when she took Bumble public. She was 31 at the time, which made her the youngest female CEO to take a US company public.

Since going public, Bumble has experience ups and downs. Bumble's annual revenue was up 16% year-over-year in 2023, but its latest results for the third-quarter of 2024 dropped 1% year-over-year to $274 million. Wolfe Herd expanded her company and relinquished some of her responsibilities after the company went public, including hiring Drena Kusari, Bumble's first global general manager. 

In May 2023, Bumble also acquired Official, a relationship app designed for couples that helps with date planning and mood check-ins, according to Fast Company. 

"We're really trying to build the entire relationship journey and take care of the entire relationship from start to finish," Wolfe Herd told Fast Company.

Keep reading to learn more about Bumble cofounder Whitney Wolfe Herd.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, 35, is a Utah native.

Wolfe Herd was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, The Times of London reported. Her father is a property developer and her mother is a homemaker, per The Times.

The CEO has been a feminist from an early age, telling The Times that she disliked how Utah's dating culture was dominated by men — women were expected to wait for them to make the first move.

Wolfe Herd went on to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas, and was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, per Fast Company. She's still close with many of her sorority sisters and even employs a few at Bumble.

Wolfe Herd also launched her first business at 19 while still in college, per Money Inc. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill pumped crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for five months in 2010, Wolfe Herd enlisted celebrity stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp to design tote bags that could be sold to help fund relief efforts. The resulting nonprofit, called the Help Us Get Cleaned Up Project, became nationally known after Nicole Richie and Rachel Zoe were spotted with Wolfe Herd's bags.

After earning a degree in International Studies, Wolfe Herd did a brief stint in Southeast Asia.

Wolfe Herd spent her time in Asia volunteering at local orphanages, per Money Inc.

Wolfe Herd is currently at the head of Bumble, it isn't the first dating app she cofounded.

At 22, Wolfe Herd was hired to work at startup incubator Hatch Labs in Los Angeles, according to The Times of London. After hours, she starting collaborating with a group that was looking to build a dating app.

That app, which is now known as Tinder, quickly grew into a global phenomenon with Wolfe Herd's help. She even came up with the name Tinder, per The Telegraph. She is credited as a cofounder and spent two years as the company's vice president of marketing, per The Times.

Wolfe Herd didn't leave Tinder on good terms.

During her tenure at Tinder, Wolfe Herd dated fellow cofounder and her then-boss Justin Mateen, per The Times of London. She left the company shortly after they split, and filed a lawsuit alleging that she had experienced sexual harassment and discrimination.

The legal dispute was settled privately outside of court, with neither party admitting to wrongdoing.

Following the legal battle, Wolfe Herd also faced online harassment.

"I was inundated with hatred online, lots of aggressive behavior, people calling me names, really painful things that I'd never experienced," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2018. "I felt like my entire self-worth, any confidence that I had, had been sucked away. There were dark times when I thought, 'Well, this is it. I won't have a career ever again. I'm 24, coming out of one of the world's hottest tech companies, but the internet hates me.' It was a horrible time. Then I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm going to rebuild myself.'"

Wolfe Herd launched Bumble in 2014, originally planning to build a female-focused social network instead of a dating app.

Wolfe Herd was persuaded to forgo her original plan for the app by former business partner and Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, according to CNN Business.

The app's women-led model was initially inspired by Sadie Hawkins school dances, where women ask men to be their date, Wolfe Herd told Business Insider in 2015.

"We're definitely not trying to be sexist, that's not the goal," Wolfe Herd said. "I know guys get sick of making the first move all the time. Why does a girl feel like she should sit and wait around? Why is there this standard that, as a woman, you can get your dream job but you can't talk to a guy first? Let's make dating feel more modern."

Wolfe Herd has since expanded the app with additional services to help women meet new friends and expand their professional networks, called Bumble BFF and Bumble Bizz respectively. Bumble has also invested in other apps, including gay dating app Chappy, TechCrunch reported.

Bumble has 3.6 million paying users across 150 countries as of June 2023, according to the company.

Wolfe Herd also reorganized and took the helm of Bumble's former parent company, Magic Lab, after its owner was ousted amid accusations of racism and sexism.

In addition to being Wolfe Herd's close friend and business partner who she said she was "incredibly in sync" with and called "two to five times a day," Andreev owned a 79% stake in Bumble, according to Fast Company.

