Kim Harris

CNN reports Bumble is dropping the swipe and Grindr is piloting bot-to-bot chats to vet dates, but gives no pilot details. Grindr Q2 revenue rose 33%.

Bumble will drop swiping in select markets from Q4 2026, Axios reported. It was piloting AI assistant Bee in March. Q2 paying users fell 16.4% to 3.2M.

Known, the swipe-free app from two 22-year-old Stanford dropouts, matches members after an AI voice interview of about 30 minutes and charges $15 per match.

Bumble launched opt-in searchable Handles for verified US iOS members on 14 October, one day after agreeing a $1.3B take-private by Ithaca Holdings.

Character.AI has filed for Chapter 11 and Disney bid $20M for a licence to its tech. What the sale and new state demands mean for dating apps.

Hinge now gives daters who commit minor harassment in chats a warning and a compulsory lesson, not a ban. Serious and repeat cases still mean removal.

Tinder launched Group Hangouts, letting up to 15 people share one profile. In Australian testing, 40% of group invitations were accepted.

Singapore's GovTech has launched FirstDate, a dating app giving civil servants aged 21 to 35 one match at a time, amid a fertility rate of 0.87 in 2025.

Grindr will make PrEP accessible directly in its app from next year, CEO George Arison said, moving beyond HIV prevention awareness.

After5.pm has launched in San Francisco, replacing swiping and matching with small-group meetups every evening from 5 p.m. The app is self-funded.

Former Hinge product lead Michelle Parsons has launched Lora, an astrology-based app with pre-seed backing from AlleyCorp and 14 relationship types.

Three Day Rule has launched Tai, a voice-activated AI assistant, with a £35/month plan that includes four guaranteed introductions per month.

Tinder's recommendation overhaul, which prioritises six-message conversations, saw sustained conversations rise 2% year-on-year in August.

Liangpei, a Chinese dating app, charges £221 upfront and refunds users who have not married within three years. It has 9,300 active users.

ATEAM, a New York dating app, caps use at 11 minutes a day and five conversations with no like button. It has shared no data on outcomes.

Bumble, Hinge and Match offer political filters, while Ipsos polling says nearly one third of Britons find cross-political dating hard or impossible.

Thursday, the London event-based dating app, won App of the Day in the US App Store after co-founder George Rawlings cited $50M in platform value.

Surf will run Blind First Dates at Hyrox events in London, Dublin, Birmingham, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro this autumn, following New York and Miami.

Ember, a dating app built by one developer, operates across 177 countries with translation in over 100 languages and mandatory ID checks.

Yeet kept its Founder Club at 2,000 members to get deeper product feedback. It says users spend 85% of active time in conversation, unverified.