Dating apps have developed a bad reputation lately. People ghost others, which means they simply stop responding to someone they once shared frequent correspondence with. There appear to be slim pickings, despite living in big cities like New York, and did we mention a lot of these apps now cost money?
At the inaugural SXSW London, TechCrunch caught up with Jackie Jantos, the CMO and president of Hinge, to talk about how the company is marketing itself to a new generation in what has become a listless dating scene.
“This is a generation that has grown up with a deep understanding of how digital experiences are created and what they are trying to get out of them,” Jantos said in an interview with TechCrunch. She listed out the traits Gen Zers want most out of their brands, like transparency and authenticity. It’s a diverse generation that spends less time in person than its predecessors.
“If you’re not building with inclusion at the center of everything, you’re just not going to build a meaningful product or marketing activation to engage them,” she said.
The dating app landscape has evolved over the past few years, seeing companies like Hinge working overtime to try and attract and sustain user attention.
Tinder, for example, has struggled with growth in the past few years, culminating in the stepping down of its CEO a few weeks ago. Bumble is also seeing a slowdown in user growth.
Hinge and Tinder are both owned by Match Group. The Q1’2025 report released by Match Group shows that Hinge is faring a bit better than its sister company. The report showed that Hinge saw an increase in direct revenue, compared to Tinder, and that the app’s downloads were “strong” across the English-speaking and Western European markets.
Jantos said Hinge is implementing and toying around with numerous new features at the moment. For example, it has added a quota on how many chats one person can have at one time so that a user isn’t simply “collecting chats.”
“We want to encourage people to close out chats if you’re not interested in someone,” Jantos said, adding that hopefully this encourages people to focus on a smaller number of conversations that can successfully move toward a date. She said Hinge is testing its coaching feature, which looks to give users tips about building their profiles.
The Match Group Q1’2025 report said Hinge was also looking to introduce Warm Introductions soon to “highlight shared interests to improve match quality.”
Jantos was coy on details but said there was a new introduction that would hopefully encourage users to “spend a little more time discovering each profile.”
“Our recommendations have gotten really strong with the new AI recommender that we recently released,” she added. (Match Group’s Q1’2025 news report said the new feature, launched in March, has already driven a 15% increase in matches and contact exchanges.) Jantos said that Hinge is also hoping to boost its safety features with AI and that overall, tools on the app will “continuously improve because of AI.”
“But also new tools will come along the wya to coach you along the [dating] journey,” she said.
Jantos flew into the inaugural SXSW London to give a talk about the loneliness epidemic impacting Gen Zers. There is no shortage of stories and reports on how young people are connecting less with the outside world, glued to their phones and virtual realities. Jantos told TechCrunch this is one reason Hinge launched its One More Hour fund in 2023.
The fund seeks to invest $1 million into organizations to foster more in-person connections among Gen Zers. She’s heard feedback from young people on her team that there are barriers to hanging out these days, including how expensive it’s become and finding places that feel safe.
“We want to lower the barrier so people just want to come out because we know if they build that skill, it’s more likely when they’re on our product, they’ll be more likely to be comfortable meeting someone up for a date,” she said.
And, as expected, Hinge is throwing events, filling ads with creators, such as writers, to “meet the audience where they are.” It created a Zine and campaign about Hinge success stories to hopefully inspire Gen Zers to go find love. And even better, on the Hinge app.
