Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: classic episode. This episode originally published on September twenty three,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. It is called Tinder Loving Care and
Speaker 1: it is of course about the app designed for dating
Speaker 1: slash hooking up Tinder enjoy. I really hope you guys
Speaker 1: swipe right on this episode, and that is in fact
Speaker 1: a reference to the topic I will be discussing today.
Speaker 1: That topic is Tinder, the dating app, and you probably
Speaker 1: heard about it. I'm pretty sure most of you are
Speaker 1: aware of what Tinder is. Some of you may be
Speaker 1: active Tinder users. It's a dating app that you download
Speaker 1: to a mobile device and when you fire it up,
Speaker 1: it shows you pictures of people who also have the
Speaker 1: app installed on their mobile devices and who are within
Speaker 1: your general location a radius that you have set, so
Speaker 1: let's say it's five miles. You will see other profiles
Speaker 1: in there that are somewhere within that five mile range
Speaker 1: of people who also have Tender, and it will match
Speaker 1: you up with the preferences you've set. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you are a man seeking a woman, it will
Speaker 1: show you the female profiles, but it won't show you
Speaker 1: the male profiles. And the way the app works is
Speaker 1: you look at this picture and if you think that
Speaker 1: person is attractive, if you think I would like to
Speaker 1: speak with this person, I think, uh, this, this person
Speaker 1: has a look that appeals to me, you would swipe
Speaker 1: right on the screen, and that essentially is like giving
Speaker 1: that person a check saying you are a CUTEI petuity.
Speaker 1: If the person's picture doesn't do anything for you, you you
Speaker 1: swipe to the left and say you are going to
Speaker 1: the heap. I do not want to speak with you.
Speaker 1: You are not interesting to me, you don't appeal to me.
Speaker 1: Whatever reason. Maybe it's just that you know you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like that hairstyle very much. It
Speaker 1: could be something as simple as that. And you only
Speaker 1: get to talk to someone if they have looked at
Speaker 1: your profile, and also they swipe right on your picture.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you give a person a
Speaker 1: check mark and they look at you and give you
Speaker 1: a check mark, then a line of communication can open up.
Speaker 1: Otherwise one party will continue to be perpetually unaware of
Speaker 1: the other party, and it doesn't indicate that someone has
Speaker 1: swiped right or left for you again, you only know
Speaker 1: if you both swipe right, which takes a lot of
Speaker 1: the pressure off obviously. So once you both swipe right,
Speaker 1: you can chat and set up a time and place
Speaker 1: to meet. You can actually go on a date and
Speaker 1: just have a nice time, or maybe you just want
Speaker 1: to meet in person. See if sparks are flying right
Speaker 1: on the get go. The app relies very heavily on
Speaker 1: Facebook integration. It pulls in photos and your likes from
Speaker 1: various pages that you visited, So if you like a
Speaker 1: lot of different pages for bands or movies or brands
Speaker 1: or whatever, those will pop up in the profile as well.
Speaker 1: Uh it'll also just give a really brief overview of
Speaker 1: a person's personality. There's also some integration with Instagram to
Speaker 1: help fill out that profile with other pictures. You can
Speaker 1: actually select I think up to six pictures to represent
Speaker 1: yourself within your tender profile, so somebody can take one
Speaker 1: look and they might say, all right, well that's the
Speaker 1: representative photo, but let me look at a couple of
Speaker 1: others before I decide. And just like we often find
Speaker 1: in real life interactions. The app focuses on physical attraction first,
Speaker 1: but let's be fair, that's what we do in real life.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you are at a an event and
Speaker 1: you see someone who catches your eye, often physical attraction
Speaker 1: is the first indicator that inspires you to go and
Speaker 1: try and have an interaction with that person. And then
Speaker 1: from there things might develop further and you might find
Speaker 1: that you really like that person, or you might find
Speaker 1: that you're completely incompatible and it would just be a
Speaker 1: total mistake to try and have any sort of relationship
Speaker 1: with that person. But ultimately that physical attraction is often
Speaker 1: the first step that leads us to those interactions. It's
Speaker 1: not always the case, but it often is. So anyway,
Speaker 1: today I'm going to talk about where Tender 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 determine 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 and Matine were just twenty seven
Speaker 1: when 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 of the college. The narrative or tender isn't just
Speaker 1: about that. It's really more about how Tinder is part
Speaker 1: of a much much larger organization called Interactive Core or
Speaker 1: i a C. Now i a C is, at least
Speaker 1: according to their website anyway, a leading media and internet
Speaker 1: company 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 night five,
Speaker 1: the Home Shopping Club now known as the Home Shopping Network,
Speaker 1: began to broadcast across the entire United States. In nineteen six,
Speaker 1: the Home Shopping Network or hs N if you prefer,
Speaker 1: established a subsidiary company, and that was called Silver King Broadcasting.