After the allegations of racism and sexism against Andreev were published by Forbes in 2019, Wolfe Herd released a statement saying she had had "nothing but positive and respectful" experiences with Andreev but "would never challenge someone's feelings or experiences."

"All of us at Bumble are mortified by the allegations about Badoo (Bumble's majority owner) from the years before Bumble was born, as chronicled in the Forbes story," Wolfe Herd said in the statement. "I am saddened and sickened to hear that anyone, of any gender, would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace."

Even before she took on her expanded role, Wolfe Herd was already a workaholic.

Wolfe Herd typically wakes up every morning at 5:15 a.m. and immediately starts responding to emails, she told The Times of London.

She has even been known to wake up every two hours during the night to check her inbox. "I'm trying to stop that," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2017. "I get no downtime. I don't get a weekend, I haven't lived like a twenty-something since I started Bumble in 2014."

Wolfe Herd is also politically active, helping outlaw digital sexual harassment in Texas.

Sending unsolicited nude photos — a phenomenon that has plagued dating apps and even AirDrop — is punishable under a new law championed by Wolfe Herd, Inc. reported. She is now advocating for a similar law in California and hopes it will soon be federal law, too.

"It is time that our laws mirror this way we lead double lives, in the physical and the digital," Wolfe Herd told Inc. shortly after the Texas law was passed in August 2019. "You look at government right now, it only protects the physical world. But our youth are spending a lot more time in the digital world than they are in the physical."

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A post shared by Whitney Wolfe Herd (@whitney)

 

The CEO says she doesn't have political aspirations of her own, however. "I could never run for [office]," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London, saying that she is frequently asked if she's considered it. "There are people so much smarter than me."

Wolfe Herd is also a mom.

Wolfe Herd married Texas oil heir Michael Herd in an elegant three-day ceremony on Italy's Amalfi Coast in 2017, per Vogue.

The couple first met while skiing in Aspen in 2013, but Wolfe Herd first saw him on a dating app. "He has the kind of face you remember," she told The Telegraph.

He is now the president of the oil and gas field operator founded by his late grandfather, Herd Producing Company, and also owns a high-end farm to table restaurant called the Grove Kitchen + Gardens.

The pair have two sons named Henry and Bobby, named after Michael's late grandfather, and they makes frequent appearances on Wolfe Herd's Instagram account.

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A post shared by Whitney Wolfe Herd (@whitney)

 

The couple also has a Great Dane named Duke and a yellow lab named Jett, per The New York Times.

"[Duke] is a kind animal but does not understand how big he is," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2019, while describing her daily after work routine. "At 175 pounds, he could quite literally kill me. I have to lock myself in the car while I wait for my husband to come home and get him away from me."

Wolfe Herd has been open about her struggles with anxiety.

"I haven't gone through the testing, but I should," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London. "It's anxiety about everything. I worry about awful things happening to people I love. They say phones are a strong catalyst for making anxiety worse, so I have this interesting balance — how do I make sure I'm on top of everything, but also preserve my mental health?"

The Herd family splits time between their two Texas houses.

The Herds have one home along the Colorado River in Austin near Bumble's headquarters and another further north in Tyler, near Michael Herd's office, per The New York Times. They also own a vacation home in Aspen, Bumble's chief brand officer Alex Williamson told Aspen Magazine.

The couple also owns Michael's 6.5-acre family estate on Lake Austin, according to Mansion Global. The waterfront compound boasts a movie theater, helipad, putting green, 10 garages, multiple boat docks, and a guest house, as well as a 5,000 square foot cabana designed for entertaining. That property was listed for sale for $28.5 million.

They also travel a lot.

Wolfe Herd takes frequent trips for both work and pleasure. Wolfe Herd told Travel +Leisure in 2017 that her all-time favorite trips include a sailing expedition through Myanmar and Thailand and a family trip to India.

For their honeymoon, Wolfe Herd and her husband stayed at Four Seasons resorts in both Bora Bora and Maui after leaving the site of their destination wedding in Italy, according to a blog post by the Indagare, the group that planned the trip.

Wolfe Herd told Indagare that she wanted a beach-heavy honeymoon because she and Herd were "looking for the ideal place to unwind, where we could take in the sun and swim. Our favorite moments were just relaxing and appreciating each other in such beautiful locations."

In July 2019, she celebrated her 30th birthday with a multi-day party on a yacht off the coast of Capri, Italy, per Guest of a Guest.

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Wolfe Herd has an estimated net worth of $400 million, according to Forbes.

