An issue with Facebook had far-reaching consequences, taking down some of the biggest names in iOS apps.
Spotify, Pinterest, TikTok, Tinder and Call of Duty Mobile, along with many others, were all offline beginning Friday morning. The issue was tracked down to the Facebook iOS SDK that all of these apps rely on. The Facebook SDK helps integrate Facebook into an iOS app, and provides access to Facebook Analytics, Facebook Login, App Events, Graph API and sharing options.
Facebook’s developers acknowledged the SDK was the source of the problem, and worked to quickly fix it.
“We are aware and investigating an increase in errors on the iOS SDK which is causing some apps to crash.”
Later that morning, Facebook’s developers had identified and fixed the issue.
“Earlier today, a code change triggered crashes for some iOS apps using the Facebook SDK. We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
It’s a greattime to be in the love business, says Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg. She says that the primary driver of their growth has been the introduction of their paid subscription feature, Tinder Gold, which allows users to see who liked them.
“Tinder remains the centerpiece of our growth story,” said Ginsberg during the earnings call. “Direct revenue at Tinder was up nearly 100% in the third quarter compared to last year and subscribers grew 61% and ARPU rose 24%. Even though we launched Tinder Gold over a year ago, it continues to have a meaningful impact on the business. More than 60% of the 4.1 million subscribers on Tinder are now Gold subscribers, up from 50% plus in the second quarter.”
Ginsberg says that their strategy to increase Gold subscriber penetration is to add more features to the Gold subscription package, making it even more compelling to their users.
Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match Group, discussed the massive growth of online dating throughout the world following their very strong earnings announcement in an interview on CNBC:
A Great Time to Be In the Love Business
This is a great great time to be in the love business for many reasons. We really are seeing tremendous growth from Tinder. Then as we have talked about we have some other exciting bets brewing. So not only is Tinder seeing momentum but we’ve got a whole host of other products across the globe that we leverage as well. We’re feeling pretty good about the upcoming year.
We are seeing that now more people are using multiple apps at one time, between three and four apps when they’re dating. We want to be able to service all their needs. We also see that people use different dating apps based on their age and life stage, whether you’re a 50-year-old divorcee or a 21-year-old who is a college senior. We feel like across the board both domestically and internationally we’ve got an opportunity to serve a lot of people.
What’s shocking is that over ten years ago three percent of relationships started online and now it’s 30 percent in this country. The world really has changed and this is the number one way that people meet. We think the numbers I just quoted are similar outside the US, but we think there’s going to be real growth opportunity.
Tinder Likes View Feature is Driving Growth
In terms of our business model, it’s simple. You can go on Tinder and you can get a great free experience, but we offer features that you don’t mind paying for. We had Plus, which was a subscription feature that enabled you to access a number of our premium features. Then about a year and a half ago, we introduced something called Gold, which essentially gives you the ability to see who’s liked you.
If someone says to you, do you want to see all the women who’ve liked you or all the men you’ve liked you, it’s very hard to say no. We saw that the take rate on that Gold or that likes view feature was really high and that was priced at an even higher premium, another subscription tier. What we saw is that not only were people happy to pay more for this feature, but we just saw more people taking the feature, and that’s what’s really driven a lot of the growth.
Facebook Helping Online Dating Become More Pervasive
Over time I think we’ll see a much more adoption (of dating apps). In 2012 only 16 percent of people in their young twenty’s, 18 to 25, used dating apps. Tinder really changed that. It brought a whole new generation to the category. We believe that a lot of what’s actually keeping that number down, especially internationally, is stigma. A market like Japan, we’ve been in for a long time, but there’s been a real sort of cultural stigma around dating. That’s changing and that’s changing fast.
Facebook entered the dating category and because of their reach, I’ve said there is a possibility that Facebook could open up in areas where they have real strong strength, where people who hadn’t thought about dating might try dating. We have not seen any impact since Facebook has launched in the three markets that they’ve tested in. I do think over time people are going to feel much more comfortable and that the normalization of dating and meeting strangers to go for a cup of coffee is going to really become much more pervasive everywhere.