Speaker 1: The purpose of this company was to secure over the
Speaker 1: air time for the Home Shopping Network, so for places
Speaker 1: that didn't have cable, but we're getting over the air broadcasts.
Speaker 1: This made a lot of sense. You know, you wanted
Speaker 1: to to target as many different markets as possible, so
Speaker 1: the company actually started buying up television stations in order
Speaker 1: to get more Home Shopping Network content out in front
Speaker 1: of more viewers. And that was the birth of the
Speaker 1: Silver King Broadcasting Company. Things get even more weird from here,
Speaker 1: but I promise we're gonna get to tender. So in
Speaker 1: n I remember in n six, that's when Silver King
Speaker 1: Broadcasting comes into being in the Home Shopping Network spun
Speaker 1: Silver King off as a separately traded public company. So
Speaker 1: now Silver King Broadcasting is a related but separate company
Speaker 1: all on its own in in Barry Diller, if you
Speaker 1: don't know who Barry Diller is. At some point I
Speaker 1: shall have to do a full profile on him. He
Speaker 1: created the Fox Broadcasting Company, among other things. In 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: a just In Incorporated. So Home Shopping Network Incorporated essentially.
Speaker 1: But then HSN Incorporated got hungry. It went on a
Speaker 1: buying frenzy. It started acquiring companies left and right, which
Speaker 1: when you think about it, seems only appropriate for the
Speaker 1: Home Shopping Network. Now. The shopping they did was on
Speaker 1: the huge scale. They bought Ticketmaster, They bought the TV
Speaker 1: assets of Universal Studios, including USA Networks and the Sci
Speaker 1: Fi Channel that was before it became Siffy, and also
Speaker 1: Match dot Com and Match dot Com would end up
Speaker 1: being a really important acquisition for them. They were already
Speaker 1: looking at ways to go beyond television and radio. At
Speaker 1: that point, the company changed its name to USA Networks Incorporated. Now,
Speaker 1: in the two thousand's USA Networks Incorporated began to sell
Speaker 1: off some of its television companies and production units. It
Speaker 1: also began to acquire more online companies, including big ones
Speaker 1: like Expedia, and it changed names again to USA Interactive
Speaker 1: in two thousand two to reflect the fact that now
Speaker 1: it was looking at more internet and technology companies and
Speaker 1: less at television. Then in two thousand three had changed
Speaker 1: its name again, finally becoming Interactive Corps, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand four four it became I a C. Slash Interactive Corp.
Speaker 1: So I a C continue grabbing up companies and spawning
Speaker 1: new brands as well. Some of the other companies that
Speaker 1: they acquired included stuff like lending Tree. Trip Advisor asked
Speaker 1: Jeeves Urban Spoon. Really, if you had a burgeoning internet company,
Speaker 1: you were in good shape because someone somewhere is looking
Speaker 1: to scoop you up, whether it was a company like
Speaker 1: Amazon or something like I a C. You had if
Speaker 1: you had a good idea, you just had to wait
Speaker 1: around long enough to get scooped up. That's why a
Speaker 1: lot of these companies that are um the startups, they
Speaker 1: don't worry so much if they don't have a way
Speaker 1: of generating revenue, because if they can demonstrate that they
Speaker 1: are interesting enough, some other bigger company will come and
Speaker 1: buy them, and then they don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: how to generate revenue. That's the bigger company's problem now,
Speaker 1: and everyone who made that stuff has become a millionaire. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm in the wrong business at any rate. The company
Speaker 1: I a C. Eventually spun off some of these properties,
Speaker 1: including spinning off the Home Shopping Network. So once again,
Speaker 1: Home Shopping Network creates Silver King Broadcasting. Silver King Broadcasting
Speaker 1: merges with Home Shopping Network. Then I a C, which
Speaker 1: grew out of Silver King Broadcasting, spins off Home Shopping Network.
