Tinder Loving Care?

I will be discussing today. That topic is Tinder, the dating app, and you probably heard about it. I'm pretty sure most of you are aware of what Tinder is. Some of you may be active Tinder users. It's a dating app that you download to a mobile device and when you fire it up, it shows pictures of people who also have the app installed on their mobile devices and who are within your general location a radius that

you have set, so let's say it's five miles. You will see other profiles in there that are somewhere within that five mile range of people who also have Tender, and it will match you up with the preferences you've set. So, for example, if you are a man seeking a woman, it will show you the female profiles, but it won't

show you the male profiles. And the way the app works is you look at this picture and if you think that person is attractive, if you think I would like to speak with this person, I think, uh, this, this person has a look that appeals to me, you would swipe right on the screen, and that essentially is like giving that person a check saying you are a CUTEI petuity. If the person's picture doesn't do anything for you, you you swipe to the left and say you are

going to the heap. I do not want to speak with you. You are not interesting to me, you don't appeal to me. Whatever reason. Maybe it's just that you know you're like you know, I don't like that hairstyle very much. It could be something as simple as that. And you only get to talk to someone if they have looked at your profile and also they swipe right on your picture. So in other words, if you give a person a check mark and they look at you and give you a check mark, then a line of

communication can open up. Otherwise, one party will continue to be perpetually unaware of the other party, and it doesn't indicate that someone has swiped right or left for you. Again, you only know if you both swipe right, which takes a lot of the pressure off obviously. So once you both swipe right, you can chat and set up a time and place to meet. You can actually go on a date and just have a nice time, or maybe you just want to meet in person. See if sparks

are flying right on the get go. The app relies very heavily on Facebook integration. It pulls in photos and your likes from various pages that you visited. So if you like a lot of different pages for bands or movies or brands or whatever, those will pop up in the profile as well. Uh it'll also just give a really brief overview of a person's personality. There's also some integration with Instagram to help fill out that profile with

other pictures. You can actually select I think up to six pictures to represent yourself within your tender profile, so someone can take one look and they might say, all right, well that's the representative photo, but let me look at a couple of others before I decide. And just like we often find in real life interactions, the app focuses on physical attraction first, but let's be fair, that's what

we do in real life. I mean, if you are at an event and you see someone who catches your eye, often physical attraction is the first indicator that inspires you to go and try and have an interaction with that person. And then from there things might develop further and you might find that you really like that person, or you might find that you're completely incompatible and it would just be a total mistake to try and have any sort

of relationship with that person. But ultimately that physical attraction is often the first step that leads us to those interactions. It's not always the case, but it often is. So anyway, today I'm going to talk about where Tinder came from and how it's business model works. Because the technology itself is incredibly simple. It's essentially GPS TOHO determined where your location is and where people are in relation to you,

and it's this app matching or profile matching software. Not a lot to it, not terribly complicated, but the behind the scenes stuff is really interesting. Now. The general story of Tinder, the one that you know, is generally pushed uh to to kind of give it a sort of campus mystique. This idea of of young, young entrepreneurs developing a really powerful app in in like a dorm room. There's this kind of image of that with Tinder, but

that's not exactly what happened. Now, there were two entrepreneurs, Sean rad and Justin Matine, who built the app, and they tested it at the University of California, and they launched it in two thousand twelve with just three people as their initial seed test group, and by the end of the week the app had more than a thousand active users, and rather Matine were just twenty seven when they launched Tinder. But the story doesn't really start there.

It's not like these are two post grads who happened to come up with a cool idea and try it out at a college. The narrative or Tender isn't just about that. It's really more about how Tinder part of a much much larger organization called Interactive Core or i a C. Now I a C is, at least according to their website anyway, a leading media and internet company focused on the areas of search applications, online dating, media, and e commerce. That's a direct quote from their site.

And it's a big company. There are more than a hundred fifty brands or products that are under that umbrella, and you would recognize these names. These are not small names. For example, Match dot com and okay Cupid, so you've got some major dating sites there. There's also video, there's college humor and about dot com. So these are these

are big brands that are under this this company. So to understand where Tinder is and why it hasn't been snapped up by someone like Google or Twitter or Facebook, you need to know what I A C is and where it comes from. So this is starting to sound like a little bit of a bait and switch, I understand, but I promise I'm going to get back to tender a little further in for the moment. Let's first take a look at I A C. And it's storied history.

