Match Group Drops $100M on Sniffies, Eyes Full Ownership
The dating app giant takes a stake in the fast-growing cruising app as users raise concerns over privacy, ads, and corporate control.
Match Group, the company behind Tinder, OkCupid, and Hinge, has invested $100 million in Sniffies, a cruising app for men seeking men. The deal gives Match Group a significant minority stake, with the option to take full ownership later.
“From the first time I met the Sniffies team a year ago, it was clear they had a deep understanding of their users and a strong point of view on how its community actually connects,” said Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Match Group, in a press release. “There’s also clear and growing demand in this space, and Sniffies feels genuinely different and authentic to its audience.”
Based in Seattle, Sniffies has an estimated 3 million monthly active users. Match Group says the app will continue to operate independently, with support for its “vision and growth.”
According to TechCrunch, Match Group beat its fourth-quarter estimates but reported declining user growth at flagship apps like Tinder, a sign of broader dating app burnout.
In a press release, Sniffies framed the investment as evidence of its growth since its 2018 founding and said it would continue investing in privacy and safety measures and maintain control over how user data is stored, handled, and protected. The company reiterated that it would operate independently, seeking to ease fears that the platform — which uses location-based data to map nearby digital “cruisers” looking to connect — might significantly alter the app experience.
“The company is not transitioning into a traditional dating app, and there will be no changes to the core principles that define Sniffies today,” the press release said. “The Sniffies map will still revolve around immediacy, clarity of intent, and cruiser-driven interaction.”
Sniffies said the partnership with Match Group would allow it to roll out new features faster, expand its global reach, and continue “delivering meaningful functionality” to users for free.
Some raised concerns about Rascoff’s previous stint as a board member of Palantir, a defense tech and data-mining company whose tools are used by militaries and counterterrorism analysts, including the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon.
“Interested to see how ties to Palantir affect Sniffies’ growth. Hopefully this doesn’t become a surveillance application,” one LinkedIn user wrote.
As reported by Wired, some users have expressed skepticism about the deal, saying the platform may have to compromise on the qualities that first drew them in.
“So will this mean tons of ads like Grindr?” one Instagram user wrote, referring to complaints that pop-up ads have made the app largely “unusable” for non-paying users.
Brad Allen, a 34-year-old event producer, told Wired he has concerns about whether the app will be monetized in ways that make it harder for free users to cruise as easily as they do now.
“I really am pulling for them to somehow navigate this differently since it’s essential to the cruising community now,” Allen said. “Hopefully the pop-up Candy Crush ads don’t light up too much in the bushes.”
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