Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Friday, November 13 2015 @ 07:03 am
Last modified on
If Tinder has been a sea of left swipes lately, the app's recently announced update could change your luck for the holidays. Tinder’s founder Sean Rad announced forthcoming changes to the algorithm during Ireland’s Web Summit on November 4.
The update is set to be Tinder's biggest yet. "It's been our mission since day one to uncover ... every possible meaningful relationship," Rad told Mashable[*1] . In service of that goal, Rad says the company is looking to "reduce the barriers to people connecting" and help them form "deeper connections." He claims the upcoming changes will boost connections made on the dating app by 30%.
Unfortunately, actual details about the algorithm update are scarce. Tinder has not yet made a formal announcement and is keeping mostly mum until then. Rad only said to expect a "series of things you're going to see that will help you make more sense of the sheer volume of people around you and build deeper connections...and more ways to connect."
What Tinder is talking about is its reputation as a “hookup app,” which its eager to shed. Rad made yet another attempt to distance the company from that status, adding that 80% of users are looking for long-term relationships.
This year has seen Tinder release features designed to make the app more engaging. Not long ago it launched 'Super Like' - a function that can only be used once a day to let a user know you really (like, really really) like them. Rad compares it to walking over and saying hi to someone, instead of winking at them from across the room.
The CEO also shared some of Tinder's impressive numbers with the Web Summit. The app currently receives 1.6 billion swipes per day, 26 million matches per day and 9 billion total matches since its debut in 2012. As a result of those swipes, 1.5 million in-person dates stem from Tinder each week. More than half of those make it to a second date.
Up next, Tinder will focus on monetization. Most of the company's revenue currently comes from Tinder Plus, a paid service that allows users to search outside of their geographical location and undo swipes. Advertising hasn't yet hit the app in a major way, but there will be a bigger focus on ads in the near future.
Rad is nothing if not confident about Tinder's success. "There is no doubt that Tinder is increasing the number of connections in this world," he said. "We are bringing the world closer together at a scale that no platform has ever been able to do and in that sense, we are changing the world."
For more on this popular dating app, please read our Tinder review.