Your coupled-up friends have thoughts about your dating life. Your group chat has thoughts about your dating life. And now, thanks to a new app, complete strangers can have thoughts about your dating life—with an actual way to introduce you to someone.
Meet Rivet, a brand new dating app that recently launched nationwide. Founded by former Tinder and Match Group executive Taru Kapoor, it uses what the company calls “Social Matching,” which is basically letting real people recommend potential romantic connections for other users. The idea: Someone else might spot a pairing you’d overlook on your own.
With Gen Z bringing friends further into the dating process and “Date My Friend” PowerPoints and old-fashioned setups gaining traction, Rivet taps into an appetite for a little matchmaking help. It just expands the pool of people who can say, “I know someone you should meet.”
And it makes sense. According to a company-commissioned survey, 75% of Gen Zers said they’d trust a match reviewed by real people over one that was given to them by an algorithm or AI (which is where some apps are heading all together). The survey also found that Gen Z actually likes doing this: 78% of Gen Z want to play matchmaker for total strangers; they’re invested in other people’s love stories.
Users can participate as “Matchers,” reviewing potential pairs and recommending introductions. Pairs with high Social Matching scores are introduced, and each person independently decides whether to match and start a conversation. You can help others while looking for connections yourself, or join exclusively as a Matcher—even if you’re not dating.
On TikTok, folks are already having fun with the matchmaking side of Rivet. It scratches a very specific itch for anyone who’s a little (or a lot) nosy, who has strong opinions about what makes people actually compatible, and who genuinely believes in helping people find their person. Many are taking the matchmaking responsibility very seriously, weighing potential pairings as though they’ve been personally retained to find these people a spouse. And honestly, sometimes you need someone that invested in your love life.
Taru hopes bringing people into the process can ease the loneliness of looking for love online. “Rivet is built on a simple truth: humans understand chemistry and compatibility in a way that no algorithm can,” she said in the press release. “You don’t have to find your person entirely on your own, let people help you find your person.”
The best part is that Matchers truly want the people they’re pairing to have the final say—this isn’t just a game or entertainment to them. Nearly 70% of the Gen Z and millennial survey respondents said they were interested in anonymously helping strangers find romantic matches only if the daters made the final decision in the end.
So, if voting on who should couple up on Love Island left you convinced matchmaking was your calling, consider this somewhere to direct that energy between seasons. Your unofficial career as Cupid no longer has to revolve around a villa full of people who can’t hear your very helpful suggestions.
Rivet is free to download on iOS and Android.