Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are neglecting their male users, Grindr CEO George Arison accused this week.
“One of the things that strikes me about the way Bumble and Tinder treat the world is that, frankly, they don’t treat 70% of their users very well,” Arison said in an interview with Polina Pompliano, founding father of media company The Profile. The two spoke at Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah.
On each Bumble and Tinder, men are about 3 times as strong as women. Yet these apps don’t try to enhance or ease men’s often unpleasant experience, Arison said. Although men are those who pay for premium services more often, their experiences remain frustrating, leading many to present up on online dating.
This exodus is confirmed by research: 79% of faculty students and other members of Generation Z – the age group that uses dating apps essentially the most by far – largest audience – based on a study by Axios and Generation Lab, they’re foregoing regular use of dating apps in favor of non-public interactions study from October 2023.
Given this decline, apps are “missing an opportunity” to expand their audience, Arison said.
“There’s a huge percentage of men who want to settle down and find a partner, and they’re very attached to the product once they’re there. Why not develop a lot of features for them?” Arison asked.
Arison isn’t the just one who’s confused. Connell Barrett, founding father of the coaching site Dating Transformation and a well-liked dating advisor on Instagram, said Assets that the features dating apps offer men ultimately don’t really help them. In his 20 years of counseling men, he has never seen men “more frustrated, exhausted and just plain burned out” from dating apps than they at the moment are, he said. He attributes this exhaustion to an inequality within the app – about 20% of men get nearly all of matches, a figure that a Hinge analyst leakedthen quickly deleted again in 2017.
“The ones who create a really good, compelling profile are the ones who get the most matches,” Barrett said. “That means 80% of men are really struggling, and those are good, attractive, dateable, great men – I know that because they’re my clients – and that’s why I’d like to see dating apps take a more democratic view of how to help them.”
That help could are available the shape of AI-generated dating advice or a feature that permits men to talk over with a dating therapist on the app, Barrett said. Instead, the app exploits men’s frustration for its own profit, he said.
The approach of dating apps is: “We ask you to upgrade to premium membership and pay us more money. Maybe that will help you get more matches,” Barrett said. “But that doesn’t work. A problematic profile that gets upgraded from gold to platinum is not going to be a more effective profile.”
More money, more games?
Users of all genders have accused apps like Hinge of “hiding” essentially the most attractive profiles unless they pay for a premium service. Hinge’s CEO denied that the app has an attractiveness rating, however the app does feature “standout” profiles that “get the most attention” and where a free user would have a lower likelihood of finding a match. You can only reach one “standout” per week unless you choose to buy more features.
This gamification makes the dating pool more efficient, said a Hinge executive. But it could also result in burnout, which Barrett says affects men greater than ever today.
Initiatives like these prove that executives are only focused on women’s experiences, Arison said. In fact, he added that the best way executives speak about men on conference calls with investors “is actually really negative, to the point of being offensive to them.”
“I’m not even part of their target audience,” said Arison – who’s gay – with a giggle. “But as a man, I still feel insulted.”
He didn’t elaborate on what he had heard on quarterly earnings calls, but comments from a May conference call with Match Group CEO Bernard Kim suggest there was a robust give attention to women’s experiences with dating apps, while male users weren’t mentioned.
“Generation Z and women, and women’s experiences in particular, are our top priority,” Kim said. “They are literally the most important audience for any dating app. We know that women need to feel empowered and respected when they use our apps.” (Match Group owns Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid and other dating apps.)
According to a 2020 Pew Research study, women report significantly higher rates of harassment on dating apps than men. studyBut dating apps can improve women’s experiences while still specializing in men, Arison said.
“You can give someone a great experience without it being a bad experience for someone else,” Arison said.