The Scale That Tinder Has is In a League of Its Own
If you think about the Match Group products, the one that stands out is Tinder. The scale that Tinder has is in a league of its own. It went viral with very little marketing spend in 190 countries and millions of users across the globe. We haven’t seen anything quite like it. There have been competitors that have come in the market, a lot of them being local players, but really that has not driven market growth.
What’s really driven market growth are things like the introduction of mobile. Also, a few years ago we saw when 50-plus audiences when they started getting much more comfortable using social and just socializing with people online, that category grew. The more people feel comfortable the higher propensity. We feel like we’re in a great position to be able to address needs for everyone.
Tinder Co-Founder Sean Rad, in an interview on stage at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, said that he thinks that as the technology of AI advances that Siri might become a matchmaker soon:
I think the future looks nothing like what you see right now. A lot of people talk about AI and its ability to create new insights and new data, but I actually like to think about AI and its ability to create better user experiences. I’ll give you a simple picture of what I where I think not just Tinder is headed but a lot of different applications are headed. I think Siri might become a matchmaker soon.
Tinder has made it being exceptionally simpler and easier to connect with people. This is partially because it introduces a new way to double opt-in and partially because behind the scenes there’s a lot that we’re doing with AI in ensuring that we show you the best possible matches, but you could see how it could get even easier.
One day because the system is so smart in knowing the users and knowing what you want, one day Siri might say… hey Sean, there’s someone a mile away who you find attractive and we were pretty sure she finds you attractive and you both happen to like Coldplay and they’re playing in town next week. Do you want to get a coffee and if you like each other go? Siri might then create that transaction or might actually make that introduction like a traditional matchmaker.
You sort of see that as technology gets better, technology starts to disappear in our lives and starts to become a little more fluid with our daily behaviors and that creates exciting new possibilities.
What About AI-Powered Bots Making Matches?I hope not, I think that’s a scary existence. You don’t want to take the humanity out of technology.
Internet pioneer Barry Diller says that the Internet revolution is still really young. He also says that this truly radical revolution is right now a very troubled revolution.
Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia, Inc., recently reflected on the relative youthfulness of the Internet and areas which are still ripe for entrepreneurs. IAC owns popular dating platforms such as Tinder and Match.
Below are Barry Diller’s comments made during an interview on Fox Business which you can watch in its entirety below:
The Internet Revolution is Still Really Young
The growth is just part of the revolution. People forget that the internet revolution is still really young, only 22 or 23 years. It took 10-15 years just to get up enough bandwidth to actually have rich media being served through it. We are really at the very earliest stage of this.
Expedia is one of the first companies to kind of colonize travel for the internet 20 years ago. That’s a world where the colonization of all these businesses is just now coming on ‘full line’ where you can do almost everything and almost everything more through digital platforms. So the growth is everywhere.
Fintech is Just Now Going Mainstream
Financial technology, Fintech, is just now really getting into very much mainstream. Big companies are being built for this. For us, it’s home services. Being able to the same thing you do when you want a car, being taken someplace rather than drive yourself, where you have an app and with Uber. Home service, which has been one of the most difficult areas to tame.
It’s the most, essentially, local of everything. It’s where your water heater breaks, your air conditioning doesn’t work, just take it on the emergency or quick service side, and you want help. Now there is an app in Angie Home Services in Home Advisor where literally you do the same thing. You say I need a plumber and it will show you plumbers hovering around, Uberish like service providers, where you will be able to do the full-service of that transaction on your mobile device because it’s there and it’s ready for you.
It’s Really a Platform
That is just now at it’s very earliest stages. It’s just one example where the growth runway is infinite. It’s really a platform. The platform takes consumers over here who have needs and service providers over here who provide services and through technology, it makes a perfect match or at least a good match.
That’s what all of those things are, they are platforms. Once you have a platform then when you say will others be created, well certainly there will be other platforms created, but there won’t be that many because the network effects have to come into play.
Tinder is Now Moving on the Same Track as Match
We’ve been involved in Match almost 20 years I think. We bought Match quite early in the cycle. We found that… you know what, that’s a very good idea. We found this little company in Texas called Match.com which we bought. The thing is when you say it’s just now becoming where people get married, we had over a million marriages ten years ago come from Match.com.
