Everything Is a Dating App Now

Summer is here, and love is in the air—though increasingly not, as Antonia Mufarech writes, on the apps. As the dating sites struggle, people are going back to the classics (IRL interactions) or starting new traditions (love on LinkedIn?). Plus: How Birkenstock became a luxury brand. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

More and more, it seems, people in the dating market are looking at the apps on their phones and swiping left on the whole enterprise. Bumble Inc. and Match Group Inc., which dominate the online dating realm, have together lost more than $53 billion in market value since Bumble’s initial public offering in 2021. Bumble’s sales growth is expected to slow to 9% this year, down from a peak of 31% in 2021. The number of people paying to use Match’s apps, such as Hinge and Tinder, declined 6% to 14.9 million from the same quarter a year earlier.