Even though they created several mechanics now employed by other apps in the industry, many later entrants tried to distance themselves from Tinder.
Tinder positioned itself as the first dating app specifically designed for mobile devices. Older dating portals tried to port their experiences and failed mainly due to their UI/UX and entire models’ complexity. Tinder was one of the first apps in the early App datingranking.net/nl/squirt-overzicht Store, with simplicity being the core differentiator.
Tinder has become the core of the dating ecosystem, and later apps have been forming around Tinder, tapping into specific niches that had specific interests or different attitudes about dating in general. Most of these can be separated into the following categories:
- Pro-feministSince women often had negative experiences just by being on a dating app, some applied tech to shift the gender balance by creating a safer environment.
- Elite“Exclusive” apps targeted at people with high income and top-level education.
- National/ReligiousApps that are focused on specific regions like APAC or Africa or religious communities.
In , Tinder’s social media director Alexa Mateen, who spearheaded Tinder’s college campus expansion, said the app offered a “chance to meet people you wouldn’t normally meet.”
Tinder has been actively engaging with students on campuses for obvious reasons: they’re the perfect target audience, and it’s a large group of 18-25-year-old people contained in close proximity to each other.
“CEO Sean Rad says that he thinks Tinder is resonating with college students because the app has taken a more subtle approach to dating, as it doesn’t require users to “put themselves out there” to the same degree other apps require.”
“There’s not really a stigma associated with Tinder,” says Justin Mateen, one of Tinder’s cofounders. “Dating apps in the past made you fill out a daunting form, and that process makes you feel desperate. ”
With Tinder, our users don’t feel that at all
“Tinder’s success can be attributed largely to simplicity; the app’s core functionality involves swiping through photos and brief profiles of other users near your location. Swiping a photo to the right means you’re interested in someone, and if they happen to like you back, Tinder offers to open up a chat session connecting the matched pair. That’s it. If you’re not a Facebook user, you’ll be left out. Tinder uses the social network to pull in your profile data.”
One of the app’s early original ideas was the Matchmaking feature: it lets you choose two folks from your Facebook friends list and introduce them via a Facebook message.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad has said that Tinder removes the “friction” associated with walking up to someone and introducing oneself.
Despite their attempts to compete with apps like Bumble and expand into other categories, Tinder was unable to overcome its reputation as a hookup app.
In an interview in 2013, Rad acknowledged that the “unwritten context” of Tinder right now is romantic relationships. Still, he argued that the primary mechanism, where two people are only connected when they both express interest in each other, is “a universal thing across friendships, across the business, across anything.” The ultimate goal, he said, is to “overcome every single problem you have when it comes to making a new relationship.”
Initially, Tinder has a better reputation compared to old-fashioned dating websites
Later in 2013, Tinder pushed a significant update yesterday that spiffs up the interface and supposedly hones the matching algorithm. The most visible change, however, is the new lists feature. In addition to liking or nixing people based on their photos and profile, users can now add each other to friends lists and chat about platonic things.