Hinge is a dating app founded by Justin McLeod in 2012. Hinge is more relationship-oriented in its features compared to its competitors, with marketing efforts focusing on the app’s "designed to be deleted" branding.
History
Hinge was founded by Justin McLeod in 2012. The mobile app version of Hinge was first developed in early 2013 and launched in February of that year. The app was designed to be less superficial than Tinder, dispensing with Tinder-like swiping and using the slogan "the relationship app". Before Hinge gained enough users on the platform to sustain the business, it nearly ran out of cash. When making the mobile app, McLeod spent much of the remaining company cash on a launch party to be held in Washington D.C. The party allowed Hinge to gain the next round of funding and saved the app from going under. Hinge formerly used connections to Facebook friends to facilitate connections. The app has since moved away from using friends of friends as a predictor of compatibility and has been rebuilt to no longer require Facebook login. In 2017, Hinge received the most mentions compared to other dating apps in the Weddings section of The New York Times. The company released Hinge Matchmaker in September 2017 to reinvent online dating for "people that missed out on the dating app craze". Match Group made investments in Hinge as early as September 2017. On June 20, 2018, Match Group acquired 51% ownership of Hinge, with the right to acquire all the remaining shares within the next 12-month period, which it exercised. Match Group owned 100% of Hinge by the first quarter of 2019. In 2019, US presidential candidatePete Buttigieg revealed that he met his husband on Hinge. Hinge is in the process of setting up a department, Hinge Lab, which will focus on researching successful matches on the app to help fine-tune the app's algorithm and other features.
Operation
Hinge has sought to be identified as more attractive to a younger demographic than Match.com or eHarmony. The app has a "Your Turn" feature designed to remind a user to continue a conversation. This feature was designed with the intention of decreasing ghosting. Profiles on Hinge are composed of pictures as well as three self-selected personal prompts. The prompts encourage users to focus on personality traits rather than just photos. When using Hinge, users are presented with other profiles in a vertical timeline format. Instead of swiping, users have to respond to specific photos or prompts when liking a profile. Hinge allows users to filter matches based on traits that Hinge believes are important to its members, such as religion or height. Unlike other dating apps, users can message other users without having to "match" first. In 2018, Hinge launched a "We Met" feature. "We Met" lets matched users privately confirm whether or not they went on a first date with their match in order to find more compatible matches. In July 2018, Hinge rolled out its "most compatible" feature, which utilizes the Gale–Shapley algorithm to find what they claim are the best matches for users. Once per day, users get a match that makes what Hinge claims is the best pairing, purportedly based on user liking and passing activity.
Marketing
Hinge's marketing focuses on how the app is "designed to be deleted", with its mascot, Hingie, getting roasted in a campfire, encased in ice in a freezer, run over by a cab, flattened by an air-conditioner, etc, when two Hinge users fall in love. In 2020, the app launched Hingie Shop, selling products that can be "destroyed" such as bath bombs and smores.
