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It may be Valentine’s Day here in the United States, but the dating app market doesn’t look as promising as it used to. According to a new analysis According to app intelligence provider data.ai, global downloads of dating apps saw only tepid year-over-year growth from January – a slight increase of just 1. 9% to reach 128 million installs, compared to the 29% increase seen during the same period. times during the previous year. Growth in the United States also slowed, with an increase of 2.38% year-over-year in January 2024, to around 12.7 million installations, down from the nearly 16% growth recorded in January 2023.
While data.ai likes to portray any growth as a positive sign for the industry, there are other signals that the market is losing steam.
Image credits: data.ai
Dating app giant Match Group, which operates Match, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid and others, reported that its total number of paying customers declined 5% year over year as of its report on fourth quarter results in January. In the previous quarter, the company reported a 6% decline in the number of customers paying for its flagship app, Tinder, what caused the stock to fall.
Tinder’s paying customer growth also slowed last quarter, falling 8% year-over-year to 10 million payers, the company said in its letter to shareholders.
Although Match Group still beat fourth-quarter earnings and revenue estimates – the latter up 10% year over year to $866.23 million – it’s becoming increasingly clear that that’s because company has learned to extract more money from a shrinking paying user base. . Concrete example: Tinder launched a subscription at a ridiculous price of $500 per month called Tinder Select last fall, which promised to match subscribers with “most searched” profiles — an idea it picked up from its Acquisition 2022 from premium dating app The League.
In the American market, one of the most important for dating applications, only three in ten adults said never used a dating site or app, Pew Research reported last year. This figure remains the same as in 2019, the company stressed.
Meanwhile, although one in 10 American adults reported meeting their partner on a dating app or website, the broader success of dating apps on this front is questionable.
A recent analysis of US Census Bureau data found that a record number of forty-year-olds (A quarter) have never been married, compared with just 6% in 1980. This likely reflects other factors, including the acceptance of unmarried partners living together and the inclusion of same-sex couples in marriage data. However, given that 44% of dating app users in the United States said they turned to dating apps to find a long-term partner, instead of wanting more casual relationships, it’s unclear whether today’s apps have been able to deliver on their promises.
Additionally, Tinder’s hold on the US dating app market appears to be waning slightly, as data.ai’s new report shows. Last month, it had the largest market share of any other dating app at 29.3%, but that’s down from 29.8% a year ago.
Image credits: data.ai
To date, Tinder has seen a total of 530 million downloads, the company shares. on his websitebut Match also admitted in the fourth quarter that the number of daily new Tinder users in the U.S. and globally declined by a single-digit range year-over-year, in addition to the decline in its paying customers.
Bumble’s share, for its part, fell from 17.6% to 14.3% over one year. data.foundto get to number two.
The “Other” category of dating apps, which includes small businesses and startups experimenting with new models, grew from a market share of 27.4% in January 2023 to 29.2% in January 2024. This appears indicate that among dating app users, there is a growing desire for something new.
Things could still change, of course. Match said it will now look to AI to improve the dating app experience, including in areas like its photo selector, matching capabilities and post-match advice, increasing features like conversation starters and nudges with AI.
This follows news that a growing number of people are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT to help them with their discussions on dating apps. Rizz, an AI dating tool, went viral and saw its downloads increase in the months since its launch. Washington Post article. Based on application intelligence provider data Application figuresRizz has seen more than 2.24 million downloads in the past year, for example.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether AI can refer more people to dating apps, given that it will also likely inspire more romance scams and other AI-driven malicious activity, according to the dating company. McAfee security. recently warned.
All this does not mean that the market is not ripe for investment. In addition to AI-driven changes, Match proves that dating apps can still bring in large sums of money when monetized properly. Data.ai noted that dating apps generated a record $505 million in January 2024, even as year-over-year revenue growth slowed to 8% from 17% the year before.
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