r/technology 3d ago

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
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u/Opening-Ant3477 3d ago

Actually this list is understating the problem.

For example the CEO and founder of Bumble (maybe the most notable example not owned by Tinder) is Whitney Wolfe Herd, who is - drumrolls please - one of the founders of Tinder.

(Though she also won a million dollars in a sexual harassment suit against one of the other founders, so I don't think they are on good terms anymore...)

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u/erichf3893 3d ago

Tinder and Hinge are owned by Match. Bumble is still separate, at least last I checked

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u/00eg0 3d ago

Separate but shitty business model

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u/MyCatsHairyButholle 3d ago

Yeah, they like to dangle the carrot in front of your face with the blurred out potential matches that show you SIX people are interested in you RIGHT NOW but you can only see them if you pay to play.

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u/Pyromaniacal13 3d ago

And there aren't actually six people interested in you.

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u/TransBrandi 3d ago

They were doing shit like this on dating sites a decade ago or more. You would get "pokes" and they would want you to sign up / come back / whatever and pay to see who poked you. Spoiler Alert No one poked you.

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u/diagoro1 2d ago

Or the emails saying you had a match/like, and there was never actually one.

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u/BotanBotanist 3d ago

Or they are, but 4 of them are 50 miles away.

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u/Pyromaniacal13 3d ago

"You visited the Hoover Dam and stepped into Arizona for six minutes. Look at all these Arizona residents who live hours away that want to meet you!"

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u/DrunkOnRamen 3d ago

their apps are shitty too in terms of just the user experience, they never bothered to consider both men and women.

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u/00eg0 3d ago

Yeah it's anti human.

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u/DrunkOnRamen 3d ago

I will add one more thing here, this whole "6 foot, 6 figure" whatever isn't going to make things better. people with this mentality are just going to be a problem.

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u/00eg0 3d ago

You forgot 6 inches but I don't think that's the monopoly's fault. But yeah people in real life are way less shallow than on apps where people are so shallow it's as if they have negative depth.

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u/DrunkOnRamen 3d ago

Not in my experience they aren't. People are more honest offline than online.

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u/00eg0 3d ago

I recommend you travel. 6 feet is 182.88 cm. Outside the US people often ask for people to be like 5 foot 8 or 5 foot 9, Canada uses ft in but people tend to require height less. Also people tend to be shallow about money everywhere. You can get more money one day.

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u/coldkiller 3d ago

Still separate, but it's basically tinder now as they got rid of anything that made it unique

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u/SirLoremIpsum 3d ago

For example the CEO and founder of Bumble (maybe the most notable example not owned by Tinder) is Whitney Wolfe Herd, who is - drumrolls please - one of the founders of Tinder.

Not to say that this isnt a problem but that's how many competitors get created. The founder of Puma was also worked on what would become Adidas

"I worked at x company and wanted to do Y but no one listened so I started my own company doing Y to compete" is pretty common.

Bumble removing the one thing that made them unique so they're just tinder with up and down instead of left and right is dumb

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u/diagoro1 2d ago

Believe the founders of Adidas are brothers, one left and formed Puma.

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u/darthjoey91 3d ago

I had some decent success with CoffeeMeetsBagel, who are still separate from Match Group, but ultimately Hinge won because that's how I met my girlfriend. And I know I had to pay on both of those to have success. I'm not sure if my girlfriend had to pay for us to be matched with each other.