So this is gonna get weird and complicated because history is never as straightforward as you might imagine. So we have to look at before I A C. So I guess b I A C if you're trying to create a new nomenclature for this. So before there was an I A C. There was a company called Silver King Broadcasting. And before there was Silver King, there was the Home Shopping Network, And before there was the Home Shopping Network, there was the Home Shopping Club. But don't worry, that's

as far back as I'm gonna go or else. We just keep on tracing all the way to the roots of the discovery of fire. So back in nineteen one, former attorney Roy Spear and a radio and television executive named Lowell White Bud Paxson launched the Home Shopping Club in Florida. Paxson had actually discovered that there was a

market for selling stuff live on television. He had ended up with a whole bunch of avocado green can openers, and he told one of the guys running one of the shows that that was airing on a television network that he owned or television station I should say that he owned. Hey, can you try and mention these things on the air so we can try and sell some of them? And discovered that they were able to sell almost two hundred in an hour, and he thought there

might be something to this. We can make this a whole business. Now. At first this was limited to broadcasting just in the state of Florida, but over a few years they got bigger and bigger, and by nine five the Home Shopping Club now known as the Home Shopping Network began and broadcast across the entire United States. In nineteen six, the Home Shopping Network or hs N if you prefer, established a subsidiary company, and that was called

Silver King Broadcasting. The purpose of this company was to secure over the air time for the Home Shopping Network, so for places that didn't have cable, but we're getting over the air broadcasts. This made a lot of sense. You know, you wanted to to target as many different markets as possible, So the company actually started buying up television stations in order to get more Home Shopping Network content out in front of more viewers. And that was

the birth of the Silver King Broadcasting Company. Things get even more weird from here, but I promise we're gonna get the tender. So in nine remember that's when Silver King Broadcasting comes into being in the Home Shopping Network on Silver King off as a separately traded public company. So now Silver King Broadcasting is a related but separate company all on its own. In in Barry Diller. If you don't know who Barry Diller is, at some point I shall have to do a full profile on him.

He created the Fox Broadcasting Company, among other things. He bought controlling interest in Silver King Broadcasting. Then it became silver King Communications and it merged with the Home Shopping Network. So just three years after Home Shopping Network spends off Silver King, Silver King and Home Shopping Network merged together, and this new company also merged with another one, Savoy Pictures Entertainment. And this new mega company became known as

hs IN Incorporated, So Home Shopping Network Incorporated essentially. But then HSN Incorporated got hungry. It went on a buying frenzy. It started acquiring companies left and right, which when you think about it, seems only appropriate for the Home Shopping Network. Now.

The shopping they did was on the huge scale. They bought Ticketmaster, They bought the TV assets of Universal Studios, including USA Networks and the Sci Fi Channel that was before it became Siffy, and also Match dot Com and Match dot Com would end up being a really important acquisition for them. They were already looking at ways to go beyond television and radio. At that point, the company

changed its name to USA Networks Incorporated. Now, in the two thousand's USA Networks Incorporated began to sell off some of its television companies and production units. It also began to acquire more online companies, including big ones like Expedia, and it changed names again to USA Interactive in two thousand two to reflect the fact that now it was looking at more internet and technology companies and less at television.

Then in two thousand three had changed its name again, finally becoming Interactive Corps, and in two thousand four four it became I a C slash Interactive Corp. So I a C continue grabbing up companies and spawning new brands as well. Some of the other companies that they acquired

included stuff like lending Tree. Trip Advisor asked Jeeves Urban Spoon. Really, if you had a burgeoning internet company, you were in good shape because someone somewhere is looking to scoop you up, whether it was a company like Amazon or something like I a C. You had if you had a good idea, you just had to wait around long enough to get

scooped up. That's why a lot of these companies that are the startups, they don't worry so much if they don't have a way of generating revenue, because if they can demonstrate that they are interesting enough, some other bigger company will come and buy them and then they don't have to worry about how to generate revenue. That's the bigger company's problem now, and everyone who made that stuff has become a millionaire. Man, I'm in the wrong business

