Thursday: new dating app only works on one day of the week (yes, you guessed it...)

Couples, your single friends are about to start turning down all your Thursday night drink invitations
Thursday

George Rawlings and Matt McNeill Love want to eliminate all the elements of dating that have made it start to feel like a chore: the evenings spent swiping, the conversations fizzling, the admin of planning your week around possible evenings your match might like to go for a drink.

After 13 months spent staring at screens, “lockdown has made dating stale”, they say, listing the reasons for launching their new dating app, Thursday. Thursday’s solution? Bringing the thrill back - hopefully - by only making the app available for one day a week (yep, you got it).

Rawlings and Love claim they’re ripping up the dating rules to make modern matchmaking more exciting. The idea is that you match, flirt and chat during the day on a Thursday before locking in a date (or three) that evening - but can an app that’s inactive 85.7 per cent of the time really expect to take on big players like Hinge and Bumble?

The app launches in two weeks and more than 110,000 singles are already pre-registered across London and New York
Thursday

Absolutely, according to the extent to which Thursday is seducing the capital’s millennials. The app launches in two weeks and more than 110,000 singles are already pre-registered across London and New York, with planned roll-outs across the UK and other European cities over the month of May. On Instagram, the buzz is building, fast. More than 68,000 users currently follow @thursdaydating’s pink, millennial-friendly profile and Rawlings and Love say DMs are already in the hundreds.

Ex-promoter Rawlings and army captain Love clearly know how to be successful hype-men. Thursday’s Instagram is a mosaic of post-it-note-style “ask for needs not nudes” slogans, lockdown dating memes and talking points such as whether to split the bill on a first date.

Rawlings’ LinkedIn bio jokes that the reason for the Thursday USP is they “[couldn’t] afford server costs for the other six days of the week” and he and Love admit their app contains an element of psychological trickery. “It’s human nature to want what you can’t have,” they tell me of the one-day-a-week USP. In other words: theirs is the app equivalent of playing hard to get.

But beneath the cheeky chappy personas and flirty catchphrases there is a serious message. After a year that’s seen most singles looking upon coupled-up friends with envy, they believe it’s time to turn the tables and make summer 2021 “the most exciting time to be single”. Couples, prepare for all your single friends to be turning down Thursday night drinks for the foreseeable: thanks to Rawlings and Love’s new brainchild, the fourth night of the week just became London’s mass date night.

The app lets members post daily Instagram-style stories, which expire after 24 hours
Thursday

The idea of a city-wide speed dating evening is enticing and it taps into one of the greatest social emotions we lost during lockdown: FOMO. “We’re not saying [users] shouldn’t use the other apps because they are fantastic, but when every single person in your city is dating on Thursday and is actually free to date that day, why would you not?” ask the co-founders. The genius of setting a date night is that it also frees up the other six days of the week to focus on all the other activities everyone’s missed over the last year.

The app also wants to minimise admin and make dating “proactive” again. All matches and conversation disappear at midnight, so you have to act quickly and be a bit spontaneous if you want to secure a date (to boost safety, members are verified using a passport or driving license and will be booted off the app if they are reported once. Though geography plays a part in suggestions, precise locations are not shared).

Obviously, the 24-hour expiry time doesn’t mean users can’t play outside the rules. The app won’t stop matches exchanging numbers and meeting on another day - but that’s beside the point, say the co-founders. Even if users don’t meet on a Thursday night, the app removes the “paradox of choice” (daily matches are capped at 10) and forces them to move quickly, upping the spontaneity factor - something everyone’s been lacking for the last year.

Members are verified using a passport or driving license to boost safety
Thursday

When it does come to meeting on a Thursday, they hope de-formalising the dating experience will help users be more adventurous with their date activities, too. “Dinner is great,” say Rawlings and Love, aware that many bars and restaurants are booked up for months. “But so is a G&T on the Southbank or a coffee in your lunch break.”

Either way, the pair are already excited to hear the of success stories after the first Thursday. Reserve May 6 in your diary: maybe you’ll be one of them.

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