Dating apps have been getting a bad reputation these days. People ghost others. This means simply stop responding to people you used to deal with frequently. Despite living in a big city like New York, there appears to be slim picking. And did you mention that many of these apps cost money now?
In the first SXSW London, TechCrunch caught up with CMO and Hinge president Jackie Jantos to talk about how the company is marketing to a new generation that has become a listless dating scene.
“This is a generation that grew up with a deep understanding of how digital experiences were created and what they were trying to get out of them,” Jantos said in an interview with TechCrunch. She listed the traits that Zers Gen Zers want most of the brand, such as transparency and authenticity. It is a diverse generation that spends more direct time than its predecessor.
“If you’re not building inclusively at the heart of everything, you’re not going to build meaningful product or marketing revitalization to get them involved,” she said.
Dating app landscapes have evolved over the past few years, and we have seen companies like Hinge work overtime to try to attract and maintain user attention.
For example, Tinder has struggled with growth over the past few years, leading to the CEO resigning a few weeks ago. Bumble also shows slower user growth.
Both the hinge and Tinder are owned by Match Group. The Q1 2025 report released by Match Group shows that the hinge is a little better than its sister company. The report shows that hinges are seeing a direct increase in revenue compared to Tinder, and that app downloads are “strong” across the English-speaking European market and Western European markets.
Jantos said Hinge is currently implementing and messing around with a number of new features. For example, we have added an allocation regarding the number of chats that can have one chat at a time, so that users don’t just “collect chats.”
“If you’re not interested in someone, I want to encourage people to close the chat,” Jantos said. She said Hinge is testing the coaching function.
The Match Group Q1 2025 report stated that Hinge is also trying to quickly introduce a warm introduction to “emphasizing shared interest to improve the quality of the match.”
Jantos was Coy for details, but said there is a new introduction that encourages users to “expend a little more time discovering each profile.”
“Our recommendations have become very strong with the new AI recommendations we recently released,” she added. (According to a first quarter 2025 news report from Match Group, the new features launched in March already have an increase of 15% in matches and contact exchanges.) Jantos said Hinge hopes to increase safety features with AI, and overall the app’s tools will “continuously improve for AI.”
“But there are also new tools to coach you along the (date) journey,” she said.
Jantos flew to the first SXSW London to talk about the prevalence of loneliness that affects the Zers generation. There is no shortage of stories and reports about how young people are less connected to the outside world and glued to mobile phones and virtual reality. Jantos told TechCrunch that this was one of the reasons Hinge launched the More Hour Hour Fund in 2023.
The fund is investing $1 million in the organization to promote more face-to-face connections between Gen Zers. She has heard feedback from young people on her team that there are barriers to wandering around lately.
“We want to lower the barriers so we want people to come out because we know if people build that skill or not, when they’re on our product, they’re likely to meet someone comfortably for the date,” she said.
And, as expected, Hinge throws events, fills up the ads with creators and other creators, and “meets the audience.” It created a campaign with Zine about ZENE’s success stories, prompting Gen Zers to go and find love. Better yet, with the hinge app.