The Unseen Drama Behind the World of Dating Apps
If you thought dating was competitive, wait until you take a peek behind the curtain of the apps you use to meet potential romantic connections.
It may not be seen by the average Tinder or Bumble user, but the competitive business of dating and hookup apps has been raging for years behind the scenes. The good news? Competition benefits users, as competing apps must one-up each other on a constant basis by introducing new features, better usability, more users for you to meet and connect with, and exclusive abilities you won’t find anywhere else.
The most high-profile battle is between Tinder, the #1 most popular dating app, and Bumble, its closest competitor. Founded by a former Tinder executive (how’s that for drama), Bumble is an overall similar platform to Tinder. Both involve users swiping right on each other’s photos, and if both swipe right it’s considered a match.
The difference with Bumble is that in matches involving a man and a woman, only the woman is given the option to match first. This feature is designed to give women more power in the world of dating, and avoid potentially abusive situations that have occasionally been reported in dating apps.
So, is Tinder going to be unveiling their own ‘women-message-first’ rule? Not likely. While Bumble has certainly been on the rise, it hasn’t seemed to have significantly knocked Tinder off its throne. The app is responsible for over 1 billion swipes every day— and that was back in 2014!
But what about the people behind these two competing apps? Bumble’s founder was once in the trenches with the Tinder co-founders, helping launch the company and build it into the behemoth it became.
Tinder has grown beyond what it initially started as under its creators. Former CEO Sean Rad had many problematic statements and problems that happened under his guidance. He had claimed that the app had over 80 millions users worldwide, which would have been enormous–had it been true.
In an SEC filing, it was found that Tinder had around 9.6 million users in the month of September, 2015, a far cry from 80 million. Some journalists have also accused Rad of threatening them for their statements about the company. Rad has also bragged about a model begging him for sex on Tinder, and a trail of bad decisions and poor choice of words seems to be the norm for the former CEO.