Wolfe Herd's multimillion-dollar fortune landed her at No. 39 on Forbes' list of the wealthiest self-made women in America in 2020.

In 2022, Bumble's total revenue increased to $903.5 million, according to its financial earnings. The company brought in nearly $243 million in quarter one of 2023, a 16% increase, according to Bumble.

Forbes previously reported that Wolfe Herd was the youngest self-made woman billionaire after she took Bumble public — a title that lasted for ten months. Wolfe Herd's net worth is currently $400 million, per Forbes.

"I feel like what I'm doing is quite important," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London in 2018. "A lot of people are, like, 'What do you mean it's important? It's a dating app.' But it's important because connections are at the root of everything we do. Human connection defines our happiness and our health. This company feels like a piece of me. I know this sounds cheesy and weird, but I really feel like it's my mission."

In November 2023, Bumble announced that Lidiane Jones would be replacing Wolfe Herd as CEO.

Bumble announced on November 6 that Jones, then CEO of Slack, would replace Wolfe Herd as CEO of the dating app starting January 2024.

Jones replaced Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield in January 2023 and was CEO of the company for less than a year before her new role at Bumble was announced.

Wolfe Herd stayed on as the executive chair of Bumble. 

 

In May 2024, Wolfe Herd shared her thoughts on AI dating.

Wolfe Herd attended the Bloomberg Technology Summit in May where she said Bumble is eyeing ways to foster "healthy and equitable relationships" using AI.

She used the term "AI dating concierge" to describe tech that would ease the pressure of online dating.

"If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she said at the summit.

Bumble announced in January that Wolfe Herd would be coming back as CEO.

Bumble announced that Wolfe Herd would return to the CEO role in a press release on January 17 — just over a year after stepping down. She'll succeed Jones, who'll remain at the helm until the change goes into effect in March.

"I am deeply grateful for the transformative work Lidiane has led during such a pivotal time for Bumble, and her leadership has been instrumental in building a strong foundation for our future," said Wolfe Herd in the release.

In her own statement, Jones praised the platform for its "tremendous progress."

"It has been an honor to serve Bumble's stakeholders, and I will remain an enthusiastic supporter of Whitney and the Company, especially the outstanding team behind the brand," Jones said.

• Podcast host Ilana Dunn gives daters advice on her podcast "Seeing Other People."
• She guides her listeners through transforming their dating app profiles, charging $95 apiece.
• She shared three tips to make dating profiles better, including how to choose photos.

Ilana Dunn knows dating — and she agrees that it's tough out there.

Dunn, 30, used to be the lead content creator for Hinge, a dating app with about 20 million users. Now, she hosts the podcast "Seeing Other People," which is about dating in the digital age. It recently hit 5 million downloads and has over 400 episodes.

Its popularity comes as singles complain of "swipe fatigue," a disillusionment with online dating apps that has caused headaches for Bumble and Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, and created a rush of new dating-app startups.

Dunn told Business Insider that she sympathizes with modern daters, who have the daunting task of crafting digital personas.

"Dating apps appeared one day, and they never came with an instruction manual," Dunn said.

There's hope, she added: Some simple tweaks to online dating profiles can help boost the chances of better matches.

In recent years, fans of her podcast have reached out for help with their profiles. Dunn began charging $95 to revamp them, helping clients select the best photos and prompts and curate how they share the story of who they are.

Dunn shared her top three tips to improve any dating profile.

1. Choose photos that show you doing what you love

Dunn said some daters fall prey to an obvious impulse — they only select photos in which they think they look the best.

"They're just posting the most attractive pictures of themselves, or what they think somebody would be attracted to," she said.

It can end up looking like a random, bland collection of images, Dunn warned.

Instead, Dunn recommended finding photos that more effectively reflect one's interests and personality. For example, Dunn once suggested that a dater delete a gym selfie from their profile and upload a picture of a marathon they ran instead.

Dunn suggested a simple thought exercise: Think about how your friends might describe you to a stranger, then pick photos that showcase the most important things a potential partner should know about you.

2. Weave an easy date idea into your profile

A common complaint from dating-app users is that conversations rarely translate into real-life meetups. This year, Hinge added a feature that blocks users from matching with new people if they have eight unanswered matches.

To encourage real-life plans, Dunn suggests planting an idea for a date somewhere in your profile, ideally related to food or drink you like.

Sometimes it's as easy as tweaking a statement you're already making. For example, Dunn would change a response to the prompt "The one thing you should know about me is…" from "I just moved to New York City" to "I'm looking for the best dollar slice in town."

