Pandemic-weary singles are bored of Hinge and Tinder and desperate for new experiences. A new batch of apps are helping bring them together IRL.

• New dating apps like Thursday and POM are testing in-person events in London and New York.
• There's a growing desire among singles to meet people in person again, Thursday's CEO told Insider.

Jessica Sultoo broke her collarbone at the last singles event she went to.

A man she had met there picked her up on his shoulder and in a drunken stupor, dropped her.

She was at an event in London hosted by Thursday, a dating app that has been running meet-ups for singles at bars across the city every Thursday since it launched in July last year.

The experience was clearly an accident that would be enough to put anyone off.

But Sultoo, 30, is certain it was an isolated incident, and it hasn't deterred her from coming back to the app's events.

"I'm very single and ready to mingle," she told Insider at one of Thursday's events on March 3 at a bar called Tonight Jospehine. "I've got four [dating] apps on my phone and they're not working!"

Sultoo's sentiments capture a growing frustration with popular dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge, which many exhausted during the pandemic. Tapping on screens was the only way to meet someone new when confined indoors, and video chats or socially distanced walks the only dates of choice.

Tinder reported 2020 as their busiest year yet, with its users also setting records for usage in early 2021. Hinge tripled its revenue from 2019 to 2020, and doubled it from that in 2021.

The surge in dating app use spurred many of them to roll out a spate of new features such as video chats.

But as the pandemic wanes, people are getting out again — and hoping to meet someone in person. Now a new crop of dating apps are leaning into that desire.

"[During lockdown] people had saturated Hinge, Tinder, Bumble," Matthew Love, CEO of Thursday, told Insider.

"It's kind of gone back to the old school way where people don't want to be online and glued to their phones," he added. "They want to be experiencing something in real life."

It's also what Mandy Mee, a dating coach at the MME Agency, has observed.

The events are an alternative to the "typical cognitive overchoice, burnout, and catfishing experience that's inevitable where online dating is concerned," Mee told Insider.

Love's app, which is available to Londoners and New Yorkers, with the odd event taking place in other UK cities, held its first event in London in November. More than 650 people rolled through the 400-person capacity venue where it took place.

It's been growing in popularity since, with people using it in many ways.

"Some try and use it to have more one night stands, some try and use it to meet the love of their life. Some try and use it to see multiple people. Others actually use it just because it's social," said Love.

Now the app is hosting up to 15 events across London and New York every week, many that surpass capacity.

Users can only use the app on the day of week that holds its namesake — Thursday, which Love explained tends to be the most popular date night across Western cosmopolitan cities.

Like other popular apps, people can swipe through profiles of others and land matches. As soon as the clock rolls into midnight, though, the app locks out until the following Thursday, erasing any matches or conversations.

It also lists the events happening across the city that Thursday, enticing users early in the week with a notification of the current week's locations.

It's what Sarah Kelly, 30, another user of the app, looks forward to each week. She's been using the Thursday events as an excuse to go out with her girlfriends, especially as she's busy working on the weekends.

"'Georgia, should we go?'" Kelly asks when the notification pops up each week, motioning to her friend there in attendance with her at the Tonight Josephine event, Georgia Freeman, 29.

The two have been to several Thursday events, motivated to have a good time at bars again because they're bored of small talk on dating apps and have felt robbed of time during the pandemic.

But socializing with friends isn't a priority for everyone at these app-facilitated dating events.

Meid Adam, 24, came to Thursday's Tonight Josephine event alone, as he has at several of Thursday's events.

"I definitely feel like coming by myself will give me more opportunity to be able to meet someone new," he told Insider at the event. "Because I'm not coming over to spend time with someone that I already know."

In-person sociability is also a core premise behind another new app, Power of Music, or POM. This app connects users based on music taste and has held several music-centred events in London since its launch last July.

"Meet on our app? Brilliant. You know you have that fundamental emotional connection. Now go to one of our events and meet in person," POM's founder, Vihan Patel, told Insider. "At the very least, there's a great conversation starter, that conversation about the music."

While POM is in earlier stages than Thursday, it's also growing, having hit 100,000 downloads this month.

The app allows users to connect their Spotify or Apple Music accounts, which helps POM see what music is most popular in any given area, important fodder for hosting music events. Patel expects to be hosting one event a week soon.

As for Thursday, the app's social media is flooded with comments with users globally asking it to come to their city. Love's priority is to build up its presence in London with new types of events such as running clubs, and to then take it across other cities in the US.

It's clear there's an appetite for new ways of using dating apps that companies must adapt to stay relevant and boost customer satisfaction, Mee said.

"Dating apps will be required to think outside the box," she said.