Just in case the buzz of posting about being in the top 0.01 percent of listeners for the Psych Labrador Semi-Arid Mood-Pop musical genre on Spotify has worn off, Grindr and Tinder are here with their own ‘wrapped’ data drops for 2024.
Grindr has some interesting insights into top and bottom locations globally, although not as extensive as it could have been. Tinder, meanwhile, has found that users are getting more bold and direct when signaling what they want from relationships. Backpacks and owls are both involved.
Grindr unwraps feet, as well as schlongs
For those dying to know whether more people searched on Grindr for people with big penises or beautiful feet, Grindr Unwrapped has arrived with the answers.
The world’s most prominent LGBTQ+ dating app had a strong year in a wider industry sector that’s generally on the decline, boasting just under 15 million monthly active users and good revenue growth. In 2024, over 130 billion chat messages were sent on the app.
Grindr Unwrapped gives us some insight into global trends among the app’s users, including the perhaps unsurprising reveal that “hung” was the most popular tag searched for.
Grindr users aren’t just looking for new friends with massive wangers. The next most popular tags searched for in the app in 2024 were ‘trans’ (transgender), ‘bb’ (bareback sex without a condom), ‘dom’ (someone who takes a dominant role in sex and foreplay) and ‘feet’ (those gorgeous things at the ends of legs).
Grindr Wrapped revealed that the country with the highest percentage of app users describing themselves as tops was Jordan: one of the very few Middle Eastern countries where homosexuality isn’t illegal. There have, however, recently been reports of police in Jordan harassing LGBTQ+ people.
Greece was the country next in line in terms of top percentage, followed by the US.
In terms of the country with the highest percentage of self-described bottoms, South Africa came up top. South Korea and Japan were in second and third place respectively.
For bears, you need Greece. The European country had the highest percentage of self-described bears, followed by the US, Ireland, Trinidad & Tobago and South Africa. For the highest percentage of twinks, the Netherlands led the pack, followed by Switzerland, Belgium, the UK and Brazil.
Tinder swipes through direct dating trend
Tinder’s end of year data drop, Year in Swipe, was perhaps more revealing than Grindr’s, suggesting a few new dating trends among users of the OG dating app.
There were signs that Tinder users were becoming more direct about their dating intentions, with the phase “Looking for…” the top phrase mentioned in profile bios in 2024.
A slew of fast-growing emojis, in terms of their increased use in bios, also suggested that users may be becoming more direct about signaling their personality styles and the kinds of people they hope to match with. The fastest-growing emoji was a bow (that you might wear in your hair, not something you shoot an arrow at someone with), which is generally considered to indicate coquettishness.
The bow was followed, in terms of speed of usage growth, by the black cloud (sometimes indicating the storminess of dating), backpack (adventurousness, but usually more hiking than sex-related), open hand (honesty and openness) and owl (up for deep conversations at night).
Tinder also collated the university major listed on user profiles, finding that computer science was the most common. It was followed by psychology, finance, mechanical engineering then biology.
The app itself had a tough year, with industry-watchers suggesting that many original Millennial Tinder users have aged out of dating app use, with Tinder struggling to attract younger generations. Match Group, which owns Tinder, is expected to further utilize AI tools in the app to help stop the rot, but the JPMorgan bank has said it doesn’t expect the company to return to growth until 2027.
Is there an emoji for that? Maybe a smashed phone or burning dollar bill?
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