"It sends the signal, 'We don't have to beat around the bush. We can just get to the date,'" Dunn said.

She added that another strategy is to name your favorite cocktail or café order and then ask where to find it in your profile.

3. Put one of your answers to a prompt in list form

Dunn said more is better when it comes to listing your interests on your dating-app profile.

You never know what word or phrase might pique the interest of a potential match, so put it all out there, she added.

Dunn recalled filling out Hinge's "I won't shut up about…" prompt when she was dating. She initially listed just her dog, Zoe, but then went back and added the Jonas Brothers and Sugarfish, a buzzy chain of sushi restaurants in New York and LA.

Her future husband ended up messaging her about the Jonas Brothers. The first dance at their wedding? "When You Look Me In The Eyes," by the Jonas Brothers.

"We've now been to 10 Jonas Brothers concerts together," Dunn said. "We may not have met if that wasn't on my profile."

Spotify Wrapped arrived on Wednesday, packaged in its usual neon, Instagram-ready glory.

The annual release dominates social-media posts for a day, but beneath the colorful cards (designed to be bespoke but distributed en masse), it's Spotify's brag about the amount of data the company has collected on you, mirrored back in a way that's meant to make surveillance sexy, silly, and shareable.

In recent Decembers, the wrap-ification of our data has spread beyond Spotify. Apple Music, Spotify's main competitor, now has a similar feature called Replay, unveiling this year's version on Tuesday. Starbucks has sent out emails telling people about their favorite beverages and number of store visits, shocking some with exactly how many dozens of Frappuccinos they bought. Duolingo kicked off the Wrapped season earlier this week, showing people how many mistakes they made while trying to learn a new language. The British supermarket chain Tesco has sent Clubcard members a review of what they bought in recent years, called Unpacked. And on Tuesday, Tinder hosted a Year in Swipe party, where it revealed the top trends in online dating the app gleaned from its broad swath of 50 million monthly users, which included people getting specific about what kind of person they're looking for or putting a hand emoji in their bios to indicate they're searching for real connections.

All this is getting weird. The type of lattes we drink and the music we listen to are things we fundamentally know about ourselves. The most common names of men and women on Tinder (Alexes and Daniels dominated among men, Marias and Lauras women) tell us nothing about how to find love. But these year-in-review trends still catch avid attention and, in turn, provide free advertising for companies when they're reshared. About an hour after Spotify unveiled this year's Wrapped, its market cap reached $100 billion for the first time. Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.

"People are so excited about seeing data collected from them and then being shown back to them in a way that feels meaningful and relatable," Taylor Annabell, a researcher with Utrecht University who has studied the Wrapped phenomenon, said. "Wrapped taps into this belief we have that data is meaningful and that we want to see it because it helps us understand ourselves."

Wrapped 2024 included the usual unveiling of top songs and artists, but Spotify has added a "Wrapped AI podcast," which features two voicebot hosts chatting through your listening habits without really saying much about the songs, in particular. There was also a section picking apart how listening styles changed over different months of the year. For me, that meant going from "van life folkie indie" to "mallgoth permanent wave punk," mildly embarrassing phrases that might describe my musical tastes from a distance but tell me little new about myself.

Of course, Spotify can't capture everything about your tastes — maybe you played a vinyl record on repeat or shared a streaming account with someone in your family. ("It's not me who can't stop listening to Chumbawamba. It's my cousin, I swear!") Maybe you opted for a mysterious approach and kept your Tinder bio short and sweet.

But where data is lacking, some have set out to create it themselves. Wrapped content has proved so effective and viral on social media that people have taken to making up new categories, packaged parts of their lives not captured by apps, and turned it over to their followers. Here, at least, these people get to curate their experiences and post them as they wish. Last December and already this week, some people took to TikTok to talk through how many first dates they went on during the course of a year, using cute and colorful slideshows to walk their users through their year of bad dates, situationships, and ghosting. A third-party project called Vantezzen takes TikTok data and generates a Wrapped-like analysis for those who want to know how many minutes they spent doom scrolling.

All this comes as people have largely thrown up their hands and given in to sharing their data with their apps. Companies have "gotten us to move past just accepting that they are spying on us to celebrating it," said Evan Greer, the director of the digital-rights advocacy group Fight for the Future and a vocal opponent of Spotify who released an album called "Spotify Is Surveillance" in 2021. "That's the shift we're seeing with this explosion of these types of year-end Wrapped viral gimmicks," Greer added. "They're actually about hypernormalizing the fact that the online services that we use know so very much about us."

