Exclusive: Plenty of Fish rebrands, launches its first in-app game
Plenty of Fish, the seasoned but somewhat under-the-radar dating app owned by Match Group, is making a push into gaming.
On Wednesday the 19-year-old company (acquired by Match in 2015) will debut an in-app game. It follows a Monday release of a fresh look for the brand.
The app’s face-lift showcases a more modern color scheme and interface. The game, called Cue’d Up, is meant to offer singles a way to connect before officially matching. Cue’d Up will pair up to six users for a short game, available twice a week at set times. Participants will answer the same prompts and then vote on who has the best answers for each of the four rounds. At the end of the game, users will vote on who has the “best vibes” overall and can like one another in the group. If people mutually like one another, they can start messaging.
“We thought games were just a natural thing that people could do online together,” CEO Malgosia Green tells Fast Company. “And so our games are very much oriented to try to replicate that sort of easy, casual, in-real-life spark that happens at, say, the backyard barbecue.”
For the past few years dating apps have been investing in more interactive features such as in-app video calling, voice memos, and games as users—already online because of the pandemic—look for richer experiences than the simple photo-swipe formula. For its part, Plenty of Fish rolled out live streaming in March 2020.
Plenty of Fish has seen a steep decline in downloads since the first half of 2019, according to Sensor Tower, a third-party data analytics firm. The company runs on free ad-based and paid subscription offerings, though Green says the majority of revenue comes from subscriptions.
Cue’d Up—which the company has been testing in a small market in Texas—will be free for the app’s users. Within the test market, 40% of singles playing the game ended up matching with someone through the feature, with many also starting conversations. “A lot of people will match on a swipe app, but they don’t necessarily turn into conversations as much. So this is definitely a step in the right direction,” Green says.
Although she anticipates that Plenty of Fish will be adding more games to the platform, Green declined to share specifics. “Ultimately, for us, this is the first game that we have out there,” she says, “and we plan on making more so that there’s always something new to try, so that there’s not an overall fatigue with the feature over time.”
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