at any rate. The company I a C. Eventually spun off some of these properties, including spinning off the Home Shopping Network. So once again, Home Shopping Network creates Silver King Broadcasting. Silver King Broadcasting merges with Home Shopping Network. Then I a C, which grew out of Silver King Broadcasting, spins off Home Shopping Network. This is a weird story. They also spun off Ticketmaster around that same time, and in two thousand eleven, I a C created a startup

incubator called hatch Labs. So this is a lot like Google's x Labs, the branch of Google that's all about research and development and rapid prototyping of various products and services, all about let's let's look at big risk, big reward type stuff. Um, where can we come up with the next awesome idea in house rather than having to go out and buy it all the time. Not that they were going to stop buying stuff, but this way they

could also develop it within the company. Now, hatch Labs allows people to develop and test ideas for new products and services and companies, and because I a c owns it, it gives I a C. A large stake in anything that comes out of hatch Labs. So this is the company that is hatch Labs is the organization that served

as the incubator for Tinder. So it wasn't that Tinder sprung up due to pure pluck and enthusiasm and had actually an enormous corporation behind it when they had a long history in online dating services because they had owned match dot com and okay Cupid for so long. But that's not the story you often hear when people talk about Tinder. It sounds like it's a much more kind of grassroots sort of thing. That's not exactly the case. But none of that is to take away from the

innovation and the clever positioning of Tinder. By the way, it's a product that people like and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's just not a little plucky start up the way some people imagine it to be. In fact, venture capitalists have been denied investment opportunities in Tender because I a c S steak in tender is so great that they don't want anyone else coming in and getting any sort of majority share in this. And

this is not a Tinder itself. It's not a publicly traded company, although it does act as its own entity. So anyway, sean Rad was working for hatch Labs and he was developing ideas. He was working on a product called cardify UM, but he also had an idea kind of fermenting in his mind about a location based dating app, and he originally started calling it Matchbox. This was not one of his formal projects, and in fact, he didn't really begin working on it in earnest until hatch Labs

held a hackathon. This was not actually that long after shan Rad had joined hatch Labs. He had joined as a general manager UM. So the hackathon was an event in which employees could prototype new ideas rather than work on their regular projects. And it lasted a few days. So it gave you a chance if you had an idea, to develop that idea and pitch your idea to the

company and say this is something I think we should do. Uh, And it gave you the freedom to do that and take your workload, your regular workload off of your shoulders while you're prototyping. So Rad worked on Matchbox at one of these hackathons and then switched back to his normal work duties trying to get Cartify off the ground. But Cardify was met with some resistance from iTunes. They were

delaying putting it into the iTunes Store. And this has happened quite a few times with lots of different apps across lots of different you know, types of apps, whether it's a game or a service or whatever. Sometimes Apple wants changes or has objections. Sometimes they don't really give you necessarily the best feedback for you to figure out how to adjust your products so that it can be

featured in the iTunes Store. And because the way iOS works, if you have a regular, un jailbroken, you know phone, you pretty much are stuck with whatever's in the iOS store. You can't sideload any apps without doing something pretty drastic to your phone, at least drastic in the eyes of your average phone user. I'm sure a lot of you guys out there and tech stuff land have phones that you have freed from the shackles of manufacturers and carriers, and you can load whatever you want on it, but

for the average consumer that's not the case. So that puts people who create apps in a difficult situation. The place where you want to be is on iOS because so many people are you're using iPhones. Even though Android has a greater market share, it's also more I would say, dilute. It's harder to get noticed um whereas Apple, like the people who have iPhones are I would I would think, based upon the studies I've seen, are more likely to adopt your app and pay for it than the Google

site is. In general. Obviously, case by case it could be very different. So because of this delay, that gave Rad the opportunity to switch back over to Matchbox to to work on that again, and it got a big push to move into production. And the one of the earliest things they did was they changed the name. I A. C. Didn't want the app to be so closely associated associated with Match dot Com. They wanted it to have its own identity and not be confused with Match dot Com.