Tinder's year in review looked at data from profiles in the US and globally and its own survey results, determining the most popular love languages and zodiac signs, the fastest-growing words mentioned in bios (freak, pickleball, and finance all soared this year), and how people like to communicate (ironically, "better in person" won out over the messaging app). It also created an interactive vision-board feature for people to set intentions for their 2025 dating plans. The company's in-person Year in Swipe party was held in a moody Manhattan bar, where attendees could make charm bracelets or have a tarot-card reading, and each sported a button designed to correspond with their dating vibe, like a black cat or delusional. Tinder did not respond to a request for comment about whether people could opt out of being used in the aggregate data.

But Spotify, in particular, wants to tell its users more about themselves throughout the year. In September 2023, the company began making "daylists," or curated playlists released multiple times throughout the day. While they don't come with the sharable, flashy cards to post on Instagram, they're given catchy names that hint at something about you, changing several times a day. Just this week, Spotify has dubbed me a "Laurel Canyon hippie" and crafted a vibe for a "yearning poetry Tuesday afternoon."

The daylists feel like Spotify's attempt to take the Wrapped success "to the next level," said Nina Vindum Rasmussen, a fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science who worked on the Spotify research with Annabell. It's "data fiction that accompanies people throughout the day," she said, adding: "What does it mean for them to have this mirror constantly shoved in their face?"

Most of us have gotten comfortable with — or at least resigned to — the fact that Big Tech is watching our every move. Wrapped season is a shiny reminder of all we've done, seemingly in private, on our phones. But don't count on your friends to stop sharing their elite spot as a 0.05% top listener of Taylor Swift anytime soon.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge have new competition.
• A slew of new apps have launched in 2024 and are taking on swipe fatigue and dating-app burnout.
• Business Insider has interviewed several founders of the newest dating startups entering the ring.

Dating apps are in for a shake-up.

Many users are tired of swiping, dating app giants like Match Group (which owns Tinder and Hinge) face headwinds, and new startups are launching left and right.

Business Insider has interviewed several founders jumping into the dating-app arena as incumbents lose their luster.

Read: Meet the founders behind 11 dating startups

The new crop of dating apps is tackling various pain points in the online dating experience.

Some, for instance, are experimenting with new ways to discover and meet singles (aka not swiping). That includes startups offering users only a small batch of profiles to review each day, such as the New York-based app Pique Dating.

Others are testing how to successfully incorporate artificial intelligence into dating, like Sitch, which offers a chatbot and matchmaking feature powered by AI.

Matchmaking, whether through AI or by friends and family, has also become one of the hottest buzzwords in the dating-startup world.

There's also a wave of IRL-focused startups that forgo the experience of a dating app entirely with in-person events bringing singles together.

Read: The loneliness epidemic has given rise to a new crop of startups aiming to help people connect in real life

Meanwhile, social startups that aren't branded around dating — like Posh, 222, and Pie — are also breeding grounds for new friendships in person that could lead to love down the line as young adults seek to meet people in more organic settings. (Several of these IRL-social startups have also raised venture-capital funding this year.)

Even Big Tech is getting in on the action, with Facebook continuing to expand its Facebook Dating feature and Instagram's long-standing role as a digital flirting mechanism.

Gen Z is also redefining modern dating. Alex Hofmann, an investor and CEO of mobile app conglomerate 9count, recently told BI that younger daters are more interested in connection broadly, even if platonic.

Read more about new dating startups launching to compete with Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble:

• Fourplay, a dating app that lets people go on double dates.
• First Round's On Me, which prioritizes setting up dates over DMs.
• Several new dating startups, like Cheers, Sitch, and Arrange are launching apps with matchmaking features.
• There are also social and dating apps for LGBTQ+ users, like Collective, Freddie, and Lex.
• 222 is not branded as a dating app, but sets up strangers on group dinners in New York and Los Angeles.

• Would you trust your friends to curate your dating-app matches?
• Several new "matchmaking" dating apps have launched in the past year, addressing dating-app fatigue.
• Startups like Sitch and Cheers are using AI and social connections to match users.

Matching and matches are everyday phrases in the online dating app lexicon. But matchmaking? Less so.

That may be changing.

A slew of new startups have launched in the past few months centered around matchmaking in the age of swipe fatigue.

