Dating applications have recently developed a bad reputation. People lead others, which means that they simply stop responding to someone with whom they once shared frequent correspondence. It seems that there are slim collections, despite life in large cities, such as New York. And did we mention that many of these applications cost now money?
In the inaugural London SXSW Techcrunch met with Jackie Jantos, CMO and President Hinger to talk about how the company is marketing with a new generation in what has become an apathetic dating scene.
“This is a generation that grew up with a deep understanding of how digital experiences and what they are trying to get out of them are created,” said Jantos in an interview with TechCrunch. She mentioned the features that Gen Zers wants the most of her brands, such as transparency and authenticity. This is a varied generation that spends less time in person than its predecessors.
“If you do not build in the center of everything, you simply do not intend to build a significant product or marketing activation to engage it,” she said.
The landscape of dating applications has evolved over the past few years, seeing that companies such as the hinge work overtime to try to attract and maintain the attention of users.
For example, Tinder fought with growth Over the past few years, the culmination of which his general director gave way a few weeks ago. Bumble also sees Slowing down users' growth.
Both and Tinder are the property of Match Group. The Q1 2025 report published by Match Group shows that Mieszko is doing a bit better than his sister company. . Report shown This hinge recorded an increase in direct revenues, compared to Tinder, and that the downloading of applications was “strong” in English and Western Europe.
Jantos said Mone is implementing and playing with many new functions. For example, he added a limit how many chats he can have at the same time so that the user is not simply “collecting chats”.
“We want to encourage people to close chats if you are not interested,” said Jantos, adding that I hope that it encourages people to focus on fewer conversations that can successfully go to a date. She said that Mieszko is testing her coaching function, which aims to give tips on building her profiles.
In the report of the Match Group Q1 2025 group said that Maol also wants to introduce a warm introduction to “emphasize common interests to improve the quality of matching.”
Jantos was shy in detail, but said that there is a new introduction that, I hope, will encourage users to “spend some time discovering each profile.”
“Our recommendations have become really strong thanks to the new AI recommendations, which we have recently published,” she added. (Match Group Q1 2025 News Report He said that the new feature, launched in March, has already led to a 15% increase in matches and exchange of contacts.) Jantos said that he also hopes to increase the security functions with AI and that the tools in the application will “constantly improve due to artificial intelligence.”
“But new tools will also come to train you during (dating),” she said.
Jantos flew to the inaugural London SXSW to comment on the epidemic of loneliness affecting the Zers gene. There is no shortage of history and reports about how young people connect less with the outside world, glued to their phones and virtual reality. Jantos told Techcrunch that he is one of the reasons why the hinge released his more hour fund in 2023.
The fund aims to invest $ 1 million in organizations Support more in person Connections between genes. She heard feedback from young people in her team that there are barriers to spending time nowadays, including how expensive places have become and finding safe.
“We want to lower the barrier so that people just want to go out, because we know that if they build this skill, it is more likely that they will be on our product, they will meet someone more freely on a date,” she said.
And, as expected, he throws events, fills advertisements with creators such as writers, to “meet the audience where they are.” Created zine And a campaign on stories about connections to hope that he inspires Gen Zers to find love. And even better, in the hinged application.