They didn't want people to think that Matchbox was Match dot Com in app for so they changed the name to Tinder now justin. Matein came up with the idea to test Tender at a college campus. This is not that different from how Facebook got its start when it first began, and actually, if you remember your Facebook history, Facebook essentially started out as a way for college students to find like minded folks in order or to you know, to go find date or socializing. It wasn't just to

keep in touch with the people, you know. It was also meant as a way to meet new people. So this is very much in that same vein. So the two colleges they picked were the University of Southern California and u C l A. And as I said earlier, the popularity of the app skyrocketed pretty quickly, going from three hundred to a thousand users within a week and

then just growing from there. Now Mateam would become the chief marketing officer for Tinder, but he stepped down in September two thousand fourteen in the way of a sexual harassment lawsuit which was leveled by Tender vice president of marketing and UH at least sometimes credited co founder Whitney Wolf. I say sometimes credited because that whole story is incredibly complicated. There are people who protest her being called a co founder,

although she was allowed to. You know, she was given the blessing by Sean rad to call herself co founder at least on a few occasions. There's some people who say that she was not really a co founder, but she certainly was there from the earliest days um, And there are other people who say, no, it's perfectly legitimate for her to call herself a co founder. It's a

really complicated issue, and it gets even more complex. Wolfe had either resigned from Tinder or been forced from Tinder, depending upon whose account you listen to, and so she leveled this lawsuit against Tender and Matine specifically to say that she had been sexually harassed and that that harassment had led to her leaving the company, whether she was

forced out or resigned or whatever. And she presented as evidence in this lawsuit some pretty nasty text messages from the teen I mean, really vile stuff, and tech Crunch actually ran a really long piece that I recommend if you want to hear more about the story. They ran a long piece about the lawsuit, and it gets really complicated because people obviously could not talk about this openly. It was all an ongoing lawsuit at the time, but ultimately Mateine left the company as well. Uh He and

Sean Rad remained close friends. They had been best friends for years before Tinder, so they remained friends. Wolf would go on to found a Bumble, which is another dating app, and the lawsuit itself was settled out of court for

an undisclosed sum. Now, since its launched, Tinder's popularity had become insane, so within two years by two thousand the end of two thousand fourteen, in other words, the app had been downloaded forty million times, showing a six growth in two thousand fourteen alone, and that there had been more than one billion profiles checked out every day by two thousand fourteen. That means people are swiping left or right more than a billion times a day. Actually, I

think it's close to one point two billion. That means that's about fourteen thousand profiles per second that are being looked at and judged. Those billion swipes would lead to about fourteen million matches per day, per every twenty four hours, So you know, one billion, one point two billion profile views and fourteen million matches. That's a pretty small percentage, but still fourteen million. That's a lot of people meeting somebody through this this app so it's pretty interesting now.

Sean Rad became the CEO of Tender and I was still when it was still under the umbrella of I A C. But he's the CEO. But in two thousand fourteen he was removed from that position by I A C. S Sam Yeagan. Sam Yeagan was sort of in charge of all the digital dating stuff over at I A C. And it became it was something of a shock to Rad. I think it was partly as a response to the fallout with the sexual harassment lawsuit. So Yeagan then removes Rad and Rad ends up transitioning into the role of

president and member of the board. The I A C would bring on Christopher Payne, who had worked as an executive over at eBay, to take over as CEO, but in March two thousand and fifteen, Payne would step aside. Both Paine and I A s C would say that this was not a good fit, that it was not a good long term fit for him as CEO, so who replaced Christopher Paine to take over the role of

CEO of Tinder Sean Rad. So Sean Rad returns to CEO duties in March two thou at first we're moving away from the stuff going on at the top levels and the executive side of Tender. Let's look at their business model. At first, there were no pathways to generate revenue directly from Tinder. The original app was free to download, it was free to use. You could swipe an unlimited number of times per day. Really, you're only limited by how many other Tinder users were in your general area.

I a C. Seemed to view Tender as a gateway to other services like match dot com and Match dot com is monetized, so in other words, they looked at Tinder as being kind of a gateway and you could actually end up using some of the more robust services online which you would pay for, and Tender was fine. It could be, it could be free, and that kind of answers the question of well, how does Tinder make its money. It's because it's part of this massive company.