Then the technology moved forward and you have Tinder, which is actually younger in terms of people. People on Match were fairly serious, yes they wanted to date and see what happened on a little one-time date, but they also really wanted relationships. Tinder got younger and earlier stage of pre-relationship, one-time dating or one-time whatever. But now, it is moving on the same track as Match did where real relationships are coming out of Tinder. It’s an alternative to the historic pattern of going to bars or being fixed up. This actually does bring technology into the mix.
This is a Truly Radical Revolution
When you are inside of a revolution, which I was just lucky enough in timing to get into in a very early stage, you don’t realize the effects of what is happening around you. This is a truly radical revolution. Right now it is a very troubled revolution which happens at very early stages.
Part 1 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
Part 2 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
If you’re chatting on Yik Yak, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re a millennial, talking with other millennials.
comScore’s 2015 US Mobile App Report looked at which apps have the highest concentration of millennials. Another way of putting that it which apps count 18 to 34-year-olds as the majority of their userbase.
And what comScore found was that millennials tend to dominate many popular social apps.
Yik Yak, a location-based messaging app, can count millennials as a staggering 98% of its adult userbase.
Mobile payments app Venmo is 94% millennial, while Tinder and Snapchat count 18 to 34-year-olds as 79% and 76% of their adult userbases, respectively.
“What nearly all of the apps in the ranking above have in common is a social element to them. Even apps that serve non-social functions, such Venmo with payments or Spotify and SoundCloud with music, have integrated social add-ons which are crucial to the value proposition of those apps. Expanding further on the social theme, the list also includes several social personalization apps, such as InstaSize and Layout from Instagram, which indicate Millennials’ affinity for creative expression and enhanced communications,” says comScore
If you’re looking to advertise or promote content on Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr, or Spotify – it’s definitely worthwhile to know your target audience. And that target audience, by and large, is between 18 and 34 years old.
Chelsea O’Donnell is leaving home again. Instead of running away this time as she did a couple of weeks ago, she is leaving adoptive mom Rosie O’Donnell to live with her birth mother.
Rosie O’Donnell’s spokeswoman Cindi Berger commented on the situation.
“Chelsea made a decision when she turned 18 that she wanted to go to her birth mother. This was her choice,” she said, adding that Rosie O’Donnell won’t be issuing a comment.
Chelsea O’Donnell’s birth mother, Deanna Micoley, previously accused Rosie O’Donnell and her first wife, Kelli Carpenter, of stealing Chelsea from her.
Just this past March, Micoley said in an interview, “I may not have been the best mother back then. I did drugs and I have a criminal record because of it. But I surely didn’t deserve to have my baby stolen from me!”
Chelsea O’Donnell made the decision to live with her birth mother just a week after she was located in the home of an alleged heroin dealer she met on Tinder. Chelsea suffers from an undisclosed mental illness and was reportedly not taking her meds at the time she went missing.
Rosie O’Donnell issued a statement via her rep when Chelsea O’Donnell was located at the home of Steven Sheerer in New Jersey.
“Rosie is relieved to have Chelsea back safely but is obviously very concerned about her well-being.”
Rosie must now be heartbroken that the daughter she adopted and no doubt loves is returning to her birth mom.
It will be interesting to see if Kelli Carpenter comments on Chelsea O’Donnell’s decision to leave Rosie and live with her birth mom.
Chelsea O’Donnell was reported missing from mom Rosie O’Donnell’s summer home in New York less than a week ago, but was found shortly thereafter at the home of a man she reportedly met on Tinder.
Steven M. Shearer has now been charged with two third degree charges related to the disappearance of Chelsea O’Donnell. The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey has charged Shearer with endangering the welfare of a child and the distribution of obscenity. If convicted of both charges, he faces over five years in jail. Shearer already has a prior conviction for possession of heroin.
Chelsea O’Donnell was reportedly discovered at Steven Shearer’s Barnegat, New Jersey home–in the attic with her therapy dog, Bear, after her cell phone was traced to his residence.
Steven Shearer is presently incarcerated at the Ocean County Jail–held there on $40,000 cash bail. He is prohibited from having any contact with Chelsea O’Donnell or her family.