Speaker 1: This is a weird story. They also spun off Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: around that same time, and in two thousand eleven, I
Speaker 1: a C created a startup incubator called hatch Labs. So
Speaker 1: this is a lot like Google's x Labs, the branch
Speaker 1: of Google that's all about research, ch in development and
Speaker 1: rapid prototyping of various products and services, all about let's
Speaker 1: let's look at big risk, big reward type stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: where can we come up with the next awesome idea
Speaker 1: in house rather than having to go out and buy
Speaker 1: it all the time, not that they were going to
Speaker 1: stop buying stuff, but this way they could also develop
Speaker 1: it within the company. Now, hatch Labs allows people to
Speaker 1: develop and test ideas for new products and services and companies.
Speaker 1: And because I a c. Owns it, it gives I
Speaker 1: a C. A large stake in anything that comes out
Speaker 1: of hatch Labs. We'll be back with more tender loving
Speaker 1: care after these brief messages. So this is the company
Speaker 1: as hatch Labs is the organization that served as the
Speaker 1: incubator for Tinder. So it wasn't that Tinder sprung up
Speaker 1: due to pure pluck an enthusiasm and had actually an
Speaker 1: enormous corporation behind it when they had a long history
Speaker 1: in online dating services because they had own match dot
Speaker 1: Com and okay Cupid for so long. But that's not
Speaker 1: the story you often hear when people talk about Tinder.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's a much more kind of grassroots
Speaker 1: sort of thing. That's not exactly the case. But none
Speaker 1: of that is to take away from the innovation and
Speaker 1: the clever positioning of Tinder. By the way, it's a
Speaker 1: product that people like and it does exactly what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to do. It's just not a little plucky startup
Speaker 1: the way some people imagine it to be. In fact,
Speaker 1: venture capitalists have been denied investment opportunities in Tender because
Speaker 1: I A. C. S. Steak in Tender is so great
Speaker 1: that they don't want anyone else coming in and getting
Speaker 1: any sort of majority share in this. And this is
Speaker 1: not a Tinder itself. It's not a publicly traded company,
Speaker 1: although it does act as its own entity. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Sean Rad was working for hatch Labs and he was
Speaker 1: developing ideas. He was working on a product called cardify UM,
Speaker 1: but he also had an idea kind of fermenting in
Speaker 1: his mind about a location based dating app, and he
Speaker 1: originally started calling it Matchbox. This was not one of
Speaker 1: his formal projects, and in fact he didn't really begin
Speaker 1: working on it in earnest until hatch Labs held a hackathon.
Speaker 1: This was not actually that long after shan Rad had
Speaker 1: joined hatch Labs. He had joined as a general manager UM.
Speaker 1: So the hackathon was an event in which employees could
Speaker 1: prototype new ideas rather than work on their regular projects,
Speaker 1: and it lasted a few days, so it gave you
Speaker 1: a chance if you had an idea to develop that
Speaker 1: idea and pitch your idea to the company and say
Speaker 1: this is something I think we should do. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it gave you the freedom to do that and take
Speaker 1: your workload, your regular workload, off of your shoulders while
Speaker 1: you're prototyping. So Rad worked on Matchbox that one of
Speaker 1: these hackathons and then switched back to his normal work
Speaker 1: duties trying to get Cartify off the ground. But Cardify
Speaker 1: was met with some resistance from iTunes. They were delaying
Speaker 1: putting it into the iTunes Store. And this has happened
Speaker 1: quite a few times with lots of different apps across
Speaker 1: lots of different you know, types of apps, whether it's
Speaker 1: a game or a service or whatever. Sometimes Apple wants
Speaker 1: changes or has objections. Sometimes they don't really give you
Speaker 1: necessarily the best feedback for you to figure out how
Speaker 1: to adjust your products so that it can be featured
Speaker 1: 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 form, so they changed the name
Speaker 1: to Tender. Now, Justin Matine 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 h the University of Southern
Speaker 1: California 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 my team would become
Speaker 1: the chief marketing officer for Tinder, but he stepped down
Speaker 1: in September two thousand fourteen in the wake of a
Speaker 1: sexual harassment lawsuit which was leveled by Tender vice president
Speaker 1: of marketing and uh at least sometimes credited co founder
Speaker 1: Whitney Wolf. I say sometimes credited because that whole story
Speaker 1: is incredibly complicated. There are people who protest her being
Speaker 1: called a co founder, although she was allowed to, you know,
Speaker 1: she was given the blessing by Shaan Rad to call
Speaker 1: herself co founder at least on a few occasions. There's
Speaker 1: some people who say that she was not really a
Speaker 1: co founder, but she certainly was there from the earliest days. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are other people who say, no, it's perfectly
Speaker 1: legitimate for her to call herself a co founder. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a really complicated issue, and it gets even more complex.