It's not a tiny little startup that's operating all on its own. It has these big corporate boots behind it, so they were they had plenty of of operating money to work with. And uh, everyone over at I a C. Seemed really impressed by Tinder's growth. It was clear that it was really popular, so they felt that it was

worthy of support. In two thousand and fourteen, there were rumblings that Tinder would finally start experimenting with a couple of different ways to generate revenue, and back at that time, there were lots of different options being discussed, including showing ads to people h and also starting up a premium service.

And the spring of two thousand fifteen, Tender launched a premium service called Tinder Plus, and that ruffled some Tinder users feathers because they made the claim that the way they that Tender created a premium service was to take features away from the free service and then make them pay only. So, in other words, instead of creating a better app that has a better experience, they created an app that had some of the features native to the free app but now had been turned off. For example,

unlimited swiping, that's the most obvious one. So the premium service was said to have an unlimited number of swipes, which immediately set off alarms and said the free version would then be limited. And this is pretty complicated. You might say, well, how many swipes do I get per day? Then like, can I bank them? Can I roll them over? Well, you can roll them over. How many you get per day, however, is a little a little tricky. That limitation isn't even

across all tender users. It may be that you discover your friend has way more swipes available than you do, and even if you have, even if both of you haven't rolled over any swipes. It's because this is based on an algorithm and it can actually be tuned to individual levels. So personally, if I were the one in charge, I'd be truly evil. I'd be I'd be a terrible,

terrible person, and you would all hate me. But I would be making so much money because what I would do is I would look at how many swipes each individual tender user typically uses in a session, so and you can pull up that data and just actually make this all automated. And then what I would do is I would subtract that number by two and set that

as the limit. So let's say that then your average session you look at fifty profiles, I would set your limit to forty eight, because then I know that eventually you're going to hit that limit, and then you're going to eventually not want to hit that limit, and you'll be given an incentive to go with the premium service or you'll stop using it. But either way, if it's a free app, I'm not losing any money if you

go away. I only gain money if you subscribe. So that's how evil I would be if I were in charge. I don't know what they did, that's just what I would do. This is why I don't can and this is why people don't put me in charge of things, I guess. Another thing that got some people talking about was that tender Plus didn't cost the same amount for all users. If you are under thirty years old, the cost is nine dollars and nine cents per month. If you are thirty years old or older, the cost is

nineteen dollars and nine nine cents per month. So we old folks are paying twice as much as you young whipper snappers in order to try and find Mr or Mrs right. So we see, yet again the cost of growing old. Now, to understatement on the pricing was, and this is a direct quote from a tender executive. We've priced tender Plus based on a combination of factors, including what we've learned through our testing, and we've found that these price points were adopted very well by certain age

demographics end quote. In other words, they discovered that young folks aren't as willing to pay as much per month for this service, or they're not as able to because they don't have as much income, and older folks desperate for some companionship after a lifetime of solitary disappointment would be more than willing to cough up the dough. I might be over dramaticizing this a little bit, but to

be fair, I've had a lot of caffeine today. So other features in Tender Plus include a rewind feature which lets you undo a swipe left should you get distracted, and dismiss a profile that could have been the per match. So let's say you are pulling up tender and you're looking through and you see someone who is incredibly attractive to you. Their look is just really appealing. They seem to be engaged in activities that you think are really fun.

Maybe you know it's a shot of a person uh sledding down a hill and they're just got a big smile on their face, and it's something that really as someone that you know you love the snow, you love having fun, you really want to connect with this person, and so you put your finger on the screen and you get distracted and you accidentally swipe left, and you

have doomed yourself. You are now alone. Well, if you were to subscribe to the Tinder Plus service, you would have an undo button and you can press undo and then it would undo your last swipe left, so that way you could actually swipe right instead. So if you had been going through very quickly, because that you can

start doing this. I mean, the the Tinder app a lot of people we'll talk about feeling a lot like a game like You're it's almost like the whole the old Hot or Not website where you would just you know, you're judging people on their looks, and it may be that you know you're you're going through a list of people that don't do anything for you. So you're swiping left, swiping left, swiping left, and then you realize, oh, that last person I actually kind of thought looked attractive and

I swipe left. This would let you undo that. Now, of course, keep in mind, this is all still based upon how attractive you find someone initially, how physically attractive you think they are. It's not guaranteed to actually lead to anything. Fun or meaningful. If you undo and then swipe right, it may very well be that you undo and swipe right and the person that you swipe right on either never sees your profile or swipes left on it.

