Speaker 1: Tech with Technology with tech Stuff from Stuff toom. Hey
Speaker 1: there everyone, this is Jonathan Strickland with Tech Stuff and
Speaker 1: I hope you are enjoying our episodes. This is a
Speaker 1: repetition for some of you, but we have gone to
Speaker 1: once a week publication for the time being. In the
Speaker 1: future we will go back to two times a week,
Speaker 1: but right now, once a week every Wednesday, new episode.
Speaker 1: And I really hope you guys swipe right on this episode,
Speaker 1: and that is in fact a reference to the topic
Speaker 1: I will be discussing today. That topic is Tinder, the
Speaker 1: dating app, and you probably heard about it. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure most of you are aware of what Tinder is.
Speaker 1: Some of you may be active Tinder users. It's a
Speaker 1: dating app that you download to a mobile device and
Speaker 1: when you fire it up, it shows pictures of people
Speaker 1: who also have the app installed on their mobile devices
Speaker 1: and who are within your general location a radius that
Speaker 1: you have set, so let's say it's five miles. You
Speaker 1: will see other profiles in there that are somewhere within
Speaker 1: that five mile range of people who also have Tender,
Speaker 1: and it will match you up with the preferences you've set. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you are a man seeking a woman,
Speaker 1: it will show you the female profiles, but it won't
Speaker 1: show you the male profiles. And the way the app
Speaker 1: works is you look at this picture and if you
Speaker 1: think that person is attractive, if you think I would
Speaker 1: like to speak with this person, I think, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this person has a look that appeals to me, you
Speaker 1: would swipe right on the screen, and that essentially is
Speaker 1: like giving that person a check saying you are a
Speaker 1: CUTEI petuity. If the person's picture doesn't do anything for
Speaker 1: you, you you swipe to the left and say you are
Speaker 1: going to the heap. I do not want to speak
Speaker 1: with you. You are not interesting to me, you don't
Speaker 1: appeal to me. Whatever reason. Maybe it's just that you
Speaker 1: know you're like you know, I don't like that hairstyle
Speaker 1: very much. It could be something as simple as that.
Speaker 1: And you only get to talk to someone if they
Speaker 1: have looked at your profile and also they swipe right
Speaker 1: on your picture. So in other words, if you give
Speaker 1: a person a check mark and they look at you
Speaker 1: and give you a check mark, then a line of
Speaker 1: communication can open up. Otherwise, one party will continue to
Speaker 1: be perpetually unaware of the other party, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: indicate that someone has swiped right or left for you. Again,
Speaker 1: you only know if you both swipe right, which takes
Speaker 1: a lot of the pressure off obviously. So once you
Speaker 1: both swipe right, you can chat and set up a
Speaker 1: time and place to meet. You can actually go on
Speaker 1: a date and just have a nice time, or maybe
Speaker 1: you just want to meet in person. See if sparks
Speaker 1: are flying right on the get go. The app relies
Speaker 1: very heavily on Facebook integration. It pulls in photos and
Speaker 1: your likes from various pages that you visited. So if
Speaker 1: you like a lot of different pages for bands or
Speaker 1: movies or brands or whatever, those will pop up in
Speaker 1: the profile as well. Uh it'll also just give a
Speaker 1: really brief overview of a person's personality. There's also some
Speaker 1: integration with Instagram to help fill out that profile with
Speaker 1: other pictures. You can actually select I think up to
Speaker 1: six pictures to represent yourself within your tender profile, so
Speaker 1: someone can take one look and they might say, all right,
Speaker 1: well that's the representative photo, but let me look at
Speaker 1: a couple of others before I decide. And just like
Speaker 1: we often find in real life interactions, the app focuses
Speaker 1: on physical attraction first, but let's be fair, that's what
Speaker 1: we do in real life. I mean, if you are
Speaker 1: at an event and you see someone who catches your eye,
Speaker 1: often physical attraction is the first indicator that inspires you
Speaker 1: to go and try and have an interaction with that person.
Speaker 1: And then from there things might develop further and you
Speaker 1: might find that you really like that person, or you
Speaker 1: might find that you're completely incompatible and it would just
Speaker 1: be a total mistake to try and have any sort
Speaker 1: of relationship with that person. But ultimately that physical attraction
Speaker 1: is often the first step that leads us to those interactions.
Speaker 1: It's not always the case, but it often is. So anyway,
Speaker 1: today I'm going to talk about where Tinder came from
Speaker 1: and how it's business model works. Because the technology itself
Speaker 1: is incredibly simple. It's essentially GPS TOHO determined where your
Speaker 1: location is and where people are in relation to you,
Speaker 1: and it's this app matching or profile matching software. Not
Speaker 1: a lot to it, not terribly complicated, but the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes stuff is really interesting. Now. The general story
Speaker 1: of Tinder, the one that you know, is generally pushed
Speaker 1: uh to to kind of give it a sort of
Speaker 1: campus mystique. This idea of of young, young entrepreneurs developing
Speaker 1: a really powerful app in in like a dorm room.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of image of that with Tinder, but
Speaker 1: that's not exactly what happened. Now, there were two entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: Sean rad and Justin Matine, who built the app, and
Speaker 1: they tested it at the University of California, and they
Speaker 1: launched it in two thousand twelve with just three people
Speaker 1: as their initial seed test group, and by the end
Speaker 1: of the week the app had more than a thousand
Speaker 1: active users, and rather Matine were just twenty seven when
Speaker 1: they launched Tinder. But the story doesn't really start there.
