As Valentine’s Day approached, Steven Coyle was on the phone looking for a date, but not on Tinder.

The 26-year-old from Las Vegas used an app called Snack to scroll through videos of women walking down the street, showing off their outfits or lip-syncing to the camera.

One caught his eye – a tall, pretty blonde recording herself walking through Disney California Adventure Park to the Avengers Campus, where she ordered a cocktail from the bar.

She looks fun, he thought. He pressed a heart to “love”.

Coyle had come across Snack, an app that bills itself as “TikTok meets Tinder,” a few days earlier. It’s one of the few innovative dating apps trying to capture the attention of Gen Z, many of whom say they’re tired of the apps that have dominated the online dating scene for nearly a decade. – Bumble, Hinge and, most importantly, Tinder, which popularized the now ubiquitous “swipe to match” user interface.

Looking for love with someone who shares your Myers-Briggs personality type or your love of video games? Want to see a blurry photo of your potential partner that gets sharper the more you chat? The options abound.

Heterosexual couples in the United States are now more likely to meet a romantic partner online than through any other mode of connection. A 2017 survey found that 39% of these couples said they met their partner online, up from 22% in 2009. Nearly half of 18- to 29-year-olds say they’ve used a dating app in their lifetime, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center Study.

And during the pandemic, online dating has reached new heights – with Bumble reporting a 70% increase in video calls and Tinder surpassing 3 billion swipes in a day for the first time in March 2020.

“Dating apps give you this opportunity to meet people outside of your typical circles that you would be in day to day and I think that’s really powerful – people say opposites attract,” said Snack’s general manager, Kim Kaplan.

Underscoring its intention to woo a new generation of daters, Snack eliminated the swipe gesture in favor of pressing a heart-shaped button or sending a message. Trying to scan brings up the cheeky “scan is old” error message.

“Swiping is 10 years old now,” said Kaplan, who was an early Match.com employee and involved with dating app Plenty of Fish, which eventually sold for $575 million.

That’s not all that’s been refreshed. Users upload TikTok-style videos instead of photos, there’s no field for a biography, and you can even upload videos to an Instagram-style “story” that people can see after you match. with them.

TikTok, where Snack advertises, played a major role in its creation. Kaplan was scrolling through the app one day in early 2020 when she came across a video of a woman introducing herself with her name, age and star sign. His caption included the hashtag “#single”. Kaplan realized she had uncovered a whole “belly” of dating already happening on TikTok.

It clicked: a video-first dating app was the next logical evolution of dating.

She encouraged her Gen Z employees and investors to incorporate their voices and feedback into Snack’s development.

They told him that most people of their generation only use swiping apps because they have to, preferring to move the conversation to a more casual social media platform like Instagram or Snapchat as soon as possible.

Taking inspiration from the early days of Tinder, the company focuses on field promotion on college campuses and currently has the most users in California, Texas, Florida and New York. The application is only available for 18 to 35 year olds.

He also produces a dating show that airs live weekly on TikTok. Although Kaplan declined to disclose user numbers, Snack, which launched in February 2021, was the 10th most downloaded dating app in the United States in August.

Schmooze, another dating app wooing Gen Z, is also organized around a form of digital content the generation has fallen in love with – memes.

Or, as CEO Vidya Madhavan put it, “Laugh the way you like.”

At first glance, Schmooze doesn’t look like a dating app. Instead of people’s profiles, you’re immediately greeted by a meme on a colorful cartoon-like background, with the choice to swipe right for “like” and left for “dislike”.

After a number of swipes, the app’s machine learning model attempts to gauge the type of humor you like and your topics of interest, such as politics, pop culture or science. At this point, you’ll receive a “#MatchRec” with someone whose humor matches yours, giving you the choice of “Schmooze” or “Snooze.”

A few years ago, Madhavan was working in India and debating whether to go to college. She emailed someone who had attended American business school asking for advice. That first email led to over 150 email exchanges filled with jokes and humor and, ultimately, marriage – along with Madhavan’s belief that humor is a good indicator of compatibility in love.

“Meme-based dating fits so perfectly with this generation,” Madhavan said. “Because memes are how we all communicate, right? Whether it’s sharing news or sharing how you feel.

The 27-year-old Stanford business school graduate co-founded the company with classmate Abhinav Anurag and launched the app as a beta test in early April 2021. It recently surpassed 300,000 users, with concentrations on the East Coast and Los Angeles. (For scale, Tinder has around 66 million monthly users worldwide.)

Madhavan said the dating apps currently on the market all basically have the same format – a profile and photos.

“Now are you writing a longer biography? Do you have three guests? Does the woman come first? These are all things that change, but basically every dating app has a profile and a photo,” Madhavan said. “And that means you have to have your profile to be so organized, to stand out.”

By removing this burden, Schmooze attempts to turn dating into a lighter and more fun experience.

“And while you’re having fun, you’ll find a date,” she said.

When it comes to the issue of looks versus personality, a dating app called Iris takes the opposite approach to Schmooze, while reducing the burden of self-presentation.

Returning to the fundamentals of physical attraction, the app, which launched in early 2020, allows users to train a machine learning algorithm by browsing through three sets of stock photos. It then recommends potential matches where there may be mutual attraction, either locally or across the database via a “Super Search” feature.

The founder, who has yet to come out publicly, said he aims to recreate the initial attraction experience when meeting someone in real life, regardless of factors such as skill level. education, hobbies or political affiliation.

Iris also offers free return airfare for all matching couples if they live too far away. All they have to do is email the company, although no one has accepted the offer yet, said Daniel Mori, chief growth officer.

While Iris isn’t explicitly targeting Gen Z, the company has seen marketing success on TikTok, which was its primary source of user acquisition in its first year, Mori said. He also formed a network of around 400 influencers to promote the app.

Aside from who you’re likely to meet, is there any real difference in the experience of finding love on a Gen Z app?

Coyle, who has used Tinder and Bumble in the past, said Snack’s focus on video gives “more of an idea of ​​what they’re actually doing when they’re at a party or something, not just at from a photograph.

But he struggled to find videos of himself to include in his profile and wasn’t sure how long he was going to last on the app.

It’s a “love-hate” relationship with dating apps that keeps bringing him back, despite the lack of success.

“Most of the time I try to find the woman,” he said.