Messaging apps are a certain trend of the new generation. This kind of apps allow you to communicate in all ways and for all sorts of purposes – starting with making somebody’s acquaintance and finishing with managing a business and setting technical tasks for companies. Ten years ago such statements would have sounded ridiculous at the very least but the technologies keep moving forward.
A so-called dating app named Tinder was released recently. Within a short time period, it became immensely popular. Today our article is about Tinder review.
So, here is its history from the start until now.
The app was developed by September 1, 2012. It was launched in October in the Hatch Labs community.- Statistics says that in January 2014 the total user base was over 10 M users and the number of using the app through smartphones per day constituted around 1 bn times.
- The number of downloads in December 2014 exceeded 40 M.
- Unlike other mobile application companies, Tinder is not a startup. The app was made by Match.com, this company is also in the online dating business.
- Hardly anyone in the company now remembers who suggested the current name; however, the majority of the team reckons that it was ex-VP Marketing Whitney Wolfe. She suggested this name as an alternative to the name Tender, making it sound less sugary.
- The app is available on Android and iOS that means – App Store and Google Play Market.
- The product has a user profile, where you can upload a photo and information about the user.
The app allows inviting friends mainly from Facebook.- Registration takes place via a Facebook account. You cannot register with Tinder without having a Facebook profile.
- The settings include the following options: Profile, Home, Messages, Settings, and the Invite option.
- The app allows you to set parameters for contact searching: boarders to search for people in, their age and gender.
- The app uses a push-notification system.
- Liquidity is what is making the app a success. Roughly speaking, opportunities to buy and sell. However, in this app these notions are replaced with women (sellers) and men (buyers). In reality, nobody buys anything. To make such an app a success, you need to ‘form’ its audience. Obviously, Tinder would not be so interesting for male audience if there wasn’t quite a large amount of women in it. The development and management teams chose to focus on it and proved to be right. The principle of making the first steps was simple: the focus was on women. They set a goal to attract women’s attention to the app. Bars and pubs use the same principle: allow ‘free’ entrance for girls, buyers (men) will get there fast and many after that. The plan was excellent; it included the interests and specific features of the young generation.
The current ways of promoting Tinder include corny word-of-mouth advertising and articles in the media/postings in social networks.- The app is based on location service, because the whole user base available for dating is made up on it. The product locates a user and then makes up a list of potential targets for dating. It includes those who are closer to the user and who have the app installed.
- You manage the app by swiping profiles.
- A swipe to the left means you just skip a contact. A swipe to the right means you find the person interesting. Such a gamification also contributes to the app’s popularity. People start swiping through profiles actively, hoping to ‘win a jackpot’. It’s also worth saying that users cannot return to those profiles, which they have already left behind by swiping.
- If a user chose somebody after all, he/she may offer them to go out. If the other side accepts, a chat window will open in which they can communicate.
In June 2013, Tinder added a new feature called Matchmake; it lets users invite two friends – for romantic purposes or other ones, too. The friends you invite can take part in the general chat. Such a simple innovation added more options for Tinder to develop.- Before Matchmaker was introduced, Tinder users looked for partners only for themselves. This made Tinder open only for those, who wanted to meet a dating partner. However, once Matchmaker came out, the app began to attract people not interested in searching for a match – those who already have a stable relationship. This allowed them to find new friends through Tinder.
- In November 2013, Tinder launched Lists – a feature, which a Techcrunch editor Alexa Tsotsis described as “a step towards mass usage”. Lists allows Tinder users to arrange their contacts in groups – e.g., “Paris friends” or “brunch lovers”. This innovation supports 24 languages.
Monetization:
Back in 2013, the management team of the app announced that Tinder would be free; however, a while later they found a way to monetize their app. For example, paying a fee will let you get back to profiles that you have already skipped or buy presents similar to those offered in Facebook. For those under 30 the app will cost $9.99 a month, for those over 30 the price rises 19.99%. However, it is unknown so far how this model will work. This pricing policy is based on the conclusions made by Quartz. The survey says that young people use the app more often and they cannot afford to pay much. So in order to attract them, the price should be low.
Scandals around Tinder:
Quite recently, Nancy Jo Sales, a Vanity Fair journalist, wrote an article saying that Tinder was mainly being used to search for sexual partners. The messaging company responded immediately: literarily within 24 hours, dozens of tweets came out on Tinder official page in an attempt to save the situation.
The girls, who Nancy Jo Sales had spoken to, said that these days fewer and fewer young people tried to meet them in the street and that most of guys who message them in Tinder are “fuckboys”, who just wish for sex with no obligations.
Overall Tinder published over 30 tweets on its official account. In those posts the company tried to protect the reputation of the app as means of searching for love of one’s life. The company reps tweeted that sex was invented far earlier than 2012 when Tinder was first launched.
Such responses of the company only heated up the interest to the article. Bloggers began to post their hot discussions about it. Lots of Twitter users even began to make jokes over the response of Tinder to the Vanity Fair article.
Later on, Tinder reps admitted that they a little overreacted.
On June 30, 2014, Whitney Wolfe alleged a lawsuit to the Los Angeles Supreme Court against her former colleague Justine Mateen, saying that he made sexist, racist and other inappropriate comments about her as well as sent her similar messages.
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