Following extensive investment into premium products, Coffee Meets Bagel doubled its paying subscribers during 2018.
Co-founder and co-CEO Dawoon Kang refused to reveal the exact figures during an interview with Yahoo Finance, and explained that the company has historically been sensitive with user numbers.
The slow-dating app is also in the process of introducing new features to make the subscription package more complete and beneficial for all members.
‘Unlimited Takes’ will let users look through as many profiles as they want, a pivot away from the app’s original model which prioritised quality over quantity. However, Kang was adamant that if subscribers were showing commitment to dating by paying $40 a month then unlimited swipes wouldn’t be counter-productive.
She said to Yahoo Finance: “Ultimately we decided to [introduce Unlimited Takes] because we’re not actually offering unlimited like to every user, because it would then just become Tinder.
“Subscribers are committed enough to prioritise dating so even if we show them more than what we usually do, they’re actually going to spend time thoughtfully browsing and looking at each profile.”
The second feature being brought in is ‘Priority Likes’, which will make singles appear higher up in the pile for potential matches that they’ve already liked.
They will also be able to see data about other members, showing how active they are and how likely they are to respond to messages.
Finally, read receipts will help to tackle the prevalent issue of ghosting in the online dating industry. In theory, the notifications should make users less likely to ignore messages if their match knows that they’ve read it.
Watch the full interview here.