It’s been almost a year since Match Group announced its launch Sagittarius, the online dating giant’s first app for gay, bi and queer men. Since launching in New York last June, Archer has been downloaded more than 685,000 times, according to estimates from the market intelligence firm Sensor tower. Archer completed its US release last October.
With Match and other online dating companies facing a downturn, Archer’s growth is certainly remarkable. The last match earnings results showed a decrease in user payments on Tinder, the company’s flagship app and one of the leading dating platforms on the market.
However, despite reaching over half a million installs, Archer still has a long way to go to catch up with heavyweight Grindr, which racked up over 10 million downloads last year alone and has a total of 87 million installs worldwide per Sensor data Tower. Another established competitor, Scruff, has more than 17 million mobile app installs of all time.
Unlike its rivals, who have been accused of fostering a toxic hookup culture, Archer has a fresh take on online gay dating and aims to provide a safe space for users. The app instigates several security measures to prevent unwanted behavior, such as incorporating artificial intelligence into its chat mode to automatically blur possible nudity. (Users can still send photos of the bird through private photo albums.) There’s also selfie verification that prevents matches from using blank profiles or headless profile photos.
“We recognize that there is bad behavior on gay dating apps,” Michael Kaye, Director of Marketing and Brand Communications at Archer, told TechCrunch. “There is a lot of body shaming and there is a lot of racism. And we hope that every person is required to verify [their selfie]this will contribute to a lower rate of misbehavior because there is nothing to hide behind.
Archer also separates casual and serious daters by giving them two different layouts to choose from — Dating Mode, a linear layout for users who like one match at a time, and Hookup Mode, where users can view multiple profiles at once that they show their activity status and if they’re looking for something casual. According to the company’s findings, 66% of its users are looking for dating and relationships, and 49% are on Archer for dating and hookups.
Additionally, Archer has a number of social features that make it stand out, including the ability to follow users and add interest tags (Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, Peloton, etc.) to their profiles. It recently launched Emoji Reactions, where users can react to a profile with a fun emoji to help break the ice and start a conversation.
In hopes of attracting more users and staying on its upward trajectory, Archer plans to release new features this summer and fall. Knowing that 74% of Archer users are looking for friendships, Kaye revealed to us that she is prioritizing community-building features, such as the ability to find users by entering tags in the search bar. It also mentioned testing other features that “further help people connect with others who share interests and participate in offline activities.” As Kaye previously told us, Archer is working on adding a Stories feature to the app, which would make it more like Instagram.
Additionally, Kaye teased exploring possible new AI integrations.
“We will continue to explore how we can further integrate AI into the app and create a much more enhanced premium experience for our users… Match Group recently partnered with OpenAI earlier this year and I’m sure we’ll be working with it soon,” Kaye said.
Like many other businesses, Match has increased its investment in artificial intelligence and plans to spend about $20 million to $30 million on the technology in 2024. The company now has a deal with OpenAI and previously experimented with an AI photo selection feature on Tinder .