Speaker 1: Wolf 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 Matine,
Speaker 1: I mean really vile stuff. And tech Crunch actually ran
Speaker 1: a really long piece that I recommend if you want
Speaker 1: to hear more about this story. They ran a long
Speaker 1: piece about the lawsuit, and it gets really complicated because
Speaker 1: people obviously could not talk about this openly. It was
Speaker 1: all an ongoing lawsuit at the time, but ultimately Mateine
Speaker 1: left the company as well. Uh He and Sean rad
Speaker 1: remained those friends. They had been best friends for years
Speaker 1: before Tinder, so they remained friends. Wolf would go on
Speaker 1: to found a Bumble, which is another dating app, and
Speaker 1: the lawsuit itself was settled out of court for an
Speaker 1: undisclosed sum. Now, since its launched, Tender's popularity had become insane,
Speaker 1: so within two years by two thousand the end of
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, in other words, the app had been
Speaker 1: downloaded forty million times, showing a six percent growth in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen alone, and that there had been more
Speaker 1: than one billion profiles checked out every day by two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen. That means people are swiping left or right
Speaker 1: more than a billion times a day. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: it's close to one point two billion. That means that's
Speaker 1: about fourteen thousand profiles per second that are being looked
Speaker 1: at and judged. Those billion swipes would lead to about
Speaker 1: 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 the 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 Tinder, and that 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: and fourteen he was removed from that position by I
Speaker 1: a C. S Sam Yeagan. Sam Yagan was sort of
Speaker 1: in charge of all the digital dating stuff over at
Speaker 1: I a C. And it became it was something of
Speaker 1: a shock to Rad. I think it was partly as
Speaker 1: a response to the fallout with the sexual harassment lawsuit.
Speaker 1: So Yeagan then removes Rad and Rad ends up transitioning
Speaker 1: into the role of president and member of the board.
Speaker 1: The I A C would bring on Christopher Payne, who
Speaker 1: had worked as an executive over at eBay, to take
Speaker 1: over as CEO, but in March two thousand fifteen, Pain
Speaker 1: would step aside. Both Pain and I A sa C
Speaker 1: would say that this was not a good fit, that
Speaker 1: it was not a good long term fit. For him
Speaker 1: as CEO, so who replaced Christopher Paine to take over
Speaker 1: the role of CEO of Tinder Sean Rad So. Sean
Speaker 1: rad returns to CEO duties in March two thousand fift
Speaker 1: Uh not. First, we're moving away from the stuff going
Speaker 1: on at the top levels and the executive side of Tender.
Speaker 1: Let's look at their business model. At first, there were
Speaker 1: no pathways to generate revenue directly from Tinder. The original
Speaker 1: app was free to download, it was free to use.
Speaker 1: You could swipe an unlimited number of times per day. Really,
Speaker 1: you're only limited by how many other Tinder users were
Speaker 1: in your general area. I a c. Seemed to view
Speaker 1: Tender as a gateway to other services like match dot
Speaker 1: com and match dot com is monetized, so in other words,
Speaker 1: they looked at Tender as being kind of a gateway
Speaker 1: and you could actually end up using some of the
Speaker 1: more robust services online which you would pay for, and
Speaker 1: Tender was fine. It could be, it could be free,
Speaker 1: and that kind of answers the question of well, how
Speaker 1: does Tender make its money. It's because it's part of
Speaker 1: this massive company. It's not a tiny little startup that's
Speaker 1: operating all on its own it has these big corporate
Speaker 1: boots behind it, so they were they had plenty of
Speaker 1: of operating money to work with and UH. Everyone over
Speaker 1: at I a C. Seemed really impressed by Tender's growth.
