Tinder

Online dating sites like OkCupid and Plenty of Fish have had a free model for a long time, which has managed to expand their membership databases and make them tough contenders with paid sites such as Match.com and eHarmony. But now that free dating apps like Tinder have entered the picture and taken the dating world by storm, the paid dating sites have seen not only a decline in membership, but also in revenues.

Is online dating on its way out?

According to a recent article in The Economist, paid online dating sites have reason to worry. In the article, The Economist points out Cupid, who runs subscription-based dating websites such as Cupid.com, UniformDating.com, and LoveBeginsAt.com, announced a $4.9 million loss in the first 6 months of 2014, up 20% from last year. The number of members has dropped, too. At the end of 2012, Cupid’s sites had 113,000 paying members, but by June 2014, they had just 48,000.

While this is a disturbing trend for online dating sites like Cupid – which haven’t really taken off like other paid sites Match.com and eHarmony – it could weed out many contenders in the online dating market over the next couple of years. However in contrast to Cupid's earnings, eHarmony recently reported incredible subscriber growth and better earnings than they have seen in years, due to focusing on long-term relationships and technology that they market as extremely valuable for finding the “right” match.

But what about popular free dating apps and websites like Tinder and old-timer OkCupid? They have attracted users because of their easy set-up and accessibility. They have made online dating less intimidating, (although a little more sketchy according to some users). Are they responsible for the decline in companies like Cupid? 

Not necessarily. Even free apps and websites aren’t so free anymore.

There has been a shift for the free dating apps and online sites to offer “freemium” services – that is, additional features to the basic service but for a price. In the current online dating market, revenue growth needs to happen for investors to remain interested, and that means charging for services once the user base is built. Tinder recently announced that it will launch a premium paid service in early November, while the basic features of the app will still be free. OkCupid started with a freemium model a while ago, charging users who want to filter profiles according to user preferences, or to be able to review and see reviews of other members.

Still others like eHarmony are adding more personalized matchmaking services at a very high price – thousands per year – for those who want a relationship but would like someone else to do the heavy lifting. eHarmony has not reported numbers to see the success of this particular service.

So what does the future look like for online dating? One thing is for sure: free models likely won’t last forever.

At the recent Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, Tinder cofounder Sean Rad made the surprise announcement that the company is launching a new premium service in early November. The upgrade will allow paying users more options beyond just swiping left and right.

This might make some Tinder fans uneasy. After all, the value of the app is in the sheer number of people using it. Will restricting certain new features to paying customers cause others to drop off and look for other cheaper alternatives for hooking up?

Not according to Rad. He says the premium service will include functions that Tinder users have long been asking for - including the ability to travel and use Tinder in multiple cities. Currently, you can only use the service locally, which means if you live in Los Angeles you can't look for hook-ups in New York.

But will people pay for this type of technology? Several hackers have taken advantage of Tinder's technology already and used it to create the very features users have been requesting and the premium Tinder will be offering - such as fooling the GPS-based technology into thinking you are in another city so you can scroll through profiles in multiple cities. Also, several hackers have come up with technology to "mass-like" profiles in mere seconds without having to manually scroll through, which is a very popular request from current Tinder users to increase their odds of a match.

And what about Tinder's current features - will new users have to start paying for basic services, or will some features be taken away to add to the new premium service? Rad says there will be no changes under the current free app, so users can rest a little easier. Forbes reported that people now swipe through 1.2 billion Tinder profiles a day, and that each day Tinder makes more than 15 million matches. The company needs to hang on to these users because its value is in the numbers. 

But Rad is trying to continue Tinder's growth, and that means it's time to add revenue - especially for investors like Barry Diller.  “We had to get our product and growth right first,” says Rad. “Revenue has always been on the road map.”

Forbes said the Tinder founder hinted at offering other types of services that go beyond dating, including features for travelers, though he didn't cite anything specific. Could we see a Tinder app that includes restaurant, car service, or hotel choices in the near future?

Clearly, Rad has big plans for his popular app. But we'll have to wait and see how the market (and their pocketbooks) respond. For more on this dating app you can read our Tinder review.