Speaker 1: It's not like these are two post grads who happened
Speaker 1: to come up with a cool idea and try it
Speaker 1: out at a college. The narrative or Tender isn't just
Speaker 1: about that. It's really more about how Tinder part of
Speaker 1: a much much larger organization called Interactive Core or i
Speaker 1: a C. Now I a C is, at least according
Speaker 1: to their website anyway, a leading media and internet company
Speaker 1: focused on the areas of search applications, online dating, media,
Speaker 1: and e commerce. That's a direct quote from their site.
Speaker 1: And it's a big company. There are more than a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty brands or products that are under that umbrella,
Speaker 1: and you would recognize these names. These are not small names.
Speaker 1: For example, Match dot com and okay Cupid, so you've
Speaker 1: got some major dating sites there. There's also video, there's
Speaker 1: college humor and about dot com. So these are these
Speaker 1: are big brands that are under this this company. So
Speaker 1: to understand where Tinder is and why it hasn't been
Speaker 1: snapped up by someone like Google or Twitter or Facebook,
Speaker 1: you need to know what I A C is and
Speaker 1: where it comes from. So this is starting to sound
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a bait and switch, I understand,
Speaker 1: but I promise I'm going to get back to tender
Speaker 1: a little further in for the moment. Let's first take
Speaker 1: a look at I A C. And it's storied history.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna get weird and complicated because history
Speaker 1: is never as straightforward as you might imagine. So we
Speaker 1: have to look at before I A C. So I
Speaker 1: guess b I A C if you're trying to create
Speaker 1: a new nomenclature for this. So before there was an
Speaker 1: I A C. There was a company called Silver King Broadcasting.
Speaker 1: And before there was Silver King, there was the Home
Speaker 1: Shopping Network, And before there was the Home Shopping Network,
Speaker 1: there was the Home Shopping Club. But don't worry, that's
Speaker 1: as far back as I'm gonna go or else. We
Speaker 1: just keep on tracing all the way to the roots
Speaker 1: of the discovery of fire. So back in nineteen one,
Speaker 1: former attorney Roy Spear and a radio and television executive
Speaker 1: named Lowell White Bud Paxson launched the Home Shopping Club
Speaker 1: in Florida. Paxson had actually discovered that there was a
Speaker 1: market for selling stuff live on television. He had ended
Speaker 1: up with a whole bunch of avocado green can openers,
Speaker 1: and he told one of the guys running one of
Speaker 1: the shows that that was airing on a television network
Speaker 1: that he owned or television station I should say that
Speaker 1: he owned. Hey, can you try and mention these things
Speaker 1: on the air so we can try and sell some
Speaker 1: of them? And discovered that they were able to sell
Speaker 1: almost two hundred in an hour, and he thought there
Speaker 1: might be something to this. We can make this a
Speaker 1: whole business. Now. At first this was limited to broadcasting
Speaker 1: just in the state of Florida, but over a few
Speaker 1: years they got bigger and bigger, and by nine five
Speaker 1: the Home Shopping Club now known as the Home Shopping
Speaker 1: Network began and broadcast across the entire United States. In
Speaker 1: nineteen six, the Home Shopping Network or hs N if
Speaker 1: you prefer, established a subsidiary company, and that was called
Speaker 1: Silver King Broadcasting. The purpose of this company was to
Speaker 1: secure over the air time for the Home Shopping Network,
Speaker 1: so for places that didn't have cable, but we're getting
Speaker 1: over the air broadcasts. This made a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: You know, you wanted to to target as many different
Speaker 1: markets as possible, So the company actually started buying up
Speaker 1: television stations in order to get more Home Shopping Network
Speaker 1: content out in front of more viewers. And that was
Speaker 1: the birth of the Silver King Broadcasting Company. Things get
Speaker 1: even more weird from here, but I promise we're gonna
Speaker 1: get the tender. So in nine remember that's when Silver
Speaker 1: King Broadcasting comes into being in the Home Shopping Network
Speaker 1: on Silver King off as a separately traded public company.
Speaker 1: So now Silver King Broadcasting is a related but separate
Speaker 1: company all on its own. In in Barry Diller. If
Speaker 1: you don't know who Barry Diller is, at some point
Speaker 1: I shall have to do a full profile on him.
Speaker 1: He created the Fox Broadcasting Company, among other things. He
Speaker 1: bought controlling interest in Silver King Broadcasting. Then it became
Speaker 1: silver King Communications and it merged with the Home Shopping Network.
Speaker 1: So just three years after Home Shopping Network spends off
Speaker 1: Silver King, Silver King and Home Shopping Network merged together,
Speaker 1: and this new company also merged with another one, Savoy
Speaker 1: Pictures Entertainment. And this new mega company became known as
Speaker 1: hs IN Incorporated, So Home Shopping Network Incorporated essentially. But
Speaker 1: then HSN Incorporated got hungry. It went on a buying frenzy.