There's no guarantee it's going to lead anywhere, but at least it meets you haven't completely negated something that could have been a potential match. Okay, So Tinder Plus also includes a feature called Passport, which allows you to change your location, meaning that, for example, I'm in Atlanta, but let's say that I've got a trip plan to Hawaii, and I want to be able to use Tender to meet up with folks have a nice time while I'm

on vacation, maybe not even go on a date. Maybe it's just to hang out and have fun, uh, not like a not like a romantic date, but just to to find someone who who seems interesting and could make that vacation much more of a memorable experience for whatever reason. Then Passport would allow you to change your location too, wherever you're going, like Hawaii, and look for matches there.

That way you can you can check around. Because if you just open up Tender normally, it's not necessarily going to give you any matches in advance, So that's interesting. It also could be incredibly creepy. I mean also if some Tender users were worried that this would dilute the results, that people would start setting their location wherever they just you know, just getting curious, Like, I wonder what would happen if I were in l A, Would I see

any celebrities because celebrities do use Tender. In fact, celebrities use Tender, and Tender now will create verified accounts for notable personalities. So let's say you fire up your phone and find out that a cute pop star or a hunky television actor that you really like happens to be in the area, and she or he is also lonely. But how do you know that person in the app is actually who they say they are, rather than just someone who has created a fake profile and and fed

it pictures of this person and then turned on Tinder. Well, Tender verifies accounts in a way very similar to Twitter, and you actually see a check mark next to their name, which is Tender's tenders indication that yes, the celebrity that you are looking at is actually on Tender. They are actually looking for love and maybe you'll fit the bill. So imagine builing up Tinder and seeing a celebrity there. I know that there are quite a few that supposedly

use it. Apparently Hillary Duff and Leonardo DiCaprio have all all both been on this app um and you know they point out sometimes this allows you to have that first interaction with a person without it being weird. I mean for celebrities in particular, it's got to be tough because so many people feel like they know them simply because they've seen them on television or in movies or whatever.

But you don't really know them. You just know their work, and Tinder in a way can help them find people who seem interesting without its seeming like that person is putting on whatever act they can in order to get to meet a celebrity. So I can totally get that, although the verified obviously makes it trickier because if you see somebody verified on Tinder, then you know already this is a notable personality of some sort, even if you're

not familiar with that person's work or their notability. Well. Tenders also adding new features all the time, Some of them help daters avoid potentially awkward situations. So, for example, you can now see if you and your potential date have any friends in common. You'll actually see mutual friends and friends of friends, so you can consider how that might influence your decision to take things a step further, whether or not you want to actually meet this person

in real life. If you both like a lot of the same people, that might be an indication that it's a good fit. That you know, if you're all both friends with a lot of the same folks, it might mean that you have very compatible personalities. But it could also help you avoid a situation in which someone might be technically in a relationship right now but kind of looking around for their next new Saturday night thing. Or maybe you look at this person you think, oh, I'm

really not looking for anything serious right now. I'm looking for something just, you know, a casual relationship, and I'm going to be totally upfront about that. I want it to be a casual relationship and I want both parties to be aware of that. However, if we all know the same people, that could end up becoming awkward among this group of friends. So it might be helpful in that sense too. Uh, I guess I mean again. I've been out of the dating life for so long that

these are all strange and unusual words to me. But the latest feature as of the recording of this podcast in Tender is the super like. In high school, we used to call this like like. You know, do you like me? Do you like like me? Check one yes, no, or maybe uh. In this case, super like is a new way to swipe on profile, so you know, you swipe left for no or nope, and Tender language swipe right for I am interested, and you swipe up for

