Dating apps use Spotify and Yelp to make dates better

Two new innovations from dating startup, Coffee Meets Bagel, are designed to improve the date success rate.

Online dating has lost much of its stigma in recent years. 5% of Americans who are in a marriage or committed relationship say they met their significant other online: hard evidence that it has grown in popularity. However, with one-in-five online daters having asked someone else to help them with their profile, the evidence also suggests it’s a difficult process. Coffee Meets Bagel is a company focusing on building meaningful and lasting relationships, removing the endless swipe. Now two innovations from the dating startup concentrate on the moments after two users have been paired. Both Mixtape and DateSpots use data from existing apps, Spotify and Yelp respectively, to build momentum and increase the chances of a follow-up date.

Mixtape uses Spotify’s API to create a playlist composed of top songs and public playlists that the matched users share in common. Invented by a Coffee Meets Bagel engineer who had built it on his own to help break the ice on a few of his own first dates. DateSpots uses Yelp’s API to help daters decide on a date spot with filters on venue type, price and location, and the platform only returns four star locations and up. Recommending ‘spots’ with, for example, quiet or average noise levels, and an intimate and trendy ambiance. The two new products provide a potent combination to help people increase the chances of a successful date. The apps will stay separate for now to allow Coffee Meets Bagel to improve their main offering.

An increase in the use of dating apps has already lead to some interesting innovations. From this platform which matches individuals looking to escape bad dates, to this Chinese app that displays the credit scores of those listed. Most dating apps work to facilitate the first date. In the future, will we see more innovations like these two that look at what the two hopefuls have in common to improve the conversion of date to relationship?