Swiping right: How couples meet has changed a lot since the '90s

Swiping right: How couples meet has changed a lot since the '90s

1/21/21 7:00PM

Bumble, the dating app which has focused on the experience of women on its platform, has filed with the SEC for an IPO which could value the company at more than $6bn. Bumble is just the latest dating app to have grown and matured into a substantial business, with revenues of $417m for the first nine months of last year.

As the chart above shows, it is no surprise that dating apps and platforms are becoming significant businesses when the majority of new couples are meeting online — according to data from the studies "How Couples Meet and Stay Together" from Stanford University.

Of heterosexual couples who met in 1995, roughly one-third met through friends, but by 2017 that number had fallen to just 20%, while almost 40% of couples met online. In same-sex couples, the number that met online is even higher at 65%.

Interestingly, meeting in a bar or restaurant was the only other medium that became a better matchmaker over the study period, with 27% of heterosexual couples meeting that way in 2017, up from 19% in 1995. Looking for love? Go to a bar and then go on a dating app while you're there.

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Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.

And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.

That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.

World cup viewers chart — Sherwood News

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