Hinge, a transparent, totally not anonymous dating app (you use your full name, and it pulls photos from Facebook), just received $4.5 million in venture funding from Founders Fund, Lowercase Capital and others. The service, similar to Tinder, uses a hot-or-not model of favoriting or tossing out matches.
This investment and rise of Hinge is the latest in an interesting trend — the embarrassment involved with online dating has faded almost entirely. People aren’t worried about their friends (and strangers) knowing that they’re single and using GPS-enabled apps to find a mate.
Also interesting: Once you spot a target on the Hinge service (it’s status-y — college and workplace are listed automatically), you can ask mutual friends about him or her. Depending on your friends, this could be either good or bad.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.
So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.
Yes, I'll give $5/month
Yes, I'll give $5/month
We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
Google Pay. You can also contribute via
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63698982/hinge-screens.0.1467742916.0.jpg)
