People are dumping Tinder. The dating app wants to rekindle its spark by getting singles offline

More than a decade ago, Tinder became the most popular app in history, revolutionizing modern romance by allowing singles to scroll through people’s profiles, match and meet.

Now, Tinder is struggling to keep the fire alive. Sometimes unexpectedly.

Last month, it convinced UCLA students to look into the real world in a larger group. They danced together as 26-year-old DJ Disco Lions played a set at the Fowler Museum on campus.

Instead of passing the time, students danced on the dance floor under disco balls, holding their smartphones as they listened to the Disco Lines’ hot remix of Tenashi’s song “No Broke Boys” — about setting high standards in romantic relationships.

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

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

Young people today want more than just a chance to swipe from dating apps, said Mark Cantor, head of product at Tinder.

“Gen Z wants to connect authentically. They believe in romance. They’re open to romance,” he said. “They’re ambitious, but they want to go beyond just the photo experience.”

Tinder is trying to attract Gen Z users with private events and new features after the number of people who pay and regularly use the service has declined.

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

Although it is still the most popular dating app in the world, it has recently lost users in major markets. Its monthly active user count in the U.S. was about 11 million this quarter, down from 18 million in early 2022, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The company has a new leadership team — including a new CEO, Spencer Roscoff, who started in July — that are betting the app can find its second wind by building new features. Raskov is also the CEO of Tinder’s parent company, Match Group.

Some of Tinder’s new releases include Double Date and College Mode, where students can meet others at their university or nearby colleges. The company is testing a new AI-powered feature called “Alchemy” in which people allow Tinder to analyze their camera roll to learn more about their interests and personality. It began requiring users in many countries to take a video selfie to verify that they are real and match their profile pictures.

Tinder’s goal: to resume history.

“Meeting is something that feels like work to a lot of people, and meeting people really needs to be fun,” Cantor said. Cantor said.

Launched at the University of Southern California in 2012, Tinder changed the way people date by simply browsing through photo-filled dating profiles on their smartphones and matching with nearby people. Company co-founder Sean Rodd, a USC dropout, pitched the idea for the dating app, originally called Matchbox, at the incubator’s inaugural hackathon.

Online dating involves filling out a long questionnaire and answering matches on a computer. On Tinder, people only swipe right if they’re interested and left if they’re not.

Many people flock to the app as a convenient way to find casual sex. As it has taken over the dating world, many users now have a love-hate relationship with Tinder. Some only activate when they are alone, others struggle with the constant rejection that comes with inapplicability. Some even blame Tinder for starting the “dating apocalypse,” a decline in romance and an environment where people are reluctant to commit because they hope the perfect match might slip away.

“It needs to cater a little more to the female audience, or make it more friendly,” said Sam Nijad, a 27-year-old California actor and contestant on the reality TV show “The Bachelorette.” “For guys, especially, from my experience, it’s an absolutely killer app.”

Tired of scrolling through hundreds of profiles, filled with gym selfies, thirst traps, scammers and men fishing, some daters have turned elsewhere to find love, at places like running clubs, events, trains, Home Depot and even Costco.

This irony has also created competition for Tinder.

Tired of not having enough dates with people she saw on dating apps, Cassidy Davis asked her friends in 2022 to invite someone from the app to a Valentine’s Day party at her Los Angeles apartment. A TikTok video of the incident went viral. Since then, she has hosted monthly “chaotic singles parties” at various locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere.

“Apps are still really useful, but these days a lot of people are looking for that rom-com, IRL meet-cute,” Davis said.

The 31-year-old is now engaged to a man she invited to her first rowdy singalong. The couple met before in real life, not through a dating app.

She said she might not have matched him if she had met him online.

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

The dating landscape is very crowded. The startup develops AI companions and other apps that it claims do a better job of matching people. Then there are other popular dating apps like Bumble, Hinge and Grindr. Social media giant Facebook also has a dating service.

Match Group CEO Spencer Raskoff, who also heads Tinder, speaks at the Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” event at the Glasshouse on May 28 in New York.

(Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

It is often difficult for large industry leaders to change the way their brand is perceived.

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

Still, 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, Raskoff 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 starting popular companies, he worked as an investment banker and private equity investor. At one point, Raskov wanted to become a journalist. He was the managing editor of the paper at Harvard-Westlake, a college preparatory school in Los Angeles County, and worked in major news but had a greater interest in business, according to a 2020 interview with C-Suite Quarterly.

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

Tinder has a competitive edge. It’s widely used and often the first app people turn to when they want to start dating again. Despite its reputation as a hookup app, Tinder says it’s about people finding the relationships they want, whether it’s dating, love or new friends on their own terms.

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

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

UCLA student Charlize True Trujillo, 21, got paid to promote Tinder events with disco lines to her nearly 3 million followers on TikTok. She attended and enjoyed meeting people, but said online dating isn’t going away anytime soon.

“My friends and I prefer to meet someone in person,” she said. “But at this point, we’re meeting more people who are our type online.”