Dating app Tinder has had to deal with a lot of security issues, despite the app’s verification system using Facebook Connect.  In theory, because of Facebook’s security measures, only “real people” can join Tinder, so users can sign up with some reassurance the profiles they'll encounter will be real. But lately, this has not been the case.

Spammers and scammers have been able to lure users away from Tinder and onto their sites, typically, with spam bots - fake accounts pretending to be real people that flirt with users in order to redirect them to adult sites - and take their money. In the past, Tinder users could block profiles, but they couldn’t report spam.

According to website Tech Crunch, things have changed. Users can now not only block accounts but also report spam. Tinder also made a technical update to address the issue, and the update was effective at cutting down on the in-app spam. Unfortunately, the spam bots just found another avenue - SMS. Phone spam for Tinder users skyrocketed.

Instead of luring Tinder users away while they are inside the app, the spam bots changed their scripts and started collecting mobile numbers from the users, sending those users text messages with links to the spammers’ websites. 

It can be really misleading for users to receive text messages from spammers who are pretending to be people. One example Tech Crunch used that came from a spam bot read like this: “sorry my phone’s almost dead and out of mins too. If you go on Tinderpages.com ill be there. Im sweetgirl4u on it. Sorry its free tho if you confirm your email.”

Tinder is still racking up complaints, so it seems the technical update hasn’t actually made a difference. According to security researchers, this is beacuse Tinder was successful in getting rid of the in-app spam bots but not the spam bots themselves. Lead researcher Raj Bandyopadhyay explained to how they conducted their research, and what it meant for Tinder:

“Our topic modeler looks for phone number related complaints, and then classifies them using Data Scientist to validate correlation. In this case, we isolated complaints related to Tinder, and then compared them to historical complaints. This gives us a high degree of confidence that the spike is specific to Tinder activity and not just an overall spike in spam. In addition, it is important to re-emphasize that this is a pattern we have frequently seen – fraudsters migrating to phone after being thwarted online.”

So it seems text messages are becoming the spam bot avenue of choice, since online technology has improved so much. Now, mobile security needs to catch up.

Tinder is no doubt the latest craze of online and mobile dating. Most singles have heard of it, if they aren’t already using it. But despite the fact that Tinder requires you to sign up via your Facebook profile (which keeps out the fake profiles and supposedly keeps people honest about who they are) – hackers are finding ways to game the system for their own benefit.

A recent article by such a hacker appeared in Android Central, where the author Cage Michaels - who is happily in a relationship - enjoys just being on Tinder, flipping through photos and judging each woman's hotness. He has decided to share his strategy with the masses (“FTW” – “for the win” - as he says). To him, Tinder has nothing to do with his relationship and his “real life,” but considers it a game or a way to pass time entertainingly. He says, “I'm in a relationship. I'm happy. I just find it really entertaining to swipe through photos of real people. Some people spend all day looking at photos of cats. Personally, I'd rather look at photos of women. To each their own.”

Of course, in order to look at photos on Tinder you have to be on Tinder. This created a problem for him, because his friends (and her friends) noticed he was on the app and were wondering if he was cheating or had broken up with his girlfriend. According to him, neither was the case. Hence his dilemma – how could he Tinder without all the hassle?

Instead of setting up a fake Facebook profile (which can take some effort), he decided to outsmart Tinder’s GPS capabilities and fake the app into thinking he was visiting another city (where he had no friends or connections). This made his Tinder habit easy to maintain.

He goes step-by-step in the article, guiding people first through downloading a fake GPS app. Once you download, you can pick the city where you want to anonymously browse Tinder profiles. When you hit the “play” button within the fake GPS, you can then enable a fake GPS signal. Once you open Tinder, it will pick up the fake GPS location from your phone and use that for its search.

While this is one way of creating a fake profile on Tinder, it certainly isn’t the only way to outsmart the app. There are new apps being launched that take advantage of Tinder’s functionality by allowing people to match en masse without even looking at profiles, just to increase your odds of success.

