The Pandemic Changes the Rules for Online Dating

Global restrictions on movement and collaboration aimed at preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus have worked in Asia and may work elsewhere. But will they slow the rate at which new relationships are formed, particularly in countries where online dating has become such a common way for people to meet?

Stay-at-home recommendations because of the coronavirus are shifting people’s routines, workflows, and now dating. Most people being asked to remain indoors, and businesses closed in cities across the countries, singles can’t go out to bars and restaurants to meet people. Thus, dating apps are approval ratings are through the roof in usage during the pandemic. Even without the coronavirus dating apps would show stable growth.

Number of online dating users in the United States from 2017 to 2024 (in millions)

This statistic presents the number of online dating users in the United States from 2017 to 2024. In 2019, approximately 30.4 million U.S. users accessed online dating services. The number of U.S. online dating users is projected to reach 35.4 million in 2024.

On the Apple App Store, Tinder’s download rank has been a bit more up and down over this period, with an opening rank of 81, and closing rank of 70 – via a low of 107 in late February and a high of 46 in early March.

Tinder Apple App Store download rank, US

Source: SimilarWeb

It ranks a bit higher in international markets; 53rd in Germany, 55th in Canada, and 61st in the UK (mid-March 2020).

 You might be wondering what the point of online dating is in the current situation. While meeting up in-person is typically the end (and often quickly met) goal of many dating apps, coronavirus means that users are now forced to self-isolate for an uncertain period. At the same time, quarantine has naturally resulted in the increased desire to seek out connection, in whatever form possible.

Dating apps continue to serve public service announcements in-app, as well as encouraging people to use their chat and video functionalities to continue exploring potential relationships.

Why you should build a dating app?

Dating app development can be both profitable for you and a good solution for people that want to find a soulmate. 

The principle of dating app functionality

Dating apps belong to a ‘family’ of social apps; that’s why special attention is regularly paid to supporting human collaboration and meeting user’s particular needs. No doubt, there are no two similar dating apps: each app (Tinder, OkCupid, Pure, eHarmony, just to name a few) has a specific set of features. Though, we will cover a few things that you should read if you want to build a dating app.

The engagement technology: Matching algorithms

After entering the information about themselves, the users are ready to break the ice and do what they want the most to do find the right person. The first stage in this complex process is matching users. Dating apps may use a wide variety of matching techniques to match up people who like each other. Let’s overview some of them.

 Location awareness. You are more likely to live happily ever after with someone in your city than on another continent. No wonder, dating apps tend to employ GPS components in their matching algorithms. Having suggested a list of users nearby and brief information about them.

Mathematical basis. Another technology, which is widely used, is the mathematical algorithm that connects people by finding similarities in answers given to a suggested questionnaire. Such algorithms are mostly based on the compatibility percentage of answers given for each question separately or all questions collectively. 

Behavior-based matching. The question-based consistency might seem enough to give users a hint who can be a soulmate. However, the reality is that people tend to provide inaccurate information about themselves. It may happen inappropriately, or someone may not purposefully tell the truth. This leads to contradicting matches.

 Algorithms for behavior-based matching are more complicated than mathematical and location-based ones as they operate with data gathered from outside sources (social networks accounts, profiles, groups they visit, musical playlists, etc.). Generating and analyzing large datasets requires significant resources. It’s where a Big Data analytics approach helps to increase chances of the right match.

Interesting niches in the dating site market

The dating app market seems to be overcrowded, and making a profit in this sector is almost impossible, but it is not. When choosing the right strategy, you can always succeed. The main thing is to do these preparations before development. It is essential to make a qualitative analysis of the market, study existing offers, and understand which niche there is still unmet demand. And believe me, it is!

We did a little research on what kind of diving applications have recently appeared on the market and are quite successful in recruiting their fans. So let’s see:

# 1 For single parents or people looking to have a baby. When you flip through an application like Tinder, you hope to find someone who is free and has no experience of starting a family. Agree that photos with children in the classic application can be confusing, and the excuse “this is my nephew” spoils the impression anyway.