Sitch, an AI-powered matchmaking app launched in New York in November. Cheers, an app that lets friends play matchmaker in a social-media feed, launched in October. Facebook Dating even launched a matchmaking feature last month.

Matchmaking is by no means a new invention. People have relied on matchmakers for centuries, and have sometimes been willing to pay thousands of dollars to be paired by one.

Tinder's cofounder and former CEO, Sean Rad, told Harry Stebbings on a September episode of the 20VC podcast that he had always imagined the dating app moving beyond swiping and into matchmaking. Rad described an ideal version of Tinder where the app was trained well enough to suggest the right "person for you," he said on the podcast.

Big dating apps have previously dabbled in matchmaking. In 2017, Hinge (just before it was acquired by Match Group in 2018) launched a stand-alone app called Matchmaker that let friends swipe for each other. It appears to have since shut down. Tinder, also owned by Match Group, launched a similar feature in 2023.

The current trend of new matchmaking apps generally splits into two categories: Either the users themselves are doing the matchmaking, or the app (typically built with AI) is matching users directly.

Friends and family become matchmakers

Handing over the reins to your dating profile to friends and family may seem daunting, but several startups are betting on this form of matchmaking.

Loop, founded by siblings Lian and Adam Zucker, is a "matchmaking app where everyone can set up their single friends," Lian said. Only two-thirds of the user base are singles, though, Lian told BI, explaining that the rest are friends and family members — or even professional or hobbyist matchmakers. Loop launched in 2023 and is currently free for all users.

An app that's set to launch in December, called Arrange, is built around a similar premise. Developed by former Fizz staffers Ram Chirimunj and Zoe Mazakas, the app will let users link their profiles with a "scout," likely a trusted friend or family member, who can talk with potential matches ahead of time and vet for compatibility.

"I thought back on all my relationships and realized that they were all made by friend introductions," Chirimunj said. "I wanted to see how we could bring that authenticity from the real world onto a dating platform."

But some startups that offer matchmaking tools, like Cheers, recognize many people don't want to spend all their time matching on behalf of their friends — no matter how much they love them. Sahil Ahuja, an ex-Instagram engineer and founder of Cheers, is trying to bridge the gap between dating and social media with a friend-of-a-friend social graph. The app, which he describes as a crossover between Hinge and Instagram, is free and currently invite-only.

On Cheers, if a user spots someone they may want to go on a date with, they can send a request to their mutual friend on the app to make the introduction. Non-dating users can also send profiles or start group chats with mutual friends to kick off a connection.

"Because it's more social, it lends itself well to solving this more organically and feeling more like how you would date in real life through friends," Ahuja told BI.

Let AI do the matchmaking for you

Some newer dating apps (like Hawk Tuah Girl's app called Pookie or Rizz) are riding the tailwinds of the AI hype with chatbots that help people flirt, troubleshoot dating conundrums, and connect.

Sitch, for example, offers an AI chatbot experience where users can ask questions about dating. Users can also answer a series of intimate questions about their interests, values, and backgrounds that contribute to a profile within the app. The app then offers users potential "setups," where the AI will introduce two users.

"We've tried to replicate the exact human flow of matchmaking," Sitch cofounder Nandini Mullaji — who has experience in matchmaking friends of friends IRL — told BI.

Sitch launched in November exclusively in New York — but there's still a waitlist to get approved. Users can then pay for "setups," which cost $150 for three pairings.

Amori, a dating-advice app with characters users can chat with, is also experimenting with its own form of matchmaking using a personal assistant (though it isn't live within the app yet).

"We're trying to nail down the dating advice side of it with the coach," Amori's founder, Alex Weitzman, told BI. Down the line, Amori's AI dating coach will help users find potential matches through the app.

Will it really work?

Despite the string of new apps, New York City matchmaker Nick Rosen said he thinks it won't be easy for friends and family to find users a perfect match.

Rosen said he typically works with a roster of 20 to 30 people at a time and keeps a rolodex of 3,000 available singles in New York City for his clients to meet.

When he starts working with a client, he does an extensive intake of a person's romantic history, which he says is an advantage of a professional matchmaker. Friends and family know you well, but maybe they don't know the entirety of your dating history and scars.

"People open up to me like a therapist," Rosen said.

Though friends and family might be excited at first to play Cupid, the exhausting reality of helping someone find love can wear off, Rosen said.

Still, he thinks matchmakers need to change with the times.

"If we want to make matchmaking more approachable and cooler to people, we need to go and start having our own apps," he said.