It sounds like authorities found Rosie O’Donnell’s daughter with a predator. Chelsea O’Donnell suffers from an undisclosed mental illness, which may have made her more vulnerable to some of the lures used by predators.
It will be interesting to learn what becomes of Steven Shearer regarding this case. Most important of all is that Chelsea O’Donnell was found–seemingly unharmed–and returned to her family.
Rosie O’Donnell is no doubt eternally grateful to the investigators in Ocean County, New Jersey.
A new Vanity Fair article called “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’” doesn’t exactly heap praise on the dating app for its role in the modern relationship.
And when someone at Tinder read it, they jumped on Twitter.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a corporate tweetstorm:
Tinder has always tried to play off the fact that it’s a hookup app – which it is. But is Tinder ruining the modern relationship? I don’t know. Is wanting to hook up with attractive people a new phenomenon?
“Tinder users are on Tinder to meet people for all kinds of reasons. Sure, some of them – men and women – want to hook up. Just like it real life. And in the many years that existed before Tinder,” says the company.
And that’s a fairly good point.
But reading Sales’ piece in Vanity Fair does make you feel kind of icky about a lot of it. And it’s hard to deny many of the points she makes.
In the end, I’m not sure Tinder’s Twitter freakout was the best way to respond.
It might sound like a strange thing for famous people to do, but there are plenty of celebrities on Tinder (at least by rumor). Celebs – they’re just like us – swiping right with impunity.
Now, Tinder wants you to know if it’s your lucky day and you actually matched with a famous person. Tinder is beginning to verify people.
“Starting today, you may see a verified symbol on some profiles. Now when notable public figures, celebrities and athletes appear in your recommendations, you’ll know it’s for real,” says the company in a blog post.
Tinder says it wants to do its best to keep its 26 million daily matches real.
The Tinder verification check mark looks similar to those employed by Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Swipe on. And good luck. Hopefully, if you match with someones famous, they’re actually single.
Lisa Lampanelli lost 107 pounds following gastric sleeve surgery three years ago, and even more impressive than that–she’s kept the weight off.
Known for both her hilarious insults and her success on Celebrity Apprentice, the 53-year-old comedienne dished recently to The Huffington Post.
When asked about whether there’s a new man in her world, Lisa Lampanelli–who is recently divorced–said no.
“I got a divorce that was final in December, but I don’t feel I’m in a position to date yet,” she said. “I have no personal life.”
Instead, Lisa Lampanelli has chosen to focus solely on herself and her emotions at this time. An emotional eater, she realizes now that’s how she wound up packing on so much weight.
“I’ve really been working on the emotional and internal issues that made me eat in the first place. It’s been a real journey,” she explained.
Surprisingly, Lampanelli still incorporates fat jokes into her comedy routines.
“I honestly feel like 99 percent of people have some kind of self-hate about their looks and if I can joke about mine, maybe they can feel better about theirs,” she said.
One day Lisa Lampanelli hopes to find love again. She was married to Jimmy ‘Big Balls’ Cannizzaro for four years. That was her second marriage.
“I’ve only had two [weddings] and want three more,” she joked.
She is, however, steering clear of apps like Tinder.
“I’m way too famous and rich to be on a dating app, but if I get very desperate by the time I’m 60, I’ll go on Tinder. Or I’ll go on Millionaire Matchmaker, I’ll call Patti Stanger,” she joked.
Lisa Lampanelli is positively glowing following her 107-pound weight loss. Hopefully she gets a grip on her emotions so she’s at less risk for putting the weight back on. In the meantime she’ll no doubt be at the right place at the right time and meet a perfect someone, who is looking for the same things in life as the comedienne.
Not that anyone on Tinder would care, but a new report says that there’s a pretty good chance the person you just matched is already accounted for.
The study, published by Global Web Index, says the 30% of Tinder users are married and another 12% are “in a relationship”. So it’s pretty much a coin flip on whether you swipe right on someone who’s truly available or someone’s who’s being a little devious.
Of course, we must account for people with open marriages and those who might still identify as “married”, even though they’re separated. But any way you slice it, that’s a shockingly large chunk of the Tinder pool.