Between these and the hackers, you might want to question whether your Tinder match is real, or just another person who’s gaming the system. 

Tinderly’s tagline is: “Tired of swiping right all day?” Apparently, daters whose thumbs are getting tired of all that repeat motion are demanding an easier way to Tinder. Or at least, that’s what new unofficial Tinder apps like Tinderly are saying.

The new app aims to change the now-“cumbersome” Tinder app with something much more efficient: instead of swiping right one potential date at a time (who has the patience or time to look at each individual photo anyway?) – you can “like” an entire mass of singles near you in mere seconds.

That is, if you are into numbers games when it comes to dating. Men and women have both gravitated to Tinder because of its game-like interface, where they can swipe left if they aren’t interested in someone’s photo and swipe right if they are, and see who matches with them. But more recently, men have figured out a way to game the system, thanks to a few uber-successful Tinder users who have been giving away their secrets.

The more people you like, the more chances you have at getting a date, or getting laid, depending on your goals. So the faster you can “like,” the more competitive (and successful) you can be.

A slew of apps and even Google Chrome extensions have launched recently, all claiming to help in the high-speed Tinder chase, all claiming their technology helps you like users en masse, so you don’t waste all that time trying to get just one match from Tinder.

Tinderly is the latest, offering an interface to view photos of several matches at a time, and allowing you to like 50 matches per swipe.

So will an app like Tinderly take over for Tinder? With competition like Tinderoids, Botinder, and others, it’s hard to say. Other apps are cutting straight to the chase, too - allowing you to say “yes” to hundreds of matches in mere seconds. Marketing is going to be key for who remains competitive, but Tinder-compatible apps aren’t really differentiating themselves at the moment. They all seem to offer the same high-speed technology, which is geared more towards men, not women. Why not think about what female Tinder users want in an app – if only to capture a different market?

Reviews for Tinderly have been mixed, with some users claiming that the only thing you are able to do with Tinderly is swipe left or right for multiple users, but you’re unable to message or look at profiles. Others have been happy with its efficiency.

Tinderly is available only for iOS, not for Android phones.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Tinder even if you haven’t already tried it. The app has taken the dating world by storm, mostly because of its easy access through your phone, simple set-up, and the sheer number of people using it. Tinder makes it seem like dating options are endless.

But accessing Tinder through your phone and looking through each individual match takes way too much time, at least according to some daters. Botinder intends to resolve this problem by offering a desktop version of Tinder, where you can see several potential dates at once.

Developers are launching new unofficial Tinder apps and complementary extensions regularly, just to capture this fast-growing market and capitalize on it with the latest and greatest in dating technology, or at least establishing their own marketing spin. Botinder is an unofficial Google Chrome Extension that allows you to like and dislike Tinder users even faster than you can using the official app. And if there’s one thing Tinder users need, it’s speed. Swiping left and right through each individual candidate is way too time-consuming.

There is a strategy to Tinder which makes technology like Botinder appealing, at least for the guys. By saying “yes” to as many women as possible as quickly as possible, you greatly improve your chances of getting matched (or laid). For the women, it’s a bit different. They tend to be much more discerning, turning down potential matches a lot more often than accepting. With Botinder, they too can dislike matches more quickly, making the process more efficient for everyone.

According to website Business Insider, creating a desktop version of Tinder has been a popular request for a long time. Typically, users had been downloading an Android emulator to run a version of the app, but now this is a much easier way to run it on your laptop, for those who aren’t quite so tech-saavy.

Botinder sorts users by row, allowing you to organize your matches so you can compare or view photos several at a time. There is also a “Booster” function where you can choose “like automatically” and Botinder will start liking every Tinder user near you – multiple people a second – so you can’t really even see who you are liking. But that’s not really the point – it’s actually playing a numbers game with dating. It would take weeks of being a dedicated Tinder app user before you got the kind of instant matching success that is likely with Botinder.

The real question is: will Botinder improve the overall dating experience, or just add to the noise and confusion?

For more information on service this Chrome Extension works with you can read our Tinder page.