Speaker 1: It started acquiring companies left and right, which when you
Speaker 1: think about it, seems only appropriate for the Home Shopping Network. Now.
Speaker 1: The shopping they did was on the huge scale. They
Speaker 1: bought Ticketmaster, They bought the TV assets of Universal Studios,
Speaker 1: including USA Networks and the Sci Fi Channel that was
Speaker 1: before it became Siffy, and also Match dot Com and
Speaker 1: Match dot Com would end up being a really important
Speaker 1: acquisition for them. They were already looking at ways to
Speaker 1: go beyond television and radio. At that point, the company
Speaker 1: changed its name to USA Networks Incorporated. Now, in the
Speaker 1: two thousand's USA Networks Incorporated began to sell off some
Speaker 1: of its television companies and production units. It also began
Speaker 1: to acquire more online companies, including big ones like Expedia,
Speaker 1: and it changed names again to USA Interactive in two
Speaker 1: thousand two to reflect the fact that now it was
Speaker 1: looking at more internet and technology companies and less at television.
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand three had changed its name again,
Speaker 1: finally becoming Interactive Corps, and in two thousand four four
Speaker 1: it became I a C slash Interactive Corp. So I
Speaker 1: a C continue grabbing up companies and spawning new brands
Speaker 1: as well. Some of the other companies that they acquired
Speaker 1: included stuff like lending Tree. Trip Advisor asked Jeeves Urban Spoon. Really,
Speaker 1: if you had a burgeoning internet company, you were in
Speaker 1: good shape because someone somewhere is looking to scoop you up,
Speaker 1: whether it was a company like Amazon or something like
Speaker 1: I a C. You had if you had a good idea,
Speaker 1: you just had to wait around long enough to get
Speaker 1: scooped up. That's why a lot of these companies that
Speaker 1: are the startups, they don't worry so much if they
Speaker 1: don't have a way of generating revenue, because if they
Speaker 1: can demonstrate that they are interesting enough, some other bigger
Speaker 1: company will come and buy them and then they don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about how to generate revenue. That's the
Speaker 1: bigger company's problem now, and everyone who made that stuff
Speaker 1: has become a millionaire. Man, I'm in the wrong business
Speaker 1: at any rate. The company I a C. Eventually spun
Speaker 1: off some of these properties, including spinning off the Home
Speaker 1: Shopping Network. So once again, Home Shopping Network creates Silver
Speaker 1: King Broadcasting. Silver King Broadcasting merges with Home Shopping Network.
Speaker 1: Then I a C, which grew out of Silver King Broadcasting,
Speaker 1: spins off Home Shopping Network. This is a weird story.
Speaker 1: They also spun off Ticketmaster around that same time, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, I a C created a startup
Speaker 1: incubator called hatch Labs. So this is a lot like
Speaker 1: Google's x Labs, the branch of Google that's all about
Speaker 1: research and development and rapid prototyping of various products and services,
Speaker 1: all about let's let's look at big risk, big reward
Speaker 1: type stuff. Um, where can we come up with the
Speaker 1: next awesome idea in house rather than having to go
Speaker 1: out and buy it all the time. Not that they
Speaker 1: were going to stop buying stuff, but this way they
Speaker 1: could also develop it within the company. Now, hatch Labs
Speaker 1: allows people to develop and test ideas for new products
Speaker 1: and services and companies, and because I a c owns it,
Speaker 1: it gives I a C. A large stake in anything
Speaker 1: that comes out of hatch Labs. So this is the
Speaker 1: company that is hatch Labs is the organization that served
Speaker 1: as the incubator for Tinder. So it wasn't that Tinder
Speaker 1: sprung up due to pure pluck and enthusiasm and had
Speaker 1: actually an enormous corporation behind it when they had a
Speaker 1: long history in online dating services because they had owned
Speaker 1: match dot com and okay Cupid for so long. But
Speaker 1: that's not the story you often hear when people talk
Speaker 1: about Tinder. It sounds like it's a much more kind
Speaker 1: of grassroots sort of thing. That's not exactly the case.
Speaker 1: But none of that is to take away from the
Speaker 1: innovation and the clever positioning of Tinder. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's a product that people like and it does exactly
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to do. It's just not a little
Speaker 1: plucky start up the way some people imagine it to be.
Speaker 1: In fact, venture capitalists have been denied investment opportunities in
Speaker 1: Tender because I a c S steak in tender is
Speaker 1: so great that they don't want anyone else coming in
Speaker 1: and getting any sort of majority share in this. And
Speaker 1: this is not a Tinder itself. It's not a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company, although it does act as its own entity.
Speaker 1: So anyway, sean Rad was working for hatch Labs and
Speaker 1: he was developing ideas. He was working on a product
Speaker 1: called cardify UM, but he also had an idea kind
Speaker 1: of fermenting in his mind about a location based dating app,
Speaker 1: and he originally started calling it Matchbox. This was not
Speaker 1: one of his formal projects, and in fact, he didn't
Speaker 1: really begin working on it in earnest until hatch Labs
Speaker 1: held a hackathon. This was not actually that long after
Speaker 1: shan Rad had joined hatch Labs. He had joined as
Speaker 1: a general manager UM. So the hackathon was an event
Speaker 1: in which employees could prototype new ideas rather than work
Speaker 1: on their regular projects. And it lasted a few days.