Speaker 1: It was clear that it was really popular, so they
Speaker 1: felt that it was worthy of support. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, there were rumblings that Tender would finally start
Speaker 1: experimenting with a couple of different ways to generate revenue
Speaker 1: and back at that time, there were lots of different
Speaker 1: options being discussed, including showing ads to people UH and
Speaker 1: also starting up a premium service. In the spring of
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, Tender launched a premium service called Tinder Plus,
Speaker 1: and that ruffled some Tinder users feathers because they they
Speaker 1: made the claim that the way they that Tender created
Speaker 1: a premium service was to take features away from the
Speaker 1: free service and then make them pay only. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, instead of creating a better app that has
Speaker 1: a better experience, they created an app that had some
Speaker 1: of the features native to the free app but now
Speaker 1: had been turned off. For example, unlimited swiping, that's the
Speaker 1: most obvious one. So the premium service was said to
Speaker 1: have an unlimited number of swipes, which immediately set off
Speaker 1: alarms and said the free version would then be limited.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty complicated. You might say, well, how
Speaker 1: many swipes do I get per day? Then like, can
Speaker 1: I bank them? Can I roll them over? Well, you
Speaker 1: 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 in your average
Speaker 1: session you look at fifty profiles. I would set the
Speaker 1: your limit to forty eight because then I know that
Speaker 1: eventually you're going to hit that limit, and then you're
Speaker 1: going to eventually not want to hit that limit, and
Speaker 1: you'll be given an incentive to go with the premium
Speaker 1: service or you'll stop using it. But either way, if
Speaker 1: it's a free app, I'm not losing any money if
Speaker 1: you go away. I only gain money if you subscribe.
Speaker 1: So that's how evil I would be if I were
Speaker 1: in charge. I don't know what they did, That's just
Speaker 1: what I would do. This is why I don't can
Speaker 1: and this is why people don't put me in charge
Speaker 1: of things. I guess. Another thing that got some people
Speaker 1: talking about was that Tender Plus didn't cost the same
Speaker 1: amount for all users. If you are under thirty years old,
Speaker 1: the cost is nine dollars and cents per month. If
Speaker 1: you are thirty years old or older, the cost is
Speaker 1: nineteen dollars and ninety 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 Wright. So we see, yet again the cost of
Speaker 1: growing old. I got a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: about Tinder, but before we do that, let's take this
Speaker 1: quick break. Now. Tender statement on the pricing was, and
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote from a Tender executive. We've
Speaker 1: priced Tinder 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 perfect 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 could 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 talk about feeling a lot like a game,
Speaker 1: Like you're it's almost like the whole the old Hot
Speaker 1: or Not website where you would just you know, you're
Speaker 1: judging people on their looks. And it may be that
Speaker 1: you know you're you're going through a list of people
Speaker 1: 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 swiped left. This would let you undo that now.
Speaker 1: Of worse, 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 means 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's who seems interesting and could make
Speaker 1: that vacation much more of our memorable experience for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Then Passport would allow you to change your location too,
Speaker 1: wherever you were 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 boiling up Tender 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 gotta be tough because
Speaker 1: so many people feel like they know them simply because
Speaker 1: 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 Tender 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 tender, 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: Tender is also adding new features all the time. Some
Speaker 1: of 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 usual 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,
Speaker 1: no or maybe uh. In this case, superl 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 another interface in
Speaker 1: the app itself if you don't want to swipe up,
Speaker 1: but a super like sends a notification to the person
Speaker 1: whose profile you've tagged. In other words, normal operation of Tender,
Speaker 1: no one gets any indication that someone has liked or
Speaker 1: disliked their profile until they have liked the other person's profile,
Speaker 1: and even then you don't get an indication if they
Speaker 1: didn't like it. You only you only get a connection
Speaker 1: if both of you say yes, well it's super like.
Speaker 1: It's a little different if I were to super like
Speaker 1: a profile, that person would receive a notification saying, hey,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland just super liked you. Now, Tender says this
Speaker 1: is probably going to allow for more connections because you
Speaker 1: are only given one super like per day and you
Speaker 1: can't bank them. You can't roll them over to the
Speaker 1: next day. So it's a use it or lose it,
Speaker 1: and if you use it, that's the only one you
Speaker 1: get to use for that twenty four hour period. So
Speaker 1: if I send someone a super like, they know, all right,
Speaker 1: well he really does like at least my appearance, because
Speaker 1: he used up his one and only chance today to
Speaker 1: say I like you. At that point, the person can
Speaker 1: swipe left and you just lost your super like you.