Children are entirely changing the dating system. And as practice shows, many people, including single parents and people who want to be parents, do not use dating apps to pair. For those looking to find a second parent, the search can be difficult. This is how the idea to create the Heybaby app came about.

There are more than 13 million single parents in the United States, and half of the people in their 20s and 45s say they want kids, but that’s not exactly where you want to start a Tinder conversation. Heibabi aims to help find a partner with similar life plans.

When a user subscribes to heybaby, he answers questions about his family and what he wants in the future, such as if he already has children and if they want more. There will also be questions about lifestyle, such as work and travel preferences, to find the right match at different levels.

A lot of research confirms that if a couple has real long-term compatibility, they are made up of money, children, and religion. There are applications. That is focused on a serious relationship; they do not affect such vital factors that we described above.

Van de Zande, one of the app creators, said: “The worst thing for a person who has children or wants them is to enter into a relationship only to find out that they do not share the vision of the future with their potential partner.”

# 2 Tesla Dating. At the moment, there are only rumors that the dating app for Tesla owners will soon appear on the market. We have already seen the prototype of this site, and in our opinion, the idea is interesting.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Grewal, a Canadian e-commerce entrepreneur, thought about the app after hearing from “countless” friends and acquaintances how much they love their Tesla. He said, “It seemed like when they became customers, that was all they wanted to talk about. It has become an essential part of their personality. “

Aside from mainstream dating apps like Tinder or OkCupid, there are plenty of niche apps out there – think FarmersOnly.

According to Grewal, Tesla Dating has received 200 early access subscriptions and thousands of site visits at the time of publication. However, users have to verify Tesla’s ownership before launch, so it’s unclear how many of those will remain. How do you like the idea? But really, this idea can work.

Why are dating apps beneficial?

Considering the overall popularity of dating apps, it would be better to list the main benefits that let such apps dominate and be popular.

How do dating apps make money?

The majority of dating apps offer free services to anyone, but some of them use premium mode as well. So you should think about this option to gain a good profit. The premium user account can offer a few additional features like the following:

• Boost the account. User can pay a fixed fee and become the first one in the search list for a particular period;
• Smart swipe. Integrated machine learning algorithms change the way how users can see your photos. Order of the photos can be changed depending on the interests of the user who browses them;
• Unlimited right swipes. In a free app, the number of daily right swipes can be limited, so people can use a premium account that will give them an unlimited number of right swipes;
• Ad-free. A premium account will allow the user to surf without advertising that may irritate them.

The future of dating

We believe that with the relaxation of quarantine, the dating rules during a pandemic will remain unchanged. For many, it will remain habitual to conduct the first meeting in FaceTime, for example, and not make an actual appointment.

Before strict quarantine was introduced and everyone was urged to stay at home, dating in big cities was very expensive. Virtual meetings save hundreds of dollars for single people, and this trend is likely to continue as unemployment in the US continues to rise.

According to experts, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the courtship process.

“You know, many years ago, marriage was the beginning of a partnership. Now it’s the final, experts say. “All my data shows that the longer the courtship process takes, the more likely people are to stay together and form stable partnerships.” How the story with the pandemic and relationships ends – we’ll see. Let’s take a look at the statistics of dating apps.

According to the latest polls, the demand for the Tinder app increased by 25% during the outbreak in the US.

The Inner Circle also officially confirmed that the number of sent messages increased by 116%.

According to the company’s blog, during the virus outbreak, the number of conversations with the OkCupid app increased by 20%, and the number of matches – by 10%.

Every city and state’s COVID-19 rules and regulations will shift and evolve. It’s too early to say when things will be back to “normal” or what normal will even look like then. Undoubtedly, today there is an enormous amount of dating apps that can hit every spot, but imagination has no limits, so we have a great field for the creation of something new which can achieve a breakthrough. With everything mentioned above, you can start the competition with your product by creating a dating app of high level.

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