Innovations in Online Dating & Social Discovery: What SDG's Doing to Stay Ahead of the Curve

9.65 billion dollars! That is how much the global online dating market size was valued in 2022. And at a projected compound annual growth rate of 7.4% all the way up to the year 2030, things are only going to get hotter and hotter.

If these numbers already fascinate you, remember that they only represent the online dating segment of the social discovery spectrum.

Social Discovery Group tends to experiment with a variety of other exciting products that can help like-minded people connect. It is certainly a great time to be alive as we transform our current world and the way we interact with each other!

But of course, the most curious question remains; how will the social discovery industry evolve over the course of the upcoming years?

Answering this question certainly poses a challenge. Life, with its technological advances, changes literally from day to day. One can only speculate what imaginative fantasy will become reality after the recent boom of AI.

Some people still have trouble believing how prevalent AI is becoming for many of us and how virally its implementation encircles us.

Naturally, it won’t just be AI that leads the transformation but also the changing preferences of the target markets and the particularities of demographic cohorts. Without further ado, let’s jump into what we believe the future of online dating and social discovery may hold.

What Does the Future Hold?

No, the truth is we do not have a glass orb to foresee the future (unfortunately). One can only speculate. What we do have, however, is a strong, dedicated market research team that helps us make strategic decisions in building our products.

We also have publicly available research conducted by companies like Global Dating Insights and Pew Research. And when conducting extensive market research, a few trends start to emerge regarding the future of online dating and social discovery. Here are the 5 main points below.

1. Personality focus
2. Community building
3. User security enhancement
4. AI & Machine Learning
5. Gamification

Ready to discover what we are doing to stay ahead of the curve? Read on as I expand on these 5 main predictions.

Personality Focus

One of the greatest challenges of connecting with people online is understanding whether you match by personality. Naturally, you may be physically attracted to each other and that drives your communication. But that is just about 50% of the love chemistry!

If you have any plans for a devoted, lasting relationship, there is no way to make that happen unless you know you have a strong vibe when it comes to your personality. The biggest apps in the dating game make it easy to lose focus. How? Let’s call it the visual bias effect.

What is your usual user journey? You go online, you scroll through numerous profiles, you check out their photos, and you compare. You normally choose only those users that are contrastingly better looking.

But what if someone uses filters on their photos? Or is he/she simply a better photographer? Perhaps they are more photogenic? Could it even be that the angle of that photo you just swiped away did not show the person in the most attractive light?

If we could only turn back the hands of time, imagine how many quality relationships you could have started if it was not for that split-second decision made in visual bias.

One product from SDG investments stands out when it comes to personality focus. Magnet removes the problem of visual bias. When you register on Magnet, you generate your personal customizable cartoon avatar to ‘start your game.’

Then, you get to discover other users through communication in chat, complete challenges, and upgrade your digital identity through experience. And if you believe that you truly met someone who matches your personality, you get to unlock each other’s photos!

Community Building

The next prediction that is a good contender for being an industry disruptor is the focus on features facilitating the building of communities. We all have a need to belong to clusters of people that represent our beliefs and values. It’s simply human nature.

Thus, if we are able to frictionlessly discover such groups of interest, we would be effectively solving our pain of solitude.

When one finds himself in a community he can call home, the burden of seeking out someone with similar interests is significantly reduced. Be it communities focused on LGBTQ+, religion, ethnicity, hobbies, or even diet, their forming could be key to making better connections.

While we absorbed this hypothesis company-wide, there are definitely some notable products that the SDG invested in with the central aim of building communities.

The HeyGay LGBTQ+ team is actively working on hosting a gay community initiative, which will become a bodacious social discovery product of its own towards the end of the summer.

In addition to this, the Social Discovery Group invested in GuysOnly, where singles from around the world can connect and begin forming a relationship, using a variety of communication features on the online dating platform.

Now if singles want to search further afield for that special someone, they connect one-on-one via video chats and use an advanced filter system to find the particular connection you’re looking for.

Recently, queer chat platform Queer Spaces also raised funding from the Social Discovery Group which has been a groundbreaking step in expanding inclusivity and representation within the LGBTQ+ community.

User Security Enhancements

Having studied the Pew Research report From Looking for Love to Swiping the Field: Online Dating in the U.S., online safety continues to be a concern for the majority of users in the social discovery world. This should not come as a surprise.

The internet is converting more and more users into its web daily. And scammers, or any other ill-wishing individuals for that matter, are learning how to survive despite the enhancing safety features too.

Given the numerous possibilities of hiding your intentions and your identity online, it frequently becomes the perfect environment for deceit and abuse. Companies recognize that it is not only their responsibility but also the guarantor of their reputation to keep our users safe.

Therefore, SDG tends to put plenty of attention to our customers’ safety across all of our products.

There’s one SDG investment, however, that needs an honorable mention concerning its work with user safety: BamBam. This face-to-face video chat roulette has a mission of bringing users together with safety at the highest level of importance.

The safety system on BamBam includes both automatic and manual mechanisms of moderation. This ensures you do not suddenly match with someone inappropriate or abusive on their video stream.

AI & Machine Learning

So, let’s cover the most curious prediction for the future of our industry. Will AI affect dating and social discovery? Why, certainly. There is no stopping it! The most curious question is perhaps, how? First and foremost, artificial intelligence will most likely be used to improve user matching.

Through machine learning, products will be able to uncover similarities between various people and connect them accordingly. We could also see a surge in AI wingmen - bot helpers that will aid customers in communicating with and attracting partners.

After all, many of us could certainly use some help in that area. Could AI also help us build our dating profiles? Maybe! But when it comes to foretelling how else AI will change our world of social discovery, I believe that sky is certainly the limit.

The most certain thing is that AI is here to stay.

Does Social Discovery Group have a finger in AI? You betcha! Ever since the rise of Chat GPT, the team has been brainstorming and coming up with hypotheses on how to use AI to better our products for our customers.

Closing eyes on the rapidly transforming technological movement would be a huge mistake.

Besides enhancing SDG products with AI tools, Social Discovery Group also invests in AI startups across the globe. Dmitriy Volkov, the CEO and Founder of the Social Discovery Group, had a keen eye for recognizing the immense potential of this emerging technology right from the outset and was fortunate to have invested funds into the now thriving startup of OpenAI.

EVA AI is another app with AI at the heart of its model that SDG took to invest in. It offers a virtual AI partner to users that listens, responds, and appreciates the user’s needs.

The avatar companion driven by artificial intelligence can be appropriately altered to suit the user's desires to create the companion they’ve always dreamed about.

EVA AI aims to provide a virtual environment where users may experience virtual reality and let users develop new kinds of relationships with virtual acquaintances.

Gamification

Using games in dating apps can actually make connecting with others more fun and less stressful than those typical dating platforms. It's like turning the whole dating thing into a relaxed and enjoyable experience where you can get to know potential partners in a more lighthearted way.

Plus, the cool thing is that these games can give you some insights into their personality and how they see life.

For instance, take Dil Mil, one of the SDG's flagship dating apps. The application helps South Asian singles find connections in a relaxed and entertaining environment by introducing an in-app game where couples can write a Haiku together — a traditional Japanese poetic form.

So, if you're tired of the same old dating scene, why not try out a dating app that makes things more enjoyable and exciting? With gamification, you might just find a deeper connection with someone special!

You made it all the way to the end! Thanks for reading. How would you say social discovery will evolve in the near future? Feel free to comment below and get the conversation rolling!

Written by Tony Jacobs, Product Owner of Magnet