The study is from a couple of weeks ago, but was unearthed by The Guardian. According to the publication, the survey looked at over 47,000 people – which is a decent sample size.
The GWI study also found that 62% of Tinder users are male, which isn’t all the surprising. So, is Tinder full of married men?
Tinder, for its part, says the study is bollocks. From Circa:
Tinder quickly criticized the survey, saying the numbers “do not reflect Tinder’s userbase.” The company further claimed that the service is responsible for “hundreds of success stories” every week, with people meeting new partners. The company also claimed the service isn’t exclusively about dating, but also about networking and meeting new people.
It appears that the Tinder spin machine is in full rotation. Not surprising, however, as Tinder has been looking to shed its reputation as a “hookup app” – trying to convince people and marketers that it’s more than that.
I assume that these married Tinder users probably aren’t signing up for Tinder Plus. That’s an awkward credit charge to explain.
It’s commonplace to see a link to one’s Instagram profile inside their Tinder profile – and now Tinder has cut out the middleman. Tinder is now fully integrated with Instagram.
Now, if you so chose, you can link your Tinder and Instagram accounts so that your most recent Instagram photos will show up in your Tinder profile – 34 of them to be exact.
“Now there’s no need to put your Instagram handle in your profile description to tell your story (we got sick of having to do that, too). And in case you were wondering, Tinder won’t post anything to Instagram on your behalf or alter your existing Instagram privacy settings,” says Tinder.
Instagram integration is probably the most important update Tinder’s rolling out today, but the app has also added more context to profiles through “common connections” – now showing users friends of friends.
On top of that, profiles now include a user’s full set of Facebook interests.
“This is the first of many steps to take the recommendations engine to the next level and help you assess the person you’re matching with and start those conversations,” Tinder cofounder and President Sean Rad told TechCrunch. “If we can provide our users with more relevant information for each connection, we can take them halfway there in terms of getting a conversation going.”
Tinder’s most recent move was unveiling a paid tier, which rubbed many the wrong way.
Calling someone who’s 30 “older” is weird, especially as I approach that age – but in Tinder land 30 is officially old.
Tinder has just launched its Tinder Plus premium service, which it’s been teasing for months. The paid tier, which will give users access to a few new features, will cost $9.99 for US users under 30 and $19.99 for those 30 and above.
Why?
“We’ve priced Tinder Plus based on a combination of factors, including what we’ve learned through our testing, and we’ve found that these price points were adopted very well by certain age demographics,” Rosette Pambakian, Tinder’s VP of corporate communications and branding told Mashable.
“Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, like Spotify does for students, for example,” she added. “Tinder is no different; during our testing we’ve learned, not surprisingly, that younger users are just as excited about TinderPlus, but are more budget constrained, and need a lower price to pull the trigger.”
So, why pay for Tinder? If you get Tinder Plus, you’ll have access to two new features – Passport and Rewind. Passport allows you to manually change your location, so you can try to match up with people from other parts of the world. Traveling to Brazil soon? Get a head start on your love connections before you go.
Rewind lets you go back if you accidentally swipe someone away that you actually wanted to meet.
Tinder also gives Plus subscribers infinite likes, which means regular old users are going to see some limits on their liking capabilities. Those limits won’t be concrete, but algorithmic.
“Expressing interest in someone is as easy as swiping right on Tinder. The validity of the swipe is core to the Tinder experience. Tinder works best when swipes are genuine reflections of a user’s desire to connect. Limitations on rewinding and right-swiping give users more incentive to make sure their swipes are honest. For power users who want to express interest in a large number of people, Tinder Plus grants unlimited liking capability,” says the Tinder team in a blog post.
Tinder is one of the hottest dating apps around – in fact, it’s just one of the hottest apps around period. Despite this, Tinder doesn’t make any money. As we learned a couple of weeks ago after then-CEO Sean Rad hinted at a premium service – that’s all about to change.
Well, it looks like Tinder’s ready to launch its new paid tier – in a select few locations. TechCrunch reports that Tinder Plus is coming soon to select users in the UK, Brazil and Germany. Why not the US? It’s all about price testing, as Tinder has to figure out the price point that works – whether it be $0.99 or $20.