Speaker 1: So it gave you a chance if you had an idea,
Speaker 1: to develop that idea and pitch your idea to the
Speaker 1: company and say this is something I think we should do. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it gave you the freedom to do that and
Speaker 1: take your workload, your regular workload off of your shoulders
Speaker 1: while you're prototyping. So Rad worked on Matchbox at one
Speaker 1: of these hackathons and then switched back to his normal
Speaker 1: work duties trying to get Cartify off the ground. But
Speaker 1: Cardify was met with some resistance from iTunes. They were
Speaker 1: delaying putting it into the iTunes Store. And this has
Speaker 1: happened quite a few times with lots of different apps
Speaker 1: across lots of different you know, types of apps, whether
Speaker 1: it's a game or a service or whatever. Sometimes Apple
Speaker 1: wants changes or has objections. Sometimes they don't really give
Speaker 1: you necessarily the best feedback for you to figure out
Speaker 1: how to adjust your products so that it can be
Speaker 1: featured in the iTunes Store. And because the way iOS works,
Speaker 1: if you have a regular, un jailbroken, you know phone,
Speaker 1: you pretty much are stuck with whatever's in the iOS store.
Speaker 1: You can't sideload any apps without doing something pretty drastic
Speaker 1: to your phone, at least drastic in the eyes of
Speaker 1: your average phone user. I'm sure a lot of you
Speaker 1: guys out there and tech stuff land have phones that
Speaker 1: you have freed from the shackles of manufacturers and carriers,
Speaker 1: and you can load whatever you want on it, but
Speaker 1: for the average consumer that's not the case. So that
Speaker 1: puts people who create apps in a difficult situation. The
Speaker 1: place where you want to be is on iOS because
Speaker 1: so many people are you're using iPhones. Even though Android
Speaker 1: has a greater market share, it's also more I would say, dilute.
Speaker 1: It's harder to get noticed um whereas Apple, like the
Speaker 1: people who have iPhones are I would I would think,
Speaker 1: based upon the studies I've seen, are more likely to
Speaker 1: adopt your app and pay for it than the Google
Speaker 1: site is. In general. Obviously, case by case it could
Speaker 1: be very different. So because of this delay, that gave
Speaker 1: Rad the opportunity to switch back over to Matchbox to
Speaker 1: to work on that again, and it got a big
Speaker 1: push to move into production. And the one of the
Speaker 1: earliest things they did was they changed the name. I A. C.
Speaker 1: Didn't want the app to be so closely associated associated
Speaker 1: with Match dot Com. They wanted it to have its
Speaker 1: own identity and not be confused with Match dot Com.
Speaker 1: They didn't want people to think that Matchbox was Match
Speaker 1: dot Com in app for so they changed the name
Speaker 1: to Tinder now justin. Matein came up with the idea
Speaker 1: to test Tender at a college campus. This is not
Speaker 1: that different from how Facebook got its start when it
Speaker 1: first began, and actually, if you remember your Facebook history,
Speaker 1: Facebook essentially started out as a way for college students
Speaker 1: to find like minded folks in order or to you know,
Speaker 1: to go find date or socializing. It wasn't just to
Speaker 1: keep in touch with the people, you know. It was
Speaker 1: also meant as a way to meet new people. So
Speaker 1: this is very much in that same vein. So the
Speaker 1: two colleges they picked were the University of Southern California
Speaker 1: and u C l A. And as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: the popularity of the app skyrocketed pretty quickly, going from
Speaker 1: three hundred to a thousand users within a week and
Speaker 1: then just growing from there. Now Mateam would become the
Speaker 1: chief marketing officer for Tinder, but he stepped down in
Speaker 1: September two thousand fourteen in the way of a sexual
Speaker 1: harassment lawsuit which was leveled by Tender vice president of
Speaker 1: marketing and UH at least sometimes credited co founder Whitney Wolf.
Speaker 1: I say sometimes credited because that whole story is incredibly complicated.
Speaker 1: There are people who protest her being called a co founder,
Speaker 1: although she was allowed to. You know, she was given
Speaker 1: the blessing by Sean rad to call herself co founder
Speaker 1: at least on a few occasions. There's some people who
Speaker 1: say that she was not really a co founder, but
Speaker 1: she certainly was there from the earliest days um, And
Speaker 1: there are other people who say, no, it's perfectly legitimate
Speaker 1: for her to call herself a co founder. It's a
Speaker 1: really complicated issue, and it gets even more complex. Wolfe
Speaker 1: had either resigned from Tinder or been forced from Tinder,
Speaker 1: depending upon whose account you listen to, and so she
Speaker 1: leveled this lawsuit against Tender and Matine specifically to say
Speaker 1: that she had been sexually harassed and that that harassment
Speaker 1: had led to her leaving the company, whether she was
Speaker 1: forced out or resigned or whatever. And she presented as
Speaker 1: evidence in this lawsuit some pretty nasty text messages from
Speaker 1: the teen I mean, really vile stuff, and tech Crunch
Speaker 1: actually ran a really long piece that I recommend if
Speaker 1: you want to hear more about the story. They ran
Speaker 1: a long piece about the lawsuit, and it gets really
Speaker 1: complicated because people obviously could not talk about this openly.
