#ThrowbackThursday: “Hey, I saw you on Tinder!”
Last year, my single Best Friend Forever (from now on, BFF) and I decided to go to Black Tie, an annual party on Christmas Eve at the Cruise Terminal. This evening starts as a usual night out: after trying – at least – five potential outfits I could finally say “YES!” to the dress. The euphoria of wearing the perfect outfit is followed by waiting for my BFF, who is always ‘fashionably late’. Two minutes later – unbelievable – the doorbell already rings and when I open the door, my BFF shouts: “SURPRISE! I can’t wait to go, hurry up!”
Not much later we arrive at the party. Well, bring it on! The party is already in full swing as we walk to our group of friends, who arrived one hour earlier. After saying HI to my other close friends, I decided to get some drinks. My BFF joined me and together we walked – like Beyoncé in her clip ‘who run the world’ – to the bar, where we both ordered our favorite cocktail.
Walking back to our friends, my BFF spotted – in her own words – a Brad Pitt lookalike. In my opinion, she needs some glasses, but that is a matter of taste. Back to our friends, it takes not long before the most predictable question is raised by my BFF: “Please, you need to help me find that Brad Pitt lookalike” I agree (after all, every blondie needs a brownie in her life!) and ask her what he was wearing, which she answers with: “A black suit with a red bow”. At that moment, I notice that all men are wearing the same – a penguin suit with a red bow. As you can guess, the search for the Brad Pitt lookalike was a disaster. However, the night is young.
Mid-evening, it was the turn of another friend to spot a handsome guy. After some eye contact – I was keeping an eye on – he walks towards her. Instead of a nice conversation, he just asks her: “Hey, where can I find your friend with the blonde hair?” the situation in one word: painful. Instead of giving him an answer, she walks towards me and asks me: “Why am I always the DUFF?” For your information: DUFF is the abbreviation for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, a person who is being used by another person who wants to get in touch with one of his/her ‘more handsome’ – this is still a matter of taste – friend. Just as I want to answer, she shouts to another guy:
“Hey, I saw you on Tinder!”
Five minutes later this visibly shocked Tinderboy is leaving the party…
…with an angry girlfriend by his side.
PRICELESS. LOVED IT. And yes, it is true:
However, it made me curious of the amount of active in-a-relationship Tinder users, so I did some research. And guess what? GlobalWebIndex (GWI), a firm that did a survey of more than 47,000 Internet users around the world, claims that 30% of the Tinderboys and Tindergirls are married and another 12% are in a relationship – what a sad truth! Last year, Tinder’s then-chief Marketing Officer Justin Mateen, tried to refute this by telling the Guardian:
“We never intended to be a dating platform. It’s a social discovery platform, facilitating an introduction between two people”
Well, I do not believe this. When you go to their website, you are first confronted with ‘romantic stories’ of couples who have met each other via Tinder. Anyway, I also know success stories about Tinder-matches that grew into a relationship – as exemplified by my boy next door. Therefore, I will not share the rest of my unvarnished opinion and continue to discuss the new business model of Tinder.
With 50 million active users, Tinder has an extremely large platform. Tinder launched an in-app subscription this year: Tinder Plus. This premium addition enables people to subscribe for extra features for £3.99 a month if you are younger than 28; when you are older than 28 you pay £14.99 (Tinder, 2015). Besides the fact that I think that the price discrimination of £11.00 is quite large, the data of GWI suggests that Tinder Plus could become a good money-spinner for the company: 24% of Tinder users had paid for an online dating service in the month May of this year (GWI, 2015). If Tinder is able to convince these users to upgrade to Tinder Plus, then this subscription can bring in the revenue of massive valuations.
The extra features of Tinder Plus are (Tinder, 2015):
- Super Like: by tapping the new blue star icon, you can let someone know that they stand out from everyone else;
- Rewind: when you have accidentally swiped left – the ‘dislike’ button – on someone you wanted to get to know, you can get them back with the touch of a button;
- Passport: this feature lets change your location to match with people around the world.
- Unlimited swipes: when you are just a normal Tinder user, Tinder introduced an algorithm that limits the number of likes you can make in a consecutive 12-hour period, while Tinder Plus members can like as many users as they want.
In addition, Tinder Plus is not the only recent change in Tinder’s business model. Last year, they introduced integrated advertising, which is also a good money-spinner. With 50 million active users, Tinder has a wide reach and the recent changes in the business model are therefore quite predictable. What do you think? What will be the next change?
357398br
References
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/07/dating-app-tinder-married-relationship
http://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/what-to-know-about-tinder-in-5-charts
Information Strategy 
Recent Comments