Tinder

Tinder Online is Coming Soon!

Four years after Tinder debuted on mobile phones across the globe, the infamous dating app is finally coming to desktops.

"Introducing Tinder Online: a fun, new web experience and your English professor's worst nightmare. Mobile phones not allowed in class? Just fire up your laptop and swipe incognito. Cubicle life got you down? Now you can toggle between spreadsheets and Super Likes in a flash. ‘Not Enough Storage?’ Not a problem," Tinder announced on its official blog.

To start, visit Tinder.com from any browser. The experience will look familiar to anyone who has already used the app: login with Facebook, choose your photos, write a bio, and start searching. Tinder is also testing the ability to login via SMS directly from mobile phones in markets where Facebook access is limited.

See All Dating Apps on Map

With the amount of media attention Tinder receives, you’d think it was the only dating app on the market - or if not the only option, at least the most popular one.

But the numbers tell a different story. Technology company Quantcast reviewed over 480,000 searches from January 6, 2017 - February 5, 2017 to discover which dating services singles in America prefer. They found that not only do different states have different preferences, preferences seem to come in clusters. And they’re not always what you’d expect.

Overall, old-school dating service PlentyOfFish won the most states with its free app. It may not have the hype of its newer, fancier competitors, but in this case slow and steady won the race. POF was especially popular in the south, southwest, and midwest.

Consumer Reports has decided to get into the love game. The non-profit organization has been around since 1936, and typically reviews consumer satisfaction with products and services, but now it wants to know about dating apps, and how satisfied customers appear to be.

We all know where this is going. Well, maybe not.

Consumer Reports found two interesting and diametrically opposed results. First, consumers hate online dating with a passion, even more than tech support services, which are notoriously poor performers. Those surveyed didn’t rate any service as more than average as far as overall satisfaction. OkCupid got the best ratings of all online dating services, including Tinder, but it got a reader score of only 56. (Tinder was second with a 52 rating.) Reader scores were evaluated by a number of factors, including messaging and search features, privacy settings, the ease of use and sign-up process, as well as quality and quantity of matches.

Tinder’s reign won’t let up. The dating app is not only the most recognizable in the industry, it’s also one of the most successful. With constant feature updates, like 2015’s introduction of the ‘Super Like’, Tinder ensures it remains on top of the game.

Two of the most recent updates have proved to be highly beneficial for the app. During a panel at this year’s SXSW, co-founder Sean Rad shared that Tinder has matched some 250,000 transgender users since unveiling new gender identity options last November. The company also increased its community education and refined its approach to preventing harassment.

“We have a great algorithm that can help, but no algorithm can solve humans,” Rad explained. “We were taken aback by how complex identity is. It’s a very complex area and, at the same time, Tinder is extremely simple.”

Wednesday 8 March was International Women's Day, an event celebrated around the world to commemorate the struggle for women's rights.

Each year, the day is an opportunity to reflect on gender issues, inequalities, and opportunities for growth. The 2017 theme focused particularly on the latter, perhaps inspired by the surge in activism we’ve seen in recent months. The theme, #BeBoldForChange, called on everyone to step up and help create a better, more inclusive world.

The call was not just for individuals. Businesses also took part in celebrating women this year, including two popular dating apps.

According to website Tech Crunch, Tinder has been offering a dating service for its most elite users for at least six months without announcing its existence.

“Tinder Select” is just as it sounds – a dating service for those Tinder users who are high profile and the most desirable, such as celebrities, supermodels and CEOs, so they can have access to date and message other high profile users and bypass the normal user matches.

But before you get excited to join and flirt with the A-listers, you can’t. Or at least most of us can’t because Tinder has to invite you first.