Speaker 1: It was all an ongoing lawsuit at the time, but
Speaker 1: ultimately Mateine left the company as well. Uh He and
Speaker 1: Sean Rad remained close friends. They had been best friends
Speaker 1: for years before Tinder, so they remained friends. Wolf would
Speaker 1: go on to found a Bumble, which is another dating app,
Speaker 1: and the lawsuit itself was settled out of court for
Speaker 1: an undisclosed sum. Now, since its launched, Tinder's popularity had
Speaker 1: become insane, so within two years by two thousand the
Speaker 1: end of two thousand fourteen, in other words, the app
Speaker 1: had been downloaded forty million times, showing a six growth
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen alone, and that there had been
Speaker 1: more than one billion profiles checked out every day by
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. That means people are swiping left or
Speaker 1: right more than a billion times a day. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think it's close to one point two billion. That means
Speaker 1: that's about fourteen thousand profiles per second that are being
Speaker 1: looked at and judged. Those billion swipes would lead to
Speaker 1: about fourteen million matches per day, per every twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: So you know, one billion, one point two billion profile
Speaker 1: views and fourteen million matches. That's a pretty small percentage,
Speaker 1: but still fourteen million. That's a lot of people meeting
Speaker 1: somebody through this this app so it's pretty interesting now.
Speaker 1: Sean Rad became the CEO of Tender and I was
Speaker 1: still when it was still under the umbrella of I
Speaker 1: A C. But he's the CEO. But in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen he was removed from that position by I A C.
Speaker 1: S Sam Yeagan. Sam Yeagan was sort of in charge
Speaker 1: of all the digital dating stuff over at I A C.
Speaker 1: And it became it was something of a shock to Rad.
Speaker 1: I think it was partly as a response to the
Speaker 1: fallout with the sexual harassment lawsuit. So Yeagan then removes
Speaker 1: Rad and Rad ends up transitioning into the role of
Speaker 1: president and member of the board. The I A C
Speaker 1: would bring on Christopher Payne, who had worked as an
Speaker 1: executive over at eBay, to take over as CEO, but
Speaker 1: in March two thousand and fifteen, Payne would step aside.
Speaker 1: Both Paine and I A s C would say that
Speaker 1: this was not a good fit, that it was not
Speaker 1: a good long term fit for him as CEO, so
Speaker 1: who replaced Christopher Paine to take over the role of
Speaker 1: CEO of Tinder Sean Rad. So Sean Rad returns to
Speaker 1: CEO duties in March two thou at first we're moving
Speaker 1: away from the stuff going on at the top levels
Speaker 1: and the executive side of Tender. Let's look at their
Speaker 1: business model. At first, there were no pathways to generate
Speaker 1: revenue directly from Tinder. The original app was free to download,
Speaker 1: it was free to use. You could swipe an unlimited
Speaker 1: number of times per day. Really, you're only limited by
Speaker 1: how many other Tinder users were in your general area.
Speaker 1: I a C. Seemed to view Tender as a gateway
Speaker 1: to other services like match dot com and Match dot
Speaker 1: com is monetized, so in other words, they looked at
Speaker 1: Tinder as being kind of a gateway and you could
Speaker 1: actually end up using some of the more robust services
Speaker 1: online which you would pay for, and Tender was fine.
Speaker 1: It could be, it could be free, and that kind
Speaker 1: of answers the question of well, how does Tinder make
Speaker 1: its money. It's because it's part of this massive company.
Speaker 1: It's not a tiny little startup that's operating all on
Speaker 1: its own. It has these big corporate boots behind it,
Speaker 1: so they were they had plenty of of operating money
Speaker 1: to work with. And uh, everyone over at I a C.
Speaker 1: Seemed really impressed by Tinder's growth. It was clear that
Speaker 1: it was really popular, so they felt that it was
Speaker 1: worthy of support. In two thousand and fourteen, there were
Speaker 1: rumblings that Tinder would finally start experimenting with a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways to generate revenue, and back at that time,
Speaker 1: there were lots of different options being discussed, including showing
Speaker 1: ads to people h and also starting up a premium service.
Speaker 1: And the spring of two thousand fifteen, Tender launched a
Speaker 1: premium service called Tinder Plus, and that ruffled some Tinder
Speaker 1: users feathers because they made the claim that the way
Speaker 1: they that Tender created a premium service was to take
Speaker 1: features away from the free service and then make them
Speaker 1: pay only. So, in other words, instead of creating a
Speaker 1: better app that has a better experience, they created an
Speaker 1: app that had some of the features native to the
Speaker 1: free app but now had been turned off. For example,
Speaker 1: unlimited swiping, that's the most obvious one. So the premium
Speaker 1: service was said to have an unlimited number of swipes,
Speaker 1: which immediately set off alarms and said the free version
Speaker 1: would then be limited. And this is pretty complicated. You
Speaker 1: might say, well, how many swipes do I get per day?
