Hinge Matchmaker: App Invites Couples To Arrange Dates For Mutual Friends

Tired of your coupled or married friends offering you condescending dating advice? Well now, with the help of Hinge Matchmaker, your friends can get in on the app-swiping game they potentially missed out on before finding true love.

Hinge, the dating app founded by Justin McLeod and launched in 2013, looks to take its friend-of-a-friend approach to the next level by allowing people in relationships to bestow recommendations for potential matches to their mutual friends. The standalone Hinge Matchmaker app, available today in a beta version on the iOS App Store, relies on Facebook friend connections and even phone contacts to allow both single and romantically involved mutual friends to embrace their Cupid role.

"Always wanted to choose matches for your friends? Have two friends that you think might be perfect for one another? Or are you single and want to have your friends set you up?" the iOS App Store description reads.

“[W]here setting up your friends is always fun and never awkward. Your future abounds with good fortune, bragging rights, and wedding invites. Now be the favorite friend - match them up!” reads the company’s description of the app.

McLeod tells TechCrunch that the experimental app is intended to analyze the marketability and interest in this third-party matching system. Instead of allowing friends to grab your phone to pick their favorite swipe-rights for you, now they can “play” their own matchmaker role on a dating app they’d have likely never downloaded otherwise.

“We found a lot of people who felt like they missed out on the dating app craze wanted to be able to participate in some way,” he told TechCrunch. “A lot of times, people will pull out their friend’s phone and swipe for them on other apps.”

Available in the “Lifestyle” category of the App Store, Hinge Matchmaker relies on users opening up their wide set of Facebook friend connections in order to allow a matchmaker – who would be known by both parties – to recommend the two for each other. Having billed itself as the dating app competitor to Tinder, Bumble or OKCupid, the new “real matchmaking” app continues Hinge’s marketing as the “real relationship” dating app.

Matchmakers have the ability to take control of a friend’s app abilities by locking their profile and then scrolling through the potential matches for that specific person. The matchmaker can also select to invite anyone from their phone’s address book onto the app in order to create their very own match from scratch.

And what if two recommended matches fail to contact each other? The matchmaker can override the shyness and send their own icebreaker message to start the conversation between the two.

For those still privacy weary, the app does have an option for preventing one’s profile from being seen by those whose role is identified as a matchmaker.