Soon you won’t have to leave Tinder to go on a virtual date with your matches. Match Group, the dating app’s parent company, said it’s developing a one-on-one video chatting feature. “We know that singles are adjusting their behaviors, and many are shifting to having dates virtually via phone or video,” it wrote in its first-quarter earnings release.
Match Group said it’s accelerating development for building “one-to-one video chat capabilities” on many of its platforms. This likely hints that, in addition to Tinder, the feature will arrive on the rest of the startup’s dating apps as well, including Hinge and OkCupid. While it didn’t reveal any specifics just yet, the company did say video calls will be first rolled out for Tinder users sometime in “late Q2.”
Earlier last month, Tinder’s sibling dating platform, Hinge also gained an update which allowed users to tell their matches that they’re ready for a video call date. However, to actually call someone, people still had to turn to other communications app outside of Hinge.
Like many online services, Tinder witnessed remarkable upswings in its engagement figures. It claims the average number of daily messages has climbed by 27% in the month of April since the last week of February. Plus, it said daily active users and swipes “reached all-time highs.”
However, with shelter-at-home orders in place, the company did face a decline in first-time paying users from February to March. It’s worth noting that Tinder made one of its premium perks called Passport free for everyone that lets users swipe in any location of their choice instead of just their locality.
Virtual dates have been on the rise lately as people find it increasingly difficult to meet up in person amidst a pandemic. Tinder, the most popular dating app, is likely seeking to capitalize on the trend with its one-on-one video chat feature.
Tinder isn’t the first dating app to add video calls either. Several of its competitors have offered the option for a while now. Austin, Texas-based, Bumble introduced in-app video and voice calls about a year ago. Facebook is also planning to integrate Messenger’s video-calling feature directly on its dating platform.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?