Speaker 1: Then like, can I bank them? Can I roll them over? Well,
Speaker 1: you can roll them over. How many you get per day, however,
Speaker 1: is a little a little tricky. That limitation isn't even
Speaker 1: across all tender users. It may be that you discover
Speaker 1: your friend has way more swipes available than you do,
Speaker 1: and even if you have, even if both of you
Speaker 1: haven't rolled over any swipes. It's because this is based
Speaker 1: on an algorithm and it can actually be tuned to
Speaker 1: individual levels. So personally, if I were the one in charge,
Speaker 1: I'd be truly evil. I'd be I'd be a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible person, and you would all hate me. But I
Speaker 1: would be making so much money because what I would
Speaker 1: do is I would look at how many swipes each
Speaker 1: individual tender user typically uses in a session, so and
Speaker 1: you can pull up that data and just actually make
Speaker 1: this all automated. And then what I would do is
Speaker 1: I would subtract that number by two and set that
Speaker 1: as the limit. So let's say that then your average
Speaker 1: session you look at fifty profiles, I would set your
Speaker 1: limit to forty eight, because then I know that eventually
Speaker 1: you're going to hit that limit, and then you're going
Speaker 1: to eventually not want to hit that limit, and you'll
Speaker 1: be given an incentive to go with the premium service
Speaker 1: or you'll stop using it. But either way, if it's
Speaker 1: a free app, I'm not losing any money if you
Speaker 1: go away. I only gain money if you subscribe. So
Speaker 1: that's how evil I would be if I were in charge.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they did, that's just what I
Speaker 1: would do. This is why I don't can and this
Speaker 1: is why people don't put me in charge of things,
Speaker 1: I guess. Another thing that got some people talking about
Speaker 1: was that tender Plus didn't cost the same amount for
Speaker 1: all users. If you are under thirty years old, the
Speaker 1: cost is nine dollars and nine cents per month. If
Speaker 1: you are thirty years old or older, the cost is
Speaker 1: nineteen dollars and nine nine cents per month. So we
Speaker 1: old folks are paying twice as much as you young
Speaker 1: whipper snappers in order to try and find Mr or
Speaker 1: Mrs right. So we see, yet again the cost of
Speaker 1: growing old. Now, to understatement on the pricing was, and
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote from a tender executive. We've
Speaker 1: priced tender Plus based on a combination of factors, including
Speaker 1: what we've learned through our testing, and we've found that
Speaker 1: these price points were adopted very well by certain age
Speaker 1: demographics end quote. In other words, they discovered that young
Speaker 1: folks aren't as willing to pay as much per month
Speaker 1: for this service, or they're not as able to because
Speaker 1: they don't have as much income, and older folks desperate
Speaker 1: for some companionship after a lifetime of solitary disappointment would
Speaker 1: be more than willing to cough up the dough. I
Speaker 1: might be over dramaticizing this a little bit, but to
Speaker 1: be fair, I've had a lot of caffeine today. So
Speaker 1: other features in Tender Plus include a rewind feature which
Speaker 1: lets you undo a swipe left should you get distracted,
Speaker 1: and dismiss a profile that could have been the per match.
Speaker 1: So let's say you are pulling up tender and you're
Speaker 1: looking through and you see someone who is incredibly attractive
Speaker 1: to you. Their look is just really appealing. They seem
Speaker 1: to be engaged in activities that you think are really fun.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know it's a shot of a person uh
Speaker 1: sledding down a hill and they're just got a big
Speaker 1: smile on their face, and it's something that really as
Speaker 1: someone that you know you love the snow, you love
Speaker 1: having fun, you really want to connect with this person,
Speaker 1: and so you put your finger on the screen and
Speaker 1: you get distracted and you accidentally swipe left, and you
Speaker 1: have doomed yourself. You are now alone. Well, if you
Speaker 1: were to subscribe to the Tinder Plus service, you would
Speaker 1: have an undo button and you can press undo and
Speaker 1: then it would undo your last swipe left, so that
Speaker 1: way you could actually swipe right instead. So if you
Speaker 1: had been going through very quickly, because that you can
Speaker 1: start doing this. I mean, the the Tinder app a
Speaker 1: lot of people we'll talk about feeling a lot like
Speaker 1: a game like You're it's almost like the whole the
Speaker 1: old Hot or Not website where you would just you know,
Speaker 1: you're judging people on their looks, and it may be
Speaker 1: that you know you're you're going through a list of
Speaker 1: people that don't do anything for you. So you're swiping left,
Speaker 1: swiping left, swiping left, and then you realize, oh, that
Speaker 1: last person I actually kind of thought looked attractive and
Speaker 1: I swipe left. This would let you undo that. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, keep in mind, this is all still based
Speaker 1: upon how attractive you find someone initially, how physically attractive
Speaker 1: you think they are. It's not guaranteed to actually lead
Speaker 1: to anything. Fun or meaningful. If you undo and then
Speaker 1: swipe right, it may very well be that you undo
Speaker 1: and swipe right and the person that you swipe right
Speaker 1: on either never sees your profile or swipes left on it.
Speaker 1: There's no guarantee it's going to lead anywhere, but at
Speaker 1: least it meets you haven't completely negated something that could
Speaker 1: have been a potential match. Okay, So Tinder Plus also
Speaker 1: includes a feature called Passport, which allows you to change
Speaker 1: your location, meaning that, for example, I'm in Atlanta, but
Speaker 1: let's say that I've got a trip plan to Hawaii,
Speaker 1: and I want to be able to use Tender to
Speaker 1: meet up with folks have a nice time while I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation, maybe not even go on a date. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just to hang out and have fun, uh, not
Speaker 1: like a not like a romantic date, but just to
Speaker 1: to find someone who who seems interesting and could make
Speaker 1: that vacation much more of a memorable experience for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Then Passport would allow you to change your location too,
Speaker 1: wherever you're going, like Hawaii, and look for matches there.