So, what will Tinder Plus do? Basically, it’ll be a paid tier that opens up new features – the first of which is an ‘undo’ button for when you swipe left but you meant to swipe right (or vice versa, I guess). The new Tinder will have a big yellow undo button that lets anyone who has already paid for the Plus service immediately go back and make the proper swipe, and offer anyone who has yet to buy the Plus service the ability to do so.
The other new feature coming to Tinder Plus is called ‘Passport’, and it basically lets people search for matches in other geographic areas. This is the big new feature that Rad hinted at a couple of weeks ago. With Passport, people planning on traveling can preemptively match with others in their destination so that they don’t have to spend one minute alone when they arrive, I guess.
TechCrunch points out a potential problem with this, and Rad responds:
Of course, the downside to the Passport feature is that regular users, paid or otherwise, who are using the app to search in their own vicinity may be served people who are actually in another location, and might not even have a trip planned anytime soon. This could dilute the app’s usefulness to some users.
“We don’t think it’ll be a big enough problem where it will hurt the experience to search locally,” said Rad. “Especially since a lot of users will be paying for the feature, and the voyeuristic quality probably isn’t enough of a value add as opposed to those who are actually traveling.”
Apparently, this was one of the most-requested features.
It’s likely that US Tinder users will see these features soon – but only after Tinder gives them a good test overseas. For now, you can only sit and wonder what might’ve been when you accidentally swipe left.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad has been forced out of the role, but will be staying with the company in the capacity of President and board member. Rad founded the company behind the hottest dating app out there, but events unrelated to the app’s performance have led to his demotion.
The news didn’t come in a formal announcement from Tinder or a press release from IAC, which holds a majority stake in the company. It came in a Forbes report with quotes from Rad himself, from his boss at IAC, Sam Yagan, and from other unnamed insiders. So this isn’t a rumor. It’s happening.
You can read the full four-page article here, which gives a lot of background and compares the story to Shakespeare (yeah, the report is really that dramatic).
Long story short, IAC wants a more experienced executive to run the show, and used a recent highly-publicized sexual harassment lawsuit as a reason to take the CEO title away from Rad. Former executive Whitney Wolfe had sued Tinder and IAC for harassment by former CMO and best friend of Rad, Justin Mateen. She also claimed Mateen and Rad had stripped her title as co-founder of the company because she was a woman. The parties reached a settlement in September, but as we now know, that was hardly the end of it.
From the Forbes report:
Rad had the title of founder, but he didn’t have control over his own fate at the company. Which led a few weeks later to the call in Philly. “If the Whitney thing didn’t happen it would be difficult for IAC to demote Sean, because they’d have a lot to answer for,” says one insider. “But the lawsuit gave them an out.”
Rad will remain in the CEO role until his replacement is found. While he will reportedly hold the President title and a spot on the board, it will be interesting to see what happens when that replacement is instated.
“We’re looking for an Eric Schmidt-like person,” Rad is quoted as saying. “There is no CEO coming in the door that I don’t get along with—that would be corporate suicide.”
The timing of this whole situation is pretty interesting because Tinder is pretty much killing it, and Rad just announced the company’s first revenue strategy a couple weeks ago (at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit no less). It is offering a premium service, which will “let users break away from location limits and expand their Tinder reach.”
Meanwhile the company claims to have seen 600% growth over the past year with 40 million downloads since launching in 2012. 30 million people are registered, and 14,000 people are being checked out on the app every second.
For Tinder itself, the outlook is pretty good. We’ll see if Rad really does stay around for the ride.
Though swipe left / swipe right dating app Tinder is growing in popularity (it’s currently in the top 25 free apps in the App Store), the company currently has no monetization strategy. In other words, Tinder is completely free and it’s not ad-supported.
This will be changing soon.
Speaking at Forbes’ Under 30 conference, Tinder CEO Sean Rad proposed a rad new idea – a premium Tinder service that would expand the app’s matchmaking features.
