With it being Valentine’s Day we thought that it would be fitting to look into the weird, wonderful and extensive world of dating apps and software. Dating sites are not a new thing, evolving from old personals ads in newspapers to a multi-billion dollar industry. But how does this show our constant adoption into a more tech-lead world?

 

The dating apps that you may be familiar with are things like Tinder, Bumble and Happn with the former being the most recognisable; they all have their own special features to differentiate them with each other. The online dating and apps market is huge; according to toptal.com it is estimated that by the end of last year, the apps market alone was worth over $3bn with revenues expected to reach over $1.2bn in 2019. The appeal is obvious and in-line with the majority of other time-saving, tech-related apps on the market: Convenience.

And it isn’t just convenience that is the biggest contributing factor to this growth; it’s also the scale of choice (for those picky people out there), the ease of use and the relative minimisation of intrusiveness. Gone are the days of the shy guys having to gee themselves up to go and chat to the person they like sitting at the other end of the bar. With it being online, people are finding it much easier to get involved and take that first step and this is just another example of how our lives are becoming much more tech-centric.

 

Big players getting involved

It says something about an industry when the big players start to get involved and that is exactly that has happened in the dating market. With Facebook making the announcement toward the end of 2018 that they would be introducing dating features to the world’s largest social media network, people initially gasped and shrieked “but what about Tinder??” – the expectation being that Facebook’s major advantage would be that a very large portion of people already have Facebook accounts. However, with the takeup of Facebook beginning to drift to older (and therefore less likely to be single) audiences, the testing phase is likely to uncover how successful this venture may prove to be – if at all.

 

Tinder for business

But the premise of dating apps, especially Tinder; isn’t limited to the content that is available but rather the format in which the content is delivered and this has had a big effect on the direction other apps and software has taken. There have been numerous businesses and startups launching that are proclaiming to be the Tinder of (insert business or industry name here) – and by this they mean the progressive, swipe-to-like, intuitive version of their industry.

Business and the corporate community has no escape from this trend. Introducing: Ripple, an app launched by a team of former Tinder employees, led by Tinder’s original CTO Ryan Ogle; the goal of the app is to bring business-people together for networking. Their mobile-first focus seeks to cut past all of the downfalls that currently exist of Microsoft’s newly acquired LinkedIn; the business-go-to social media giant which now features more than 500 million active profiles. Is this one of the first examples of a typically progressive solution (see: LinkedIn reforming the recruitment and job search process) already being replaced by an even newer system? Time will surely tell when it comes to uptake.

But what lesson does this hold for us all when it comes to our businesses and the industries that we all serve or benefit from? Is it time now that we start reviewing our current relationships with our older, out of date processes and begin the “it’s not you, it’s me (when it really is actually you)” talks with our software? Spreadsheets and old-hat processing is fast becoming the “newspaper personals ads” of the corporate world – surely it’s time to swipe right on some new bespoke software?

 

We work across a number of business sectors to provide effective bespoke software solutions. Will you swipe right with us? We’d love to chat – discover more of what we can do and get in touch with our team today.