Speaker 1: That way you can you can check around. Because if
Speaker 1: you just open up Tender normally, it's not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to give you any matches in advance, So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It also could be incredibly creepy. I mean also if
Speaker 1: some Tender users were worried that this would dilute the results,
Speaker 1: that people would start setting their location wherever they just
Speaker 1: you know, just getting curious, Like, I wonder what would
Speaker 1: happen if I were in l A, Would I see
Speaker 1: any celebrities because celebrities do use Tender. In fact, celebrities
Speaker 1: use Tender, and Tender now will create verified accounts for
Speaker 1: notable personalities. So let's say you fire up your phone
Speaker 1: and find out that a cute pop star or a
Speaker 1: hunky television actor that you really like happens to be
Speaker 1: in the area, and she or he is also lonely.
Speaker 1: But how do you know that person in the app
Speaker 1: is actually who they say they are, rather than just
Speaker 1: someone who has created a fake profile and and fed
Speaker 1: it pictures of this person and then turned on Tinder. Well,
Speaker 1: Tender verifies accounts in a way very similar to Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you actually see a check mark next to their name,
Speaker 1: which is Tender's tenders indication that yes, the celebrity that
Speaker 1: you are looking at is actually on Tender. They are
Speaker 1: actually looking for love and maybe you'll fit the bill.
Speaker 1: So imagine builing up Tinder and seeing a celebrity there.
Speaker 1: I know that there are quite a few that supposedly
Speaker 1: use it. Apparently Hillary Duff and Leonardo DiCaprio have all
Speaker 1: all both been on this app um and you know
Speaker 1: they point out sometimes this allows you to have that
Speaker 1: first interaction with a person without it being weird. I
Speaker 1: mean for celebrities in particular, it's got to be tough
Speaker 1: because so many people feel like they know them simply
Speaker 1: because they've seen them on television or in movies or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you don't really know them. You just know their work,
Speaker 1: and Tinder in a way can help them find people
Speaker 1: who seem interesting without its seeming like that person is
Speaker 1: putting on whatever act they can in order to get
Speaker 1: to meet a celebrity. So I can totally get that,
Speaker 1: although the verified obviously makes it trickier because if you
Speaker 1: see somebody verified on Tinder, then you know already this
Speaker 1: is a notable personality of some sort, even if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with that person's work or their notability. Well.
Speaker 1: Tenders also adding new features all the time, Some of
Speaker 1: them help daters avoid potentially awkward situations. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you can now see if you and your potential date
Speaker 1: have any friends in common. You'll actually see mutual friends
Speaker 1: and friends of friends, so you can consider how that
Speaker 1: might influence your decision to take things a step further,
Speaker 1: whether or not you want to actually meet this person
Speaker 1: in real life. If you both like a lot of
Speaker 1: the same people, that might be an indication that it's
Speaker 1: a good fit. That you know, if you're all both
Speaker 1: friends with a lot of the same folks, it might
Speaker 1: mean that you have very compatible personalities. But it could
Speaker 1: also help you avoid a situation in which someone might
Speaker 1: be technically in a relationship right now but kind of
Speaker 1: looking around for their next new Saturday night thing. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you look at this person you think, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: really not looking for anything serious right now. I'm looking
Speaker 1: for something just, you know, a casual relationship, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to be totally upfront about that. I want it
Speaker 1: to be a casual relationship and I want both parties
Speaker 1: to be aware of that. However, if we all know
Speaker 1: the same people, that could end up becoming awkward among
Speaker 1: this group of friends. So it might be helpful in
Speaker 1: that sense too. Uh, I guess I mean again. I've
Speaker 1: been out of the dating life for so long that
Speaker 1: these are all strange and unusual words to me. But
Speaker 1: the latest feature as of the recording of this podcast
Speaker 1: in Tender is the super like. In high school, we
Speaker 1: used to call this like like. You know, do you
Speaker 1: like me? Do you like like me? Check one yes, no,
Speaker 1: or maybe uh. In this case, super like is a
Speaker 1: new way to swipe on profile, so you know, you
Speaker 1: swipe left for no or nope, and Tender language swipe
Speaker 1: right for I am interested, and you swipe up for
Speaker 1: a super like. You can also use an other uh
Speaker 1: interface in the app itself if you don't want to
Speaker 1: swipe up, but a super like sends a notification to
Speaker 1: the person who's profile you've tagged. In other words, normal
Speaker 1: operation of Tender. No one gets any indication that someone
Speaker 1: has liked or disliked their profile until they have liked
Speaker 1: the other person's profile, and even then you don't get
Speaker 1: an indication if they didn't like it you only you
Speaker 1: only get a connection if both of you say yes, well,
Speaker 1: it's super like. It's a little different. If I were
Speaker 1: to super like a profile, that person would receive a
Speaker 1: notification saying hey, Jonathan Strickland just super liked you. Now,
Speaker 1: Tender says this is probably going to allow for more
Speaker 1: connections because you are only given one super like per
Speaker 1: day and you can't bank them, you can't roll them
Speaker 1: over to the next day. So it's a use it
Speaker 1: or lose it, and if you use it, that's the
Speaker 1: only one you get to use for that twenty four
Speaker 1: hour period. So if I send someone is super like,
Speaker 1: they know, all right, well he really does like at
Speaker 1: least my appearance, because he used up his one and
Speaker 1: only chance today to say I like you. At that point,
Speaker 1: the person can swipe left and you just lost your
Speaker 1: super like you. You you took a chance and you
Speaker 1: struck out and that is the way life goes sometimes,
Speaker 1: or they can swipe right and things can go on
Speaker 1: from there. Now you know. It's it's an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: It's already rolled out in Australia as of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast, it has not rolled out beyond Australia,
Speaker 1: but it's supposed to continue to roll out to Tender
Speaker 1: users around the world throughout the rest of the year.
Speaker 1: So that is the latest on Tender personally. I remember
Speaker 1: when I first heard about Tinder. I think I had
Speaker 1: the grumpy old man, conservative dismissive opinion about it, like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, this is so shallow. It's just people
Speaker 1: hooking up because as of the way they look. The
Speaker 1: more I think about, the more I realized, and now
Speaker 1: this is kind of a this this is no less
Speaker 1: legitimate than other means of just meeting people, seeing someone
Speaker 1: that you think is attractive and coming up and and
Speaker 1: saying hello and trying to strike up a conversation. It's
Speaker 1: also safer because it doesn't put anyone in an awkward
Speaker 1: physical situation. They can choose at the very beginning whether
Speaker 1: or not they want to pursue anything. Um And I
Speaker 1: can see how this would appeal to the millennial generation,
Speaker 1: people who have increasingly shifted their interactions to an online approach.
Speaker 1: And honestly, even though I'm a Generation xer, I'm older
Speaker 1: than the millennial generation, I feel very much the same
Speaker 1: way in a lot of respects. I do enjoy using
Speaker 1: the internet to do stuff like heck, I to order
Speaker 1: stuff and go shopping, to order food, to to call
Speaker 1: for things like an uber car or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: I get that it's something that I really uh gravitate
Speaker 1: toward as well. So upon further consideration, I think I'm
Speaker 1: much more fair towards Tender than I used to be. Granted,
Speaker 1: I am glad that I don't have to use it,
Speaker 1: because I think I might be depressed at how few
Speaker 1: matches would pop up people swiping right on my profile.
Speaker 1: But um, I think it is an interesting app, and
Speaker 1: I think if used correctly, there's nothing wrong with it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it requires the participation and honesty of the people using
Speaker 1: the app. It's not just on the app itself, it's
Speaker 1: on the behavior of the people using it. And you
Speaker 1: can use or misuse any tool, and I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are more than plenty of examples of people out there
Speaker 1: who have tried to use Tender and just gone for
Speaker 1: like an easy sexual encounter or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: And again, if you're not being honest or up front
Speaker 1: about that stuff, aim on you that is not cool.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, if everyone is is on the
Speaker 1: same page and everything is being agreed upon and transparent,
Speaker 1: then I see no reason to condemn it that. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: uh so interesting story. There's a lot more to talk about,
Speaker 1: I'm sure with Tinder, and I'm sure we'll see more
Speaker 1: uh interesting things pop up in the future. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to see how well Tinder plus does in the long run,
Speaker 1: whether it actually generates a significant amount of income. It
Speaker 1: might if people really find that that experience to be rewarding,
Speaker 1: you know, whether they just enjoy the thrill of being
Speaker 1: able to look at different profiles, or they're actually seeking
Speaker 1: out someone, either for you know, a casual dating experience
Speaker 1: or looking for someone to to really be their significant other.
Speaker 1: It's really an interesting approach. So while there has been
Speaker 1: drama behind the scenes, uh, and I'm sure there will
Speaker 1: continue to be issues with this, this kind of shuffling
Speaker 1: around at the top levels. It's it's obviously a compelling idea.
Speaker 1: Whether or not it stays compelling or something else takes
Speaker 1: its place, we'll have to wait and see. I've already
Speaker 1: heard that the age range of users has increased. That
Speaker 1: the you know it used to be the Tender users
Speaker 1: were between the ages of like eighteen and twenty five,
Speaker 1: but now it's closer to sixty percent. So there's either
Speaker 1: a large influx of older people joining Tender, or younger
Speaker 1: people are already getting less interested in and dropping away.
Speaker 1: So it may be that in another two or three years.
Speaker 1: Tender will be another one of those apps that we
Speaker 1: don't even talk about anymore. We'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think about Tender? Let me hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts. Send me an email the assss tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. You can also let
Speaker 1: me know what topics would you like to hear about
Speaker 1: in the future. Are there any particular apps or companies,
Speaker 1: or technologies or personalities anything in the text sphere that
Speaker 1: you would like to learn more about or have my
Speaker 1: perspective on. Please write me again. That email is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook, Tumbler, or Twitter. I
Speaker 1: am Text Stuff hs W as all three of those,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon for
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