a super like. You can also use an other uh interface in the app itself if you don't want to swipe up, but a super like sends a notification to the person who's profile you've tagged. In other words, normal operation of Tender. No one gets any indication that someone has liked or disliked their profile until they have liked the other person's profile, and even then you don't get an indication if they didn't like it you only you only get a connection if both of you say yes, well,

it's super like. It's a little different. If I were to super like a profile, that person would receive a notification saying hey, Jonathan Strickland just super liked you. Now, Tender says this is probably going to allow for more connections because you are only given one super like per day and you can't bank them, you can't roll them over to the next day. So it's a use it or lose it, and if you use it, that's the only one you get to use for that twenty four

hour period. So if I send someone is super like, they know, all right, well he really does like at least my appearance, because he used up his one and only chance today to say I like you. At that point, the person can swipe left and you just lost your super like you. You you took a chance and you struck out and that is the way life goes sometimes, or they can swipe right and things can go on from there. Now you know. It's it's an interesting idea.

It's already rolled out in Australia as of the recording of this podcast, it has not rolled out beyond Australia, but it's supposed to continue to roll out to Tender users around the world throughout the rest of the year. So that is the latest on Tender personally. I remember when I first heard about Tinder. I think I had the grumpy old man, conservative dismissive opinion about it, like, you know, oh, this is so shallow. It's just people

hooking up because as of the way they look. The more I think about, the more I realized, and now this is kind of a this this is no less legitimate than other means of just meeting people, seeing someone that you think is attractive and coming up and and saying hello and trying to strike up a conversation. It's also safer because it doesn't put anyone in an awkward physical situation. They can choose at the very beginning whether

or not they want to pursue anything. Um And I can see how this would appeal to the millennial generation, people who have increasingly shifted their interactions to an online approach. And honestly, even though I'm a Generation xer, I'm older than the millennial generation, I feel very much the same way in a lot of respects. I do enjoy using the internet to do stuff like heck, I to order stuff and go shopping, to order food, to to call for things like an uber car or whatever it may be.

I get that it's something that I really uh gravitate toward as well. So upon further consideration, I think I'm much more fair towards Tender than I used to be. Granted, I am glad that I don't have to use it, because I think I might be depressed at how few matches would pop up people swiping right on my profile. But um, I think it is an interesting app, and I think if used correctly, there's nothing wrong with it. Honestly, it requires the participation and honesty of the people using

the app. It's not just on the app itself, it's on the behavior of the people using it. And you can use or misuse any tool, and I'm sure there are more than plenty of examples of people out there who have tried to use Tender and just gone for like an easy sexual encounter or something along those lines. And again, if you're not being honest or up front about that stuff, aim on you that is not cool.

But um, you know, if everyone is is on the same page and everything is being agreed upon and transparent, then I see no reason to condemn it that. You know, obviously, uh so interesting story. There's a lot more to talk about, I'm sure with Tinder, and I'm sure we'll see more uh interesting things pop up in the future. I'm curious to see how well Tinder plus does in the long run,

whether it actually generates a significant amount of income. It might if people really find that that experience to be rewarding, you know, whether they just enjoy the thrill of being able to look at different profiles, or they're actually seeking out someone, either for you know, a casual dating experience or looking for someone to to really be their significant other.

It's really an interesting approach. So while there has been drama behind the scenes, uh, and I'm sure there will continue to be issues with this, this kind of shuffling around at the top levels. It's it's obviously a compelling idea. Whether or not it stays compelling or something else takes its place, we'll have to wait and see. I've already heard that the age range of users has increased. That the you know it used to be the Tender users were between the ages of like eighteen and twenty five,

but now it's closer to sixty percent. So there's either a large influx of older people joining Tender, or younger people are already getting less interested in and dropping away. So it may be that in another two or three years. Tender will be another one of those apps that we don't even talk about anymore. We'll have to wait and see. What do you guys think about Tender? Let me hear your thoughts. Send me an email the assss tech Stuff

at how stuff works dot com. You can also let me know what topics would you like to hear about in the future. Are there any particular apps or companies, or technologies or personalities anything in the text sphere that you would like to learn more about or have my perspective on. Please write me again. That email is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also

drop me a line on Facebook, Tumbler, or Twitter. I am Text Stuff hs W as all three of those, and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and pathans of other topics because it has to have works dot com