In , Tinder revolutionised the online dating industry with a simple system, swipe right if interested, left if not.
Instead of having a matchmaker rifle through thousands of profiles to find someone unique, users are allowed to decide whether they like someone based off a few photos. In comparison to the services which had come before, Tinder made dating simple, but it also, as studies have found, made it less about lasting connections and relationships and more about casual hook-ups and cheesy openers.
At the time, IAC also owned Match. Created by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev, Badoo has had many lives, including as a social games and quiz app in Facebook Games heyday in the early s. Badoo is the most downloaded dating app in the world, with over million registered users, but it has not been able to make a mark in the US. In , Andreev partnered with Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who left the company after tensions with executives, to found Bumble.
Marketed as the feminist dating app, Bumble allows women to make the first move, giving them full control of the experience. Hinge, another IAC-owned app, switched its entire platform in to focus on long term relationships.
That said, the culture is not devolving back to the Match. Tinder and Badoo are still the leaders in monthly active users, and in emerging markets like China and South-east Asia, casual dating apps are far exceeding long-term services in popularity.
