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Hinge slammed by users who claim technical glitch deleted connections: 'My match is gone'

Hinge, the popular dating app, makes it clear in its commercials and advertising that it’s “the app designed to be deleted.” Users got a taste of this on the night of August 25, when a technical malfunction caused the app to crash.

According to Twitter, Hinge users were alarmed that their matches were disappearing after they restarted the app.

“I was in the middle of replying to a new match when the outage occurred,” one person replied on Twitter. “5+ hours later and my match is gone.”

This is not the first time a glitch like this has occurred for the app. A few days prior, on August 20, users also started complaining about how the app restarted and erased their profiles, matches, likes and conversations.

In The Know spoke to one of the affected users, Abby Wilson, who fortunately didn’t lose any matches in the glitch on August 25. Wilson initially thought that someone had hacked her account because she wasn’t able to sign back in and was concerned someone was impersonating her. She messaged Hinge on Twitter and did not hear back.

DownDetector reported that too many users were trying to sign back into the app at once after it restarted, which might have contributed to prolonging the length of the crash.

Credit: DownDetector
Credit: DownDetector

Since the start of quarantine in March, dating app downloads and usage has skyrocketed. Tinder, Bumble, Plenty of Fish and Hinge were ranked in the top 10 non-gaming app downloads worldwide in May. Apps have raced to add more quarantine-friendly features to the app, including Hinge’s video dating feature called “Date from Home.”

Hinge Labs reported that 70 percent of users said they were “open” to video dating at the beginning of quarantine, and by May over a third of users were experimenting with video dating within a given week.

Hinge sets itself apart from competing dating apps by requiring its users to answer three questions from a list of prompts. Hinge also focuses on matching people with others who have common Facebook friends and lets users see who likes their pictures or answers so they can determine whether they want to like them back and start a conversation.

Through these touches, Hinge has established itself as a “relationship app,” rather than one for hookups — a reputation that has plagued apps like Tinder.

Match, which owns Hinge, claims to have been confident in the success of the dating app even prior to quarantine. From 2018 to 2019 Hinge grew over 100 percent year-over-year and increased revenue by around 400 percent.

In The Know reached out to Hinge for comment, but has not heard back as of publishing this article.

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The post Hinge went down and everyone lost their minds (and possibly their soulmates) appeared first on In The Know.