- Tinder launched Group Hangouts for friend groups to match and plan activities together
- Groups form by selecting an activity and inviting friends; up to 15 people can join
- Mutual interest triggers a group chat with options to mute, exit, block, or report users
Dating apps are under pressure to reinvent themselves as younger users lose patience with the swipe-and-scroll format, pushing companies to build features that feel less like browsing a catalog and more like organizing an actual hangout. Tinder's answer, announced Wednesday, is a new feature called Group Hangouts, built around the idea of entire friend groups matching with other groups over things they'd actually want to do together.
How It Works
The setup begins with an activity. A user selects one and pulls in at least two friends to form a group, and once that group reaches three members, it starts showing up in Tinder's regular swiping deck, where other groups can find and interact with it. Groups can hold up to 15 people total.
From there, it works a lot like normal swiping, just at a group level: browse other groups, tap "like" on ones that seem interesting, and if there's mutual interest from at least one person on each side, the two groups land in a shared chat together to start planning. Tinder has built in some guardrails too, letting individuals mute or exit a specific conversation without pulling their whole friend group out of it, and giving everyone the ability to block or report someone if things go sideways.
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Rollout
Group Hangouts lives at the top of Tinder's home screen and is currently rolling out gradually across the US and a handful of other markets, with plans to expand further down the line.
Building On Tinder's Group Dating Push
This builds on ground Tinder already started covering last year with Double Date, a feature that let two friends team up and swipe on other pairs together. Group Hangouts scales that idea up considerably, both in group size and in tone, nudging the app further away from the classic one-on-one date and closer to something resembling a planned group outing.
Claire Watanabe, Tinder's VP of product management, told TechCrunch over email that part of the inspiration came from an unexpected source: "One inspiration was seeing a college women's volleyball team make a Tinder profile while traveling for away games, so they could explore a new town and meet locals." She added that in practice, groups have stayed relatively small so far, saying, "we're seeing groups stay pretty tight, most people are hanging out with their close circle of friends, not organizing something huge."
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Part Of A Broader Shift Toward IRL Dating
This fits a pattern Tinder has been building toward for a while now. Back in March, the app rolled out an Events tab pointing users toward local things to do, speakeasies, bowling alleys, pottery studios, and this past August it widened that same in-person events offering to dozens more cities.
Tinder isn't alone in this pivot either. Bumble has been heading in a similar direction with its own Plans feature, which is likewise built around getting people together in person, in looser, group-friendly settings.
Why Now
The push comes at a difficult moment for Tinder financially. Revenue slipped in the company's most recent quarter, and monthly active users dropped 7% in Q2, extending an 8% decline from the quarter before it.
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