Hinge CMO Jackie Jantos hopes to help make Gen Zers less lonely 

Meeting applications have developed a bad reputation in recent times. Ghost people have others, which means that they simply cease to respond to someone with whom they once shared frequent correspondence. There seem to be thin choices, despite life in big cities like New York. And have we mentioned that many of these applications are now costing money?

In the first SXSW London, Techcrunch caught up Jackie Jantos, the CMO and president of Hinge, to talk about how the company is marketing in a new generation in what has become a scene of apathetic encounters.

“It is a generation that grew up with an in -depth understanding of the creation of digital experiences and what they are trying to get out of it,” said Jantos in an interview with Techcrunch. She listed the features that Gen Zers want most of their brands, such as transparency and authenticity. It is a diversified generation that spends less time in person than its predecessors.

“If you do not build with inclusion in the center of everything, you are just not going to build a significant product or marketing activation to engage them,” she said.

The landscape of the dating application has evolved in recent years, seeing companies such as the hinge being extended to try to attract and support the attention of users.

Tinder, for example, fought growth In recent years, culminating in his CEO who took off a few weeks ago. Buzz also sees A slowdown in user growth.

Hinge and Tinder both belong to Match Group. The report of the first quarter of 2025 published by Match Group shows that Hinge is a little better than his sister company. THE The report showed This hinge experienced an increase in direct income compared to Tinder, and that the application downloads were “strong” in the English -speaking and Western Europe markets.

Jantos said Hinge implements and plays with many new features for the moment. For example, he added a quota on the number of cats that a person may have at some point so that a user is not simply “collecting cats”.

“We want to encourage people to close cats if you are not interested in someone,” said Jantos, adding that, hopefully, that encourages people to focus on a smaller number of conversations that can successfully reach a date. She said Hinge is testing her coaching function, who is trying to give users advice on building their profiles.

The match Match Group Q1 2025 said Hinge was also trying to introduce warm introductions soon to “highlight shared interests to improve the quality of the match”.

Jantos was shy on the details, but said that there was a new introduction which, hopefully, would encourage users to “spend a little more time to discover each profile”.

“Our recommendations have become very strong with the new IA recommendation that we have recently published,” she added. (Match Group’s Press report of the first quarter said the new feature, launched in March, has already led to a 15% increase in matches and contacts of contact.) Jantos said that Hinge also hoped to increase its safety characteristics with AI and that overall, the tools on the “application” will improve permanently due to AI “.

“But also new tools will occur to train you along the [dating] Journey, ”she said.

Jantos flew to the first SXSW in London to talk about the solitude epidemic which has an impact on General Zers. There is no shortage of stories and reports on how young people connect less with the outside world, stuck on their phones and virtual realities. Jantos told Techcrunch that this is one of the reasons why Hinge launched his One Hour fund in 2023.

The fund is seeking to invest $ 1 million in organizations to promote more in person Connections between Zers generation. She heard comments from the young people from her team that there are obstacles to the laggles these days, in particular how expensive it has become and to find places that feel safe.

“We want to lower the barrier so that people just want to go out because we know that if they build this skill, it is more likely that when it is on our product, they will be more likely to be comfortable meeting someone for an appointment,” she said.

And, as expected, Hinge launches events, fulfills creative advertisements, such as writers, to “meet the public where they are”. He created a zine And campaign on the hinge successes to inspire, hopefully, the Zers generation to find love. And even better, on the Hinge application.