Online dating companies are betting that products targeting specific communities — from single parents and gay men to “throuples” — will reignite growth in a sector challenged by user declines at the world’s largest matchmaking apps Tinder and Bumble.
Investors have cheered Grindr, with its exclusive pitch to gay and bisexual men, but have increasingly shied away from Match Group, the mainstream one-size-fits-all powerhouse and owner of 40 products including Tinder, as well as $1.2bn rival Bumble.
Meanwhile, Feeld, founded a decade ago, has boosted its user numbers among “curious” and “open-minded” individuals who want to engage in kink, non-monogamy and polyamory — from open relationships to three-way partnerships, or “throuples”, and four-way “quads”.
Shares in Grindr have more than doubled since the start of 2023, making the app worth $2bn, in contrast to Match Group and Bumble stock, which have drifted off their pandemic-era highs. Match, the $8.8bn industry leader, has shed a fifth of its market value since the start of 2023, while Bumble’s share prices have halved.
Monthly active users have slipped at Tinder, Match Group’s largest product, and Bumble, while at Grindr numbers have continued to climb, according to figures from Sensor Tower.
Match’s other major mainstream product — the relationship-focused Hinge — has defied the trend and continued to amass users, although not enough to make up for those who have left Tinder.
Grindr says that targeting a particular demographic or community is an asset, rather than a barrier, to growth. Companies with “an intimate understanding” of their users have “a ton of opportunity to make a really great product and then, from that, monetise more and more”, said chief executive George Arison.
That viewpoint has played out in the app’s revenues, which have risen by more than one-third in the three months to March from a year earlier, in contrast to a 9 per cent gain at Match in the same period to $860mn. Bumble’s revenues meanwhile have climbed by a tenth to $268mn.
Arison, who is gay and describes himself as an “ex-heavy Grindr user”, added that his team’s “intimate understanding of gay culture” had enabled them to create a product that fitted “the very specific needs” of its users.
Success at these community-focused apps may have prompted Match Group to pivot towards more niche products in its efforts to appease investors and revive its slowing growth.
Archer, its first product specifically for gay and bisexual men, offers a premium subscription and has been downloaded more than 1.5mn times in its first year, figures from Sensor Tower show. Gary Swidler, Match’s chief financial officer, said in an earnings call that he expected Archer would soon become “a bigger piece of the equation”.
Match has added to its stable of brands in recent years and owns products tailored to Black, Latino and Christian daters, as well as single parents. It also owns a selective “dating app for the overly ambitious” called The League.
Direct revenues in the three months to March leapt by nearly a quarter at these community-based products from a year earlier, Match reported.
Match said in its latest earnings report that the company expects its brands aimed at specific demographics will offset declines at its mainstream legacy ones, such as OkCupid, “as soon as next year”. The online dating company reports its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday.
Monthly active users of UK-based Feeld, catering to those keen to explore open relationships and polyamory, climbed to an average of 1.5mn in the three months to June, according to Sensor Tower, up more than 10 per cent from the same period in 2023. The company said it has been profitable since 2017. It declined to share details of its revenues.
Chief executive Ana Kirova puts Feeld’s growth down to the app’s community focus. “The fact that we’re so closely knit with our members allows us to be more intuitive about what they want,” she says. User loyalty, particularly when purchasing paid features, reflected the app’s specific identity rather than mimicking mainstream products like Tinder, she said.
Other niche apps include Datefit with its focus on fitness while US-based Farmers Only, with the slogan “City folks just don’t get it”, is geared towards people living in the country.
The continued rise of these products reflects a growing belief in the industry that younger people want apps that are personally tailored to them and are increasingly seeking partners who share their interests and backgrounds.
“For some people the appeal of a dating app is the ability to meet anybody — to meet someone completely different to you,” says Kathryn Coduto, a researcher at Boston University. Many younger people, however, say they want the “more authentic or traditional experience” of meeting partners through shared interests and experiences, she added.
By immediately filtering out users who fail to fit certain criteria, the dating industry is hoping that special-interest or demographically tailored products could draw back those users who have reported being “overwhelmed” on mainstream services.
“The quantity-over-quality issue is one of the things that contributes to burnout on mainstream products,” says Liesel Sharabi, a researcher at Arizona University.
Academic and industry research has consistently shown that most singles use multiple dating apps simultaneously, so Match Group is likely betting that attracting users to their tailored products could also support mainstream giants Tinder and Hinge, Sharabi says.
“The growth across these niche products serves as a potential proof point that the online dating category remains healthy,” according to Deutsche Bank research analyst Benjamin Black.
The advantage of targeting specific interests and communities means that new products and start-ups are able to reduce the number of sign-ups needed to build a suitable pool of matches. “Having something in common goes a long way towards facilitating meaningful connections,” Coduto says.
Users are often more loyal and motivated, and more willing to pay for premium services. “The specificity is really their advantage,” Sharabi points out. “They know their market well and they have a loyal user base.”
Some analysts have warned, however, that demographically tailored products may never be able to take on mainstream giants like Tinder and Bumble.
“There’s a clear inability to gain scale,” Black says. “If you have a vibrant community it is often smaller and, if you try to branch out beyond that, you can alienate the users already on there.”
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