Rad wouldn’t give me specifics but hinted that one of the new features will focus on travel and could help Tinder move into markets beyond dating. Currently location based, Tinder lets you swipe though an endless stream of photos of people looking to meet up — but only the city you’re currently in. The new premium service will likely let users break away from location limits and expand their Tinder reach. “We are adding features users have been begging us for,” said Rad. “They will offer so much value we think users are willing to pay for them.”
It’s important to note that Rad also indicated that the Tinder you know and love will remain free. The “premium” paid service will be an extra, not a sudden charge for the normal set of features.
From that cryptic announcement, it looks like Tinder could be looking to not only expand the “hook-up” offerings geographically, but possibly move away from the “hook-up” matching a little bit and offer some other types of match-ups. Professional, even?
Apparently, this will launch in November. Keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, keep on swipin’ right.
With the trend of posing with tigers for your profile pic on the decline, Tinderbros are looking for other ways to impress the ladies. And since a dick pic is only going to work with a small, possibly non-existent subset of the population, some date seekers are apparently turning to the next best thing – dickish pics.
Yes, if you post a photo of your bank account as your profile pic on Tinder, that’s a dickish thing to do.
The Washington Post reports on the “hot” new trend, saying it’s not just bank accounts but resumes as well.
Conan O’Brien created a profile on Tinder, using the name Chip Whitley, and calling himself a Conan O’Brien look-alike. The happily married father of two wasn’t looking for a quick hook up, it seems, but rather feeling out the site for its laugh factor instead. He encouraged Dave Franco of 22 Jump Street to join his shenanigans–and he did. That likely caused Conan a bit of embarrassment, however.
You see, Dave Franco is–well, let’s just say hot–and Conan O’Brien–well, um…he’s not. (No offense to tall redheads.) That said, Franco got way more offers on Tinder than Conan O’Brien did. In fact, Conan’s only successful match turned out to be a 74-year-old woman who dumped him once they connected online. Now that could have been beyond hilarious had she agreed to meet him in person.
Dave Franco made online connections with nine women and actually made plans to meet up and talk with one–a young woman named Courtney. Franco was completely above board with Courtney, explaining that he and Conan O’Brien were filming a spot for his TBS show. Courtney kept the secret to herself and made arrangements to meet up with the guys at her brother’s house, where Conan still had no luck whatsoever meeting ladies. The fact that he was driving a brown van with a mural on its side didn’t up his creepy factor any either.
Tonight Dave Franco helps me learn about Tinder. Also tonight, I learn how cruel the internet can be. http://t.co/c5hpTFiEcj
If you came across profiles of someone like Conan O’Brien and someone like Dave Franco on a site that arranges hook ups–who would win out in your mind? Would you choose the tall, lanky redhead or the handsome hunk?
Conan likely learned that cold, hard truth with his experiment in comedy–but who really got the last laugh?
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Snapchat must be all hot and bothered right now.
Continuing on the trend of apps turning to ephemeral messaging, dating app Tinder is about to debut a brand new feature called “Moments,” which will allow you to share short-lasting photos with your matches.
You’ll be able to take a photo (or grab one from your library, obviously) that will then be broadcast to all of your matches. These “moments” will be housed in a separate tab, which can be swiped through in the same way profiles are swiped – right to like and left to, well, not like.
Users that share moments will be notified when their matches like them.
Unlike Snapchat (proper), Tinder Moments won’t be so fleeting. They’ll stick around for a full 24 hours – just like Snapchat Stories, which the company unveiled last October. Still, 24 hours qualifies as ephemeral when it comes to the internet, so we’ll go with that.
TechCrunch adds that Tinder will also add a feature that lets you turn yourself dark, so no one will see your profile in discover mode, but you can still communicate with your current matches.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad told Bloomberg that his app matches 10 million people a day and sees 800 million swipes. It’s clear that Tinder wants to first, perfect the “dating” aspect of the app with features and better options to connect, and then probably move beyond dating.
“It’s about sharing these moments, and just because you match, doesn’t mean you need to date that person; you could match with a friend who you want to share a moment with,” says Rad.
No? Ok. That’s good, because this is just a parody. But I’d like to imagine that the creation of Tinder was full of all the same dramatic tension, foreboding establishing shots, and whiny rich kids that made up The Social Network.
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