Speaker 1: You you took a chance and it struck out, and
Speaker 1: that is the way life goes sometimes, or they can
Speaker 1: swipe right and things can go on from air. Now
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's an interesting idea. It's already rolled
Speaker 1: out in Australia. As of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: it has not rolled out beyond Australia, but it's supposed
Speaker 1: to continue to roll out to Tender users around the
Speaker 1: world throughout the rest of the year. So that is
Speaker 1: the latest on Tender Personally. I remember when I first
Speaker 1: heard about Tinder. I think I had the grumpy old man, conservative,
Speaker 1: dismissive opinion about it, like, you know, oh, this is
Speaker 1: so shallow. It's just people hooking up because of the
Speaker 1: way they look. The more I think about it, the
Speaker 1: more I realize, now, this is kind of a This
Speaker 1: this is no less legitimate than other means of just
Speaker 1: meeting people, seeing someone that you think is attractive and
Speaker 1: coming up and and saying hello and trying to strike
Speaker 1: up a conversation. It's also safer because it doesn't put
Speaker 1: anyone in an awkward physical situation. They can choose at
Speaker 1: the very beginning whether or not they want to sue anything.
Speaker 1: Um and I can see how this would appeal to
Speaker 1: the millennial generation, people who have increasingly shifted their interactions
Speaker 1: to an online approach. And honestly, even though I'm a
Speaker 1: Generation xer, I'm older than the millennial generation. I feel
Speaker 1: very much the same way. In a lot of respects.
Speaker 1: I do enjoy using the internet to do stuff like heck,
Speaker 1: I to order stuff and go shopping, to order food,
Speaker 1: to call for things like an uber car or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. I get that it's something that I really,
Speaker 1: uh gravitate toward as well, So upon further consideration, I
Speaker 1: think I'm much more fair towards Tender than I used
Speaker 1: to be. Granted, I am glad that I don't have
Speaker 1: to use it because I think I might be depressed
Speaker 1: at how few matches would pop up people swiping right
Speaker 1: on my profile. But um, I think it is an
Speaker 1: interesting app and I think, if used correctly, is nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with it. Honestly, it requires the participation and honesty
Speaker 1: of the people using the app. It's not just on
Speaker 1: the app itself. It's on the behavior of the people
Speaker 1: using it. And you can use or misuse any tool,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there are more than plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of people out there who have tried to use Tinder
Speaker 1: and just gone for like an easy sexual encounter or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. And again, if you're not being
Speaker 1: honest or up front about that stuff, shame on you.
Speaker 1: That is not cool. But um, you know, if everyone
Speaker 1: is is on the same page and everything is being
Speaker 1: agreed upon and transparent, then I see no reason to
Speaker 1: to condemn it. That you know, obviously uh so interesting story.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more to talk about, I'm sure with Tinder,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we'll see more uh interesting things pop
Speaker 1: up in the future. I'm curious to see how well
Speaker 1: tender plus does in the long run, whether it actually
Speaker 1: generates a significant amount of income. It might if people
Speaker 1: really find that that experience to be rewarding, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they just enjoy the thrill of being able to
Speaker 1: look at different profiles, or they're actually seeking out someone
Speaker 1: either for you know, a casual dating experience or looking
Speaker 1: for someone to to really be their significant other. It's
Speaker 1: really an interesting approach. So while there has been drama
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, uh and I'm sure there will continue
Speaker 1: to be some 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, so there's either a
Speaker 1: large influx of older people joining Tinder or younger people
Speaker 1: are already getting less interested in and dropping away. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that classic episode about Tinder, Tender, loving care,
Speaker 1: fun times with the tech Stuff naming process. Anyway, if
Speaker 1: you would like to reach out and suggest topics for
Speaker 1: me to cover, whether maybe it's an update on Tinder,
Speaker 1: because obviously a lot has happened since two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's something entirely different. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways you can reach out to me. One
Speaker 1: is to download the i Heart Radio app. It's free
Speaker 1: to download. Just navigate over to tech Stuff use a
Speaker 1: little microphone icon. You can record a message up to
Speaker 1: thirty seconds in length and let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like to hear on future episodes. Or you can
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again, Releaston. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.