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Antònia Justícia, a journalist at Catalan daily La Vanguardia, called me to talk about the collapse of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Meetic and many others. Here’s her Spanish-language article (pdf), in which she covers many of the issues we discussed.
The pressures on this business model are many and varied. First of all, it’s a crowded market, one that enjoyed a boom during the pandemic, with a product that comes in many forms: symmetrical, asymmetrical to give more control to women, long-term relationships, older people, and the many variants within the LGBTQ community. Nevertheless, gender stereotypes persist.
For users of these apps, differentiating which ones work best or allow them to satisfy their needs has often proved to be a time-consuming process of trial and error, often with unsatisfactory results. The arrival of freemium-based models, which offer more privileges, better positioning or practically an SEO/SEM dedicated to something like relationships, has only made things more complex, and in a certain sense, artificial.
But beyond an overcrowded market, there is a bigger problem: people who use these apps in search of a stable partner stop using them as soon as they achieve their objective. The moment of “unsubscribing from Tinder” because you think you have formalized a relationship with a person you met there is a rite of passage for many couples. Thus, a significant number of users stop using these types ofapps every month simply because they have found a stable partner, which only leaves those focused on hooking up.
At the same time, there seems to have been a generational drift that has contributed to their decline: Generation Z seems to see dating apps as either old fashioned, a bit creepy, mercantile, or the preserve of the needy. For Generation Z, apparently, the idea of finding relationships among their friends and acquaintances is more attractive than depending on an algorithm. Equally, the concept of a group of acquaintances also changes when gaming platforms like Roblox start selling themselves as a place where their users can form romantic relationships.
The result of all this is that the valuation of apps like Tinder or Bumble are falling steadily, forcing them to change their approach, and sometimes leading to the departure of their founders. In short, if the growth of a company depends on factors it cannot control, the financial markets are not the best place for it to be. Let’s not forget that these markets are driven not so much by turnover as by growth prospects, which these apps are unable to guarantee (in fact, subscriber numbers are in decline).
If nothing else, the ups and downs of dating apps provide us with a barometer of social trends, subject to all kinds of factors that have ruined what seemed like a business sector with a future. It seems to have reflected the needs of one generation, but now looks to have been left stranded as another takes its place.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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