People are abandoning Tinder. Dating app wants to reignite its spark by taking singles offline

More than a decade ago, Tinder became the most popular dating app, transforming modern romance by allowing singles to browse people’s profiles, meet up and hook up.

Now, Tinder is fighting to keep the flame alive. Sometimes unexpectedly.

Last month, it convinced UCLA students to come together as a large group in the real world. They danced together while DJ Disco Lines, 26, played a set at the Fowler Museum on campus.

Instead of spending time swiping, students were swaying on the dance floor under the disco balls, raising their smartphones while listening to Disco Lines’ hot remix of Tinashe’s song “No Broke Boys” — a track about setting high standards in romantic relationships.

The West Hollywood company had partnered with the DJ and college influencers who posted videos with the song on TikTok and Instagram to promote the event and app. Before the show, Tinder also encouraged social media users to download the app to find out the location and time of the event.

“Swipe right. Swipe right. Swipe right,” Disco Lines said in the videos while mimicking the motion.

Today, young daters want more from dating apps than a swiping opportunity, said Mark Kantor, Tinder’s chief product officer.

“Gen Z wants to create an authentic connection. They believe in romance. They are open to chance,” he said. “They are hopeful, but they want to go beyond just the photographic experience.”

Tinder is trying to woo Gen Z users with in-person events and new features after the number of people who regularly pay and use the service declined.

In the third quarter of this year, Tinder had 9.2 million paying users, a 7% drop from the same period last year. Tinder revenue fell 3% to $491 million. The app has a free version, but users pay for additional features, including the ability to see who likes their profile or temporarily increase their profile visibility in order to get more matches.

Although it remains the most popular dating app in the world, it has recently lost users in major markets. Its number of monthly active users in the United States is about 11 million this quarter, up from 18 million at the start of 2022, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The company has a new management team, including new CEO Spencer Rascoff, who started his role in July, who is betting that the app can find a second wind by developing new features. Rascoff is also the chief executive of Match Group, the parent company of Tinder.

Some of the new versions of Tinder include a double date mode and a college mode, where students can meet others at their university or nearby colleges. The company is testing a new AI-powered feature called “Chemistry,” in which people allow Tinder to scan their camera roll to learn more about their interests and personality. It began requiring users in several countries to take video selfies to verify that they are real and match their profile photos.

Tinder’s goal: to reinvent dating again.

“Dating has become something that, for a lot of people, makes work and dating really have to be fun,” Kantor said.

Launched in 2012 at the University of Southern California, Tinder changed the way people date by making it easier to navigate photo-filled dating profiles on their smartphones and meet people nearby. Company co-founder Sean Rad, a USC dropout, pitched the idea for a dating app, initially called Matchbox, at a startup incubator hackathon.

Online dating used to involve filling out a lengthy questionnaire and responding to correspondence on a computer. On Tinder, people simply swipe right if they’re interested and left if they’re not.

Many people have flocked to the app as a convenient way to find casual sex. As it took over the dating world, many users now have a love-hate relationship with Tinder. Some only turn it on when they feel lonely, others struggle with the constant rejection that comes with not matching on the app. Some even blame Tinder for the dawn of the “dating apocalypse,” the decline of romance, and an environment in which people are reluctant to commit as they cling to the hope that the perfect match is within reach.

“It needs to be a little bit aimed at a female audience, or more user-friendly,” said Sam Nejad, a 27-year-old California actor and contestant on the reality TV show “The Bachelorette.” “For guys, especially, in my experience, it’s purely an awesome app.”

Tired of scrolling through hundreds of profiles, filled with gym selfies, thirst traps, scammers and men holding fish, some dates have turned elsewhere to find love, to places such as running clubs, events, train rides, Home Depot and even Costco.

This fatigue has also spawned Tinder competitors.

Fed up with coffee dates with people she met on dating apps, Cassidy Davis asked her friends in 2022 to invite someone from an app to a Valentine’s Day party at her Los Angeles apartment. A TikTok video about the event went viral. Since then, she has hosted monthly “chaotic singles parties” at various venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere.

“Apps are still very useful, but these days a lot of people are looking for that romantic comedy, that IRL meet cute,” Davis said.

The 31-year-old is now engaged to a man she invited to her chaotic first singles party. The couple met earlier in real life, not through a dating app.

She said she might not have been in contact with him if she had seen him online.

“I don’t think his profile would have made him the great person he is today,” she said.

The dating landscape is crowded. Startups are creating AI companions and other applications that claim to do a better job of connecting people. Then there are other popular dating apps like Bumble, Hinge, and Grindr. Social media giant Facebook also offers a dating service.

It is often difficult for leading industry giants to change the way their brand is perceived.

“We haven’t really seen a lot of names, at least in the online dating space, attempt and succeed in these turnarounds in the past,” said Nathan Feather, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Yet Tinder’s new CEO says his company is developing new products to stay on top.

A Harvard graduate who grew up in Los Angeles and New York, Rascoff teaches and speaks to students on college campuses, learning about what Gen Z wants from online dating. His father was a business manager and tour producer for famous musicians, including the Rolling Stones and U2. His mother was a real estate agent.

Before building renowned companies, he worked as an investment banker and private equity investor. At one point, Rascoff wanted to become a journalist. He was a newspaper editor at Harvard-Westlake, a college preparatory school in Los Angeles County, and interned at major media outlets, but he was more interested in business, according to a 2020 interview with the C-Suite Quarterly.

Match Group, whose stock price once reached more than $169 per share in 2021, saw its stock fall below $30 in 2023 as investors saw the number of paying Tinder users decline. Over the past six months, Match Group’s stock is up 12%, to more than $32 per share, a sign that investor confidence is growing.

Tinder has a competitive advantage. It is widely used and is often the first app people turn to when they want to start dating again. Despite its reputation as a dating app, Tinder says it’s for people to find the relationship they want, whether it’s an open relationship, romance, or new friends on their terms.

Match Group estimates there are about 250 million singles worldwide who are actively dating but are not on dating apps, Rascoff said on a call with analysts in November.

“We’ve clarified what Tinder stands for and who we’re building it for,” he said.

Sharlize True Trujillo, 21, a student at UCLA, was paid to promote the Tinder event with Disco Lines to her nearly 3 million TikTok followers. She attended and enjoyed mingling with the crowd, but said online dating isn’t going away anytime soon.

“My friends and I would prefer to meet someone in person,” she said. “But right now we’re meeting a lot more people who are our type online.”