Your moving plans, by the numbers

We asked whether you’re planning to move in the next 6 months. 33% said yes.

• ~5,000 readers answered (they’re still coming in… we crunched the numbers on ~3,800 replies)
• 33.3% of the respondents said yes, they intend to move within 6 months. 66.7% said no.
• Top cities people are moving from: NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago.
• Top cities people are moving to: Austin, Chicago, and LA.
• Some of the most popular intercity moves: NYC to LA, San Francisco to Austin, NYC to Austin, NYC to Denver, LA to Austin.
• Texans: Get ready for an influx of Californians and New Yorkers.

Your plans gave me an idea: I’m starting a moving company. Be on the lookout for marketing emails soon.

Who’s moving

Bob, moving from Chicago to Naperville, Illinois: “F*ck quarantine while in a 1,200 sq ft apartment. Need a house and a yard now.”

Chad, moving from Nova Scotia back to an RV: “We’ve lived in a 40ft RV for the last 2 years, splitting time between Canada and the US with 2 adults, 2 children and a dog. COVID forced us back into our home for 3 months, but we’ve abandoned that now and moved back into the trailer with million-dollar views overlooking the ocean in Nova Scotia for $800/month.”

Eli, moving from San Francisco to Berkeley, California: “I’ve always dreamed of living alone but that’s not an option living in San Francisco. Instead, I’ve spent the past 6 years living with 5 people. Now that prices are dropping, I found a beautiful one bedroom in Berkeley. I’ve always loved living in a city but since being locked down, my FOMO has declined as fast as rental prices.”

Cindy, moved from Chicago to New Orleans: She left the Chicago area “due to astronomically high taxes, poor services, cost of living and tired of winters. In New Orleans I own two properties, a condo I rent full-time and my personal home… Why New Orleans? The creative energy, food, music and the cost of living.”

Who’s staying put

Emily, staying in Richmond, Virginia: “I already live in an affordable, mid-size city. With even more on the horizon post-COVID-19, I think Richmond is just starting to hit its prime.”

Steve, staying in NYC: “True New Yorkers always stick around to brave whatever comes their way. 9/11, Pandemics, roaches/rats/hipsters… Everything passes in time.”

Craig, staying in Austin: “There’s no better place to be right now than Austin. I suspect we’ll be having a ton of new Texans arriving shortly.”

We’ll do another survey next week. That was fun.

Thanks to everyone who answered. You can find the entire dataset here.

–Sam, Founder & CEO of The Hustle

Against all odds, we’re living in Tinder boom times

If April saw the peak of Horny on Main culture, then May and June were when single people collectively dove back into dating apps.

Sure, in-person dating is a logistical nightmare. But that didn’t stop millions of us from clicking through profiles, wondering what — in normal times — might have been.

On Tinder, messages shot up 20%, and conversation lengths jumped 25%. Last month, Tinder was the 3rd-highest-grossing app — above even Netflix and Disney+.

Tinder is suddenly looking like a snack

Its Q1 earnings report said growth of paid subscribers had slowed significantly compared to the same time last year. But lately, Tinder has tried to sweep users off their feet with COVID-friendly features:

• Passport is now free for everyone — you can set your location anywhere in the world.
• The company has been testing in-app trivia since May.
• And as of this week, Tinder has started rolling out a video chat option in some US states.

Is that why people are dropping so much $$$ on Tinder? Maybe not completely.

The earnings data does not specifically break down where all that spending is coming from, but as Input points out, there’s likely one overriding culprit: Lonely people.

Research has found that the loneliest Tinder users are also the app’s best customers. And 4 months into quarantine, if there’s one thing the singles crowd is not lacking for right now, it’s solitude.

Amazon’s head honcho is still standing, but Twitter had a field day with #ripjeffbezos

Rest assured: Amazon’s head honcho has NOT “drowned in the Amazon river,” as some Tweeters claimed. But reality didn’t stop some pranksters from powering #ripjeffbezos to trending status anyway.

The tweets lamenting Bezos’ fake demise included pictures of just about every bald white man under the sun. But not Bezos himself.

Here are my personal favorite imposters:

• Pitbull, AKA “Mr. Worldwide Shipping”
• Bob Duncan from Good Luck Charlie. The final boss of TV Dads.
• Voldemort.
• Caillou. The good die young. ️
• Mr. Clean.
• Gru from the Despicable Me series.

See here: the actual newsy part of this piece

Bezos did not actually perish. But he probably shouldn’t celebrate too fast.

Walmart is launching a same-day delivery subscription service to compete with Amazon Prime, called Walmart+.

Amazon Prime has been cutting into Walmart’s base for years — more than half of Walmart’s top-spending customers have a Prime subscription. But with a price point $21 cheaper than the standard price for a Prime membership, Walmart+ puts the retail megachain back on offense.

Meet the winner of our Tesla giveaway

Once, he played 18 holes with professional golfer Tom Watson, thanks to a raffle victory. “My family always gives me a hard time because they think I have a lot of luck,” he says.

Now he can add “Tesla winner” to his list of good fortune — but he almost didn’t believe it.

On Monday, The Hustle’s president emailed him, inviting him to participate in a subscriber interview. In reality, the email was a ruse. But Ryan thought it was a mass email and deleted it.

The next day, he got another message, and he deleted that, too.

After receiving a 3rd email, he gave in. “I said, I’m swamped this week, I can jump on with you next week if you have time.” The reply: It’ll just take 5 minutes.

When we told Ryan over a Zoom call yesterday that he won, he was shocked. Despite reading The Hustle regularly, he hadn’t realized we were running a giveaway.

“As I was talking, I just Googled ‘The Hustle raffle’ to make sure that it was real,” he says.

But the news is certainly welcome. Ryan’s current ride is a 2011 Honda with 227k miles on it.

A credit card that packs up to $1,148 of value? (We’re not drooling, you are)

It’s not often we call a piece of plastic a work of art.

But then The Ascent showed us this credit card and, well, we had to admit — that’s a slick little swiper.

Tack on the fact that it comes with a hefty first-year bonus, up to 5% cash back, and no annual fees to boot, and we figured